Working in the field of affiliate marketing on the internet is the most rewarding thing that I have ever done. But, when you’re just new to the game, it can be tremendously confusing, very frustrating, and absolutely mind boggling! Education is the key here.

I would say that it literally took me 2 full years, loads of money, and many sleepless nights before I finally began to see really good financial returns for my efforts. I’ll bet that there are heaps of you out there who can relate to that!

When I first started out, some 10 years ago, good education regarding affiliate marketing either wasn’t around, or what was around cost you the shirt off your back! Fortunately, things have changed dramatically, to the stage where there is heaps of “stuff” out there to help you in your working from home affiliate marketing business.

Here’s a few “does” and “don’ts” for you.

There are heaps of free reports available, some with good content and advice, some not so good. If you do a Google search you will be able to find many of these free reports. Instinct should enable you to sift the good from the bad here.

If a free report wants you to click through to an educational program which is going to cost you anything from a couple of hundred bucks to 5 or 6 thousand bucks, then forget it, and delete the free report! Often, with these types of programs, the next thing that happens after you’ve paid your $200 or so, is that you’ll get a phone call from a so-called “mentor” who will offer to hold your hand and guide you step by step to earning $50,000 if only you’ll put yourself in hock on your credit card to the tune of around $20,000!!! Heard all of that at some stage or other, have you? My advice? Run 50 miles in the opposite direction as fast as you can!

Now, I’m not saying that there are no good mentors out there. There are heaps of great mentors around, but many of them will charge only a small amount, by comparison to the above, for their services.

There are some extremely good ebooks available, usually between 30 and 200 pages long, that you can pick up from around $5 right through to around $200. These are the only ones that I would bother with. They are written by people who are out there doing it in the world of affiliate marketing, and they’re happy to share their success tips - what’s working for them - with you for a reasonable fee.

The reason that there is a fee for these ebooks is very simple. Their authors want you to actually read them and implement the strategies they teach. They contend that if they give you the ebook free, then more than likely you’ll download it and never read it!! They see that as an absolute waste. Also, they’ve gone to the trouble of writing the helpful ebook - it’s fair enough that they should receive some financial recompense for that.

I recommend that you start off with some of the lower priced ebooks. I have bought several of them, and implemented the strategies taught in them. In all cases, without exception, following the strategies has lead to an increase in income for me.

Of course, not all of the strategies taught will suit you, and you may want to sift through what you’ve bought, and put into practice the ones that you feel comfortable with. That’s fine, but do understand that educating yourself in the world of affiliate marketing is necessary if you want to short circuit the road to success.

Working from home as an affiliate marketer is a fantastic lifestyle for those who are prepared to educate themselves for a reasonable cost, and for those who are prepared to seriously carry out in a determined and consistent manner the strategies being taught to them.

So you’re new to the world of affiliate marketing and you’re confused about just how to get started. You have joined up as an affiliate for a product you’d like to promote, even sent out a few of those free emails, but no commission checks yet. Heck! It’s been 3 whole weeks without any sales whatsoever!

Never fear! Real help is at hand. Here are a few tips to get you started in the awesome and inspiring world of internet marketing as a newbie affiliate marketer. I call them newbie affiliate secrets, because they are precisely the strategies that you will need to learn and master in order to succeed in the world of affiliate marketing.

As this is an article, and not an ebook, these tips will be brief but nonetheless important. When you’ve finished reading this article your next step is to thoroughly research all the methods I will be mentioning here. Doing Google searches on these strategies is a great way to find out more about them. There is heaps of free information out there, also some very good information that will cost you between $5 and $10. Then there’s information which can cost you anything from $97 to around $5,000 to $6,000.

My advice is to read all the free stuff first, then head for the info which is priced between say $5 and $50. At no stage should you ever need to spend thousands of dollars in order to learn, as a newbie affiliate marketer.

OK here goes.

Article Writing. This is one method of free advertising which can get you an unlimited stream of free traffic. There are literally hundreds, probably thousands by now, of article publishing sites such as “Ezine Articles”, “Go Articles” etc. Writing an article is not as scary as it seems. If you can talk, then you can write. You simply write as if you were talking face to face with a friend. If you still think that you can’t write, then you can have your article written for you, although you will have to pay for this.

Once your article is written you need to send it to all the article publishers. If you were to do this manually it would take forever. A better way is to join up with an article submitter - once again, do a Google search. They will distribute your article to hundreds of publishers for you, which leaves you free to knock out another article or two.

I keep saying this, write as many articles as you can. In affiliate marketing you need to generate massive exposure for the product you are promoting. In each article, try to target different keywords from the previous article. This can ensure that you rank highly with the search engines on several keywords or keyword phrases. You will need to do some keyword research, though, in order to find good keywords to target that are aligned to your particular product.

