Affiliate Marketing for Beginners

Arguably one of the easiest ways to get a foothold in the online money making business is with affiliate marketing.

I already introduced this method on the home page, but in this article I want to expand on what it is and how even a complete beginner can get in on the action and start making some real money from the Internet.

As you are likely already aware, this kind of income generating method is basically a way to earn commission on sales of goods, services and digital products that you, the marketer presents to buyers online. The how's and wherefore's are the parts of this method that need some explaining.

So let's get started!

Starting as an Affiliate Marketer

The first thing you need to do when starting out is to get signed up to your first affiliate program or network.

There are many to choose from depending on what type of things you would like to present for sale to an online audience.

So that means there's a pre-step to get over before taking that first step: Deciding what you want to sell and to whom!

The two main areas that stand out are:

Physical products
Digital products

Physical products are just that: items that people can buy online that are delivered to their home.

A good example of that is being an affiliate of Amazon, which sells just about everything under the sun to customers.

Likewise you can join the affiliate program for big stores like Wal-Mart, Wayfair, Home Depot etc, depending on what you want to promote.

Digital products, by contrast are downloadable items such as ebooks, training courses, software packages etc. These items you can also sell or promote to people that have a need for those things.

That need is surprisingly huge.

There are already a lot of work at home people that need these resources to help them expand their income choices as well as small, medium and even large companies that require any number of resources for their businesses!

What Do You Want to Promote or Sell?

Physical Products

Let's take the easiest to understand option of selling physical goods to people via an affiliate program such as Amazon.

I chose that one because it is relatively easy to sign up for and easy to promote simple things that people buy a lot of. Such as things for the home or garden, beauty products, books, electronic gadgets etc.

The work you then need to do is to choose what products you feel confident writing about or even making a video about and then publishing your creation to the web via either a website (or blog) or to a video platform like Youtube.

Somewhere in your content should be a call to action (CTA) that basically asks a viewer to click a link or a button that you program into your content. That link contains your affiliate details so that Amazon can track it and know the customer was sent from your link.

Then whatever the customer buys while they are shopping at Amazon, a percentage of the total purchase price is given to you as a commission.

Digital Products

The other side of the coin is choosing to promote and sell digital products that don't have any actual physical form or need to be physically shipped to the recipient's address. The whole transaction is completed online and the product is downloaded by the buyer onto their computer.

Probably the most popular affiliate network for digital products is Clickbank.

That company is also relatively easy to sign up for and start promoting via your website, blog, video platform or even using paid advertising methods (but that's a whole big topic for its own article).

How to Sign Up with an Affiliate Network

There are many great tutorials on how to sign up with Clickbank and many of the other affiliate networks and programs if you are stuck. Simply search for the company using this search term:

″Company-name affiliate signup tutorial″

You can search Google for text-based tutorials or Youtube for video tutorials. Or read on for my simplified Clickbank sign-up process:

How to Sign Up with Clickbank

Signing up for a Clickbank account is relatively easy and straight forward. First of all, you need to open clickbank.com in your browser and ensure you have javascript and cookies enabled.

Navigate to accounts.clickbank.com/signup where you'll find the ″Create Account″ signup form.

Enter your details including your country (there's a dropdown menu for that), your first and last name, phone number and your main email address (use an email address that you use regularly). Then choose a password to continue.

You'll also need to click the "Continue to Terms and Conditions" button (read the ClickBank Client Contract), then click the "Accept Terms and Conditions" button to return to the sign up form. Finally, click the "Join ClickBank!" button and you have completed the first part of the sign up process.

The next step, once you have signed up is to complete your ClickBank Client Profile, which you will be prompted to do right after signing up. Fill in the required fields in the profile form and click ″Save″ to complete.

Select a Product to Promote

Once signed up, you can get started by finding a product to promote via a website or blog post or using video or social media.

The ways to promote offers online are many and varied! You choose which is best for you.

There are also many tutorials on getting through this process, again in web pages, videos and there are also many really good tutorial courses available.

Some are free, others you have to pay for.

It goes without saying that in most cases, the paid courses are far more comprehensive and will provide you with a lot more useful information than will the free stuff.

One of my absolute favorite courses in affiliate marketing in general and it includes a lot of info on Clickbank, is a one dollar downloadable ebook by one of the top marketers out there, John Crestani.

Here's a handy link to get the book for only one buck!

Update: This book is no longer available. Link removed.

However, if you want to get the best training online, I strongly suggest you check out John Crestani's tremium training course, called SAS. It's not a cheapo courseby any means, but in my opinion is one of th ebest out there if you are really serious about making money online as an affiliate.

I've linked to it below (sign up for the free training):