Blogs. They’re my next favourite method of advertising, and once again, this type of advertising is free for you, the affiliate marketer. You just need to be prepared to put in the time. You should set up your own blog - it’s relatively easy once you get the hang of it - and you should add content to your blog on a regular basis, like every day. Don’t forget to “ping” it so that the search engines can find it. Your keywords are important here as well.

The other thing you should be doing is visiting other blogs on related topics and adding your comment. You may not advertise directly, but you can add your link as part of your signature. You should visit and comment in other blogs every day.

Forums. Another free way of getting yourself known out there. However this is my least favourite method as it’s very time consuming and can be rather confusing. But it’s still well worth the effort. In the forums you should add comment in the relevant threads, once again, every day.

You cannot advertise, but you can add your link in the signature area in most forums. Do look for forums that will let you post your linking signature either straight away, or after just a few posts. Stay away from forums that tell you that you cannot add your signature until you’ve posted 250 times! Heck! If you post once a day, then it’s going to take you 8 months before you can add your link to your signature! So be aware of this.

To sum up then. Articles - as many of them as you can pump out, at least one a day. Blogs - build your own and visit others, daily. Forums - search for and visit forums that will let you add your link in your signature after only a few posts, or right away.

Affiliate marketing can be a tremendous amount of fun once you get the feel for it, and of course, determined and consistent effort on your part will bring great rewards.

As an affiliate marketer you need to implement all and any tools which will increase your exposure on the internet and on the search engines, particularly Google - the big daddy of them all.

Today I want to deal with my second favourite method of doing that. ( Anyone and everyone who knows me is/are already aware that my first favourite method is article writing and distribution).

Blogs are a powerful way of achieving massive traffic for your product or program. Why is that? At present at least, the search engines are having a rampant love affair with blogs. So let’s take full advantage of that.

You can put up multiple blogs for free. If you are promoting various products or programs as an affiliate then you can - and should - set up a blog for each product or program. I recommend Wordpress and Blogger - they’re free to use and relatively easy to set up. Use Pingoat and Pingomatic to “ping” your blog. This lets the search engines know that you exist and they’ll come looking for you. Don’t forget to reping whenever you add new content.

So how do you use your blog to advertise your product or program as an affiliate marketer? The first thing you should do is write a review about your affiliate product or program, using good keywords throughout ( you’ve already done the research necessary to find good keywords). You should use several words as links through to your product’s sales page or sign up page so that your reader’s curiosity is aroused and he will want to click the links for more information.

Your review text should pay compliment to your product without too much “rarara” and hype, and you should also instruct your reader as to what you want him to do next - click through to the sales page for more information. If you’re a really good convincing writer you should also be able to instruct him to sign up on the sales page once he has read it.

In affiliate marketing this is known as subtle yet powerful subliminal suggestion. By the time your reader reaches your sales page he’s already presold and will purchase.

You should always reprint in your blog all of the articles you have submitted to publishers. This will act as yet another link which will be searched and found by the search engines when they’re out doing their “crawls” - all good for you in your affiliate marketing endeavours.

Allow for other readers to add comments to your blog. In this way they will give of their opinion, and you have a back link to their site. Guess what that means? If they give you a blog address as a back link then you can go make a comment on their blog and add your link in their blog. And all this is extra advertising for free. It’s a great thing to do in affiliate marketing, in fact absolutely necessary, plus it can be lots of fun and quite entertaining. Let’s not forget that we should also be having lots of fun as an affiliate marketer, as well as making the bucks.

Each day you should add new content to your blog - doesn’t necessarily have to be much, just something enticing enough to make your readers want to come back and see what you have to say today. An active blog with new added relevant content is much more likely to be indexed quicker with the search engines.

Visit other blogs that are reasonably closely related to your area of interest as an affiliate marketer and add your comments - plus your link in your signature. Don’t blatantly advertise your product - it’s very frowned upon - but add some valuable comment which will entice readers to want to know what you’re about, and therefore click on your link.

Blogs are websites, and as such they are a very valuable - and free - tool which you must implement in your affiliate marketing career.

You’ve decided to sell a product online as an affiliate marketer. Congratulations! In this day and age online selling has gained massive popularity, and I believe that we all have to move with the times in accepting that online marketing is here to stay.

Let’s deal in particular with promoting a product that you are marketing as an affiliate. Whatever product you chose to market you will need to know precisely how to promote your product so that it gains massive exposure out there in the great world of internet marketing. If you’re new to affiliate marketing you will be wondering just where to start, and no doubt your research so far will have most probably left you feeling dazed and confused!

You don’t have a huge budget to spend on promoting your affiliate product - in fact you don’t have any budget! Sound familiar? Those of us who have been around the world of marketing products as an affiliate for a while can all empathise with you. In plain English - we know where you’re at!

As this is an article and not an ebook, there are limits to what I can tell you here, but the following tips will get you well and truly started and on your way to promoting your product online - and for no cost!

But wait! There IS a catch! These methods for promoting your affiliate product will take time - lots of it! And you MUST be prepared to put in this time if you are going to succeed at promoting your product.

Still with me? OK here goes.

Articles. You must write articles about your product, and the more articles you write the greater your exposure on the internet will be. I know! You can’t write! I’m here to tell you that you can write. You can talk - yes? Well then, just write like you talk. Write as if you were sitting at the kitchen table telling your best friend all about your product. Make no mistake, article writing is one of the best ways to promote your affiliate product online.

There are literally thousands of article publishers out there in cyber space and they’re all hungry for content for their publications. Your article should be between 500 and 1200 words long (don’t freak out - once you start writing you will reach that amount of words in no time at all) and should be written as if you were reviewing the product. Your article must not sound like an advertisement, but rather more an endorsement or observation from your point of view.

Once you’ve written your article you need to submit it to all those thousands of publishers. Yeeeouch! But don’t worry! Help is at hand. There are also heaps of article submission sites out there. Do a search for “article submitters”, then pick one which you feel suits you. Most article submission sites will allow you to submit quite a few articles each month as a free member. I cannot stress enough that this is one of the very best methods to use when it comes time to promote your affiliate product online.

Oh, and by the way, there will be a resource box or author’s box on the article submitter’s site. This is where you advertise your affiliate link to the product you are marketing. If your article is interesting and informative your readers will click through to your site - exactly what you’re trying to achieve in promoting your product.

Blogs. This is the second free method that you should use to promote your product online. You must start your own blog and you should add to it often. You can add your published articles to your blog, plus add whatever other content about your product that you think would be relevant. Setting up a blog takes a little time to learn, but it is an absolute must and well worthwhile when it comes a great way to promote your product. You should also visit the other blogs on relevant topics and add your comments. Once again, no advertising, just your relevant comments. But you can usually sign off with a link to your product website.

Forums. Do a search for forums relevant to your product. Join as many as you can, then visit them daily, adding relevant comments. Once again, no direct advertising, but you will be able to put your product’s website link in the signature area.

You must make the above three methods of promoting your product online an absolute habit - tasks that must be performed every day. Until you get the hang of it all, start out by writing one article per day. Set up your blog and update it every three days. Visit other blogs and add comment every day. Join forums and visit them every day. You must be absolutely focused here if you are to succeed when you promote your product.

Articles and blogs are particularly loved by the search engines, so you need to have a high profile in these areas when you promote your affiliate product online.

This article is rather brief, but valuable in helping you along your path to promoting and marketing your product. There are more in depth ebooks on the subject of product promotion and marketing, and I suggest that you do invest in one of these. One of the very best that I have found and still use is not expensive, in fact under $10.You will never regret such a purchase.

Making money online should be, ideally, both fun and profitable. But here in the “real world” it is more often than not downright frustrating and expensive! Does that sound familiar to you? Yes? You’ve been there! You’re not alone! So have I along with thousands of others.

I have been involved in online or internet marketing for a little over ten years now. I would say that for the first three years I spent much more money than I ever earned! Yet still my belief and determination drove me on. My husband, Ross, says it was my “one eyed” and “pig headed” attitude !! Hahaha!

What I’d like to do here is just share with you some of my experiences and lend you the benefit of some of what I have learned.

You have undoubtedly fallen, probably more than once, for the “hype” displayed on the landing page of some guru or another, paid your money and signed up to the latest program which promises that you’ll make megabucks if you just follow this and that! With me so far? You’re told that you just have to add this “magic code”, or add “X” plug-in, or just click your mouse half a dozen times each morning and wallah!! You’ll be rolling in it in no time !! Yeah, right !!!!

Then there’s those sites which “put down” all that stuff and tell you that if you just sign up with their site, then you will, indeed, make megabucks - and look at these screen shots of our online bank account to prove it! Yeah, right !!!!

Then there are the sites that say that they really ARE going to tell it to you like it really is!!!! Yeah, right !!!!!

So here’s a line which will have you smiling !! I AM going to tell it to you like it is!!!!

There is no “easy ride” to internet marketing success or making money online!!

Firstly, it doesn’t really matter what you chose to market online. What does matter is the actual marketing! Make no mistake about this, the biggest factor if you wish to succeed in making money online is your ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN !! Isn’t it boring ?! Here I am saying something you don’t really want to hear!

All those gurus and other website owners brush over this when you’re on their landing page, or their sign-up page. It’s only after you’ve paid your bucks that they say “Of course, you’ll need to advertise in order to make money online”.

Admittedly, some of them make some sort of an attempt to give you some ideas on how and where to advertise, and in some cases they even supply you with pre-written ads, articles and banners. Well guess what?

Every time you click on one of the links on their site so that you can go do some advertising, you’re actually clicking on THEIR affiliate link and, if you upgrade from free member to a paid membership through those links, then they will get paid!!

Now, in itself, there’s nothing wrong with that, but by the time you’ve clicked on several of those links on their site, and consequently upgraded your membership on just a few of them, they have made quite a tidy little profit! So if they get, say, ten sign-ups a day then they are getting paid for their program and around 70% commission for every sign-up who upgrades to advertise using one of the links in their program. Could be quite a tidy income for them while you’re still wondering where to start !

Know this! To succeed at making money online or through internet marketing you must advertise, advertise, advertise !! And when you’ve finished doing that, then your next task is to advertise, advertise, advertise !! Then advertise some more !!

That means, whether you like what I say here or not, you have to get off your butt and do heaps of work !! Oh OK ! So you’ve read enough already and you’re going to click right on outa here right now !! That tells me that really, you’re not that serious about making money online, or you’re looking for the lazy man’s way to get to the megabucks !!

There is no easy or gentle way to tell you that, if you’re serious about internet marketing and making money online, you are going to have to work !! I mean really work - you’ll be working long hours to start with - and “to start with” can last anywhere from around three months to anything up to three years !!! Yep ! You heard right !!

I’m not going to go into what you’re marketing in this article - we can talk about that another time. For now, we’ll concentrate on what you can do to increase dramatically your chances of becoming successful in internet marketing or making money online.

By now, you’ve accepted the cold, hard facts ! You have to do heaps of work and you have to do heaps of advertising. ( Boring, aren’t I? I keep repeating this !!)

Once again, because this is an article and not a full length ebook, there’s a limit to what I can tell you here. But here’s one example of good advertising - you’re reading it right now ! An article !

Writing an article and submitting it to as many article publishers as you can is an excellent way to get fantastic, and practically instant exposure for your program, and a great way to get yourself known around the world of internet marketing. (The link to your site goes in your author’s box).

Ideally, you should be writing and submitting an article at least once every three days. Yep, you heard right ! There are several article marketers out there who will submit your article in bulk to the publishers, and they usually provide a ton of helpful info on their sites as to how to write your article.

You are allowed to submit a set number of articles each month for free through most article marketers, or you can upgrade for a monthly or annual fee in order to submit more articles. In my experience, the articles which get the best results are ones that you have written yourself. And don’t tell me that you can’t write !! You can talk, can’t you ?! Well, just write like you talk.It’s easy ! Really !

Don’t copy and submit one of the pre-written articles from your chosen program !! They’re not original enough and both the publishers and the search engines get a bit shirty about what appears to be duplicate material - after all, you and 50,000 others have just given them the same article!!

Don’t underestimate the power of email advertising. You’ll probably want to start off for free with these until you’ve got some seed money under your belt. But blasting out free emails means that they are not targeted specifically to your particular market customers. For example, you’re marketing hairclips, yet your free email ad winds up in the inbox of a motorcycle enthusiast !! Hmmm!!

But don’t worry too much. What this means is that you have to keep emailing, keep emailing, keep emailing, and then keep emailing !! Day after day, week after week, month after month !! It’s time consuming, but it’s free ! When you have some seed money, go for some targeted email campaigns. Shop around for these - the prices vary quite dramatically.

Blogs !! There are several sites where you can set up a blog for free. It’s a real learning curve, but get in there and just do it !!! The search engines love blogs, and they are undoubtedly a big factor in your impending success in internet marketing and making money online. And you can have more than one blog.

Lots of people with blogs have a comment box on their blogs. This is also a good place for you to advertise for free. You just add some comment relevant to the blogger’s topic, then add your own program url ( include the http:// ) beneath your name. Do HEAPS of this, you’ll get fantastic exposure.

Traffic Exchanges ! This is another very time consuming one, but if you really want to get ahead in internet marketing and making money online, then do this, too. Once again, you can start out for free - what that means is that you will need to spend a couple of hours each day surfing through the traffic exchanges. Once you have some seed money ( that’s money made online that you should now reinvest ) then you can start buying some credits which will cut down the amount of time that you need to be physically surfing.

I have by no means covered all the means by which you can advertise in order to succeed at internet marketing and making money online. But this WILL get you started.

My main aim here has been to make you ABSOLUTELY very well aware of the cold, hard facts that you MUST acknowledge and embrace before you have ANY hope of succeeding in making money online. You need a rock hard, granite-like mindset, utter determination, complete dedication, and bullet proof perseverance in order to succeed in the very exciting and very rewarding world of internet marketing.