Affiliate Marketing is a very exciting – if sometimes unpredictable – online business to get into.  It is a win-win situation for both the affiliate and the merchant for obvious reasons – the low risk and startup costs for the affiliate, and the low advertising costs for the merchant.


The merchant gets free advertising to a broader market through the affiliates’ websites which host his banner ads or affiliate links, and unless the visitor that you send to his site converts into a sale, it costs him nothing.  On the other hand, if the visitor does become a paying customer, you the affiliate, get a piece of the pie for being responsible for sending the customer to the merchant’s site.

If you decide to try your hand at an affiliate marketing online program, there will be a number of different programs to choose from, and they are basically classified as Pay Per Performance (PPP) or a Pay Per Click program (PPC).  Optionally, if you have a product of your own to sell and would like other affiliate marketers to promote your product, you can start an affiliate marketing online program of your own.  You just need to try each program and determine which method is more profitable for you.  You can even try a combination of several different programs if you like.

You want to be creative in your business, but at the same time it’s a good idea to be open to suggestions and work with people who have been there and done that, and have the income to show for it.  Fortunately, you don’t have to try to figure out every aspect of this business on your own or pay a fortune to find out the most profitable way to do it, as there are some folks out there who know what it takes to be successful in affiliate marketing, and are willing to share their knowledge and experience with you for free.

Because it is an inexpensive and virtually risk-free business to get into, Affiliate Marketing is very popular with new entrepreneurs who may not have a lot of cash to sink into a new business, and who haven’t learned a lot about doing business on the internet yet.  But beginner affiliates are not the only ones cashing in.  The main source of income for many of the top earners on the internet is from at least one affiliate marketing online program as well.

However, without the proper tools and training, along with patience, persistence and determination, it can be a tremendous time drain, and you can make some costly mistakes.  You must do your homework – find products or services that people are willing to buy, and then get the products in front of these people and convince them that they should buy from you.

Be careful of ads that “guarantee” instant and massive incomes.  If anyone could make money online just by buying these people’s information products, with no work involved, wouldn’t we all be rich?  It’s very easy to be distracted by the thousands of get-rich-quick pipe dreams that are coming at you from every direction, so it’s important that you discipline yourself right up front to have tunnel vision and stay on task – or you could end up spending all your time going in circles.

Granted, if you work diligently at marketing and getting your website out there – which takes work and perseverance, by the way – you can make money eventually. But this magic bullet that you plug into your computer that causes it to start spitting cash out at you, is very elusive! (I haven’t found it anyway.) It takes time, effort and a lot of acquired knowledge to establish a successful affiliate marketing online program.

If you don’t come to the table with a background in marketing, web design, computer programming, or some other computer related background in the first place, be prepared to make an effort to acquire some basic knowledge and skills in these areas.  In order to run an efficient, profitable online business, you’ll need some basic knowledge of some of the functions of marketing such as creating an affiliate marketing website, how to find products that convert to sales, how to get your business out there so people can find you, and a host of other skills that will make your online business a success.

But, as I mentioned above, you can also find some excellent mentors out there who openly share their knowledge and advice through their websites, potentially making the journey much easier and shorter for you, if you apply what you are taught.

Take Advantage Of Free Resources That Are Available To Help You Make Money Online

I have noted here on this website some of the best sites online whose webmasters know all about publishing professional blogs and exactly what is involved in making money online.  The information you glean from these guys is totally free of charge, and yet priceless.  The so-called “A-listers” of the internet charge mega bucks for Ecourses, Ebooks, and Reports that don’t even come close to what these guys openly share with their readers for free.

Another powerful advantage of affiliate marketing is the merchant’s customer support, which you don’t have to provide yourself, leaving your time open to more productive tasks such as advertising your website to bring more potential customers to your site, and optimizing your website for the search engines so that these customers can find you.

In the end, you must work at your business, and be determined to succeed, especially in the beginning.  The tools and information you need are right at your fingertips, you just have to take the steps needed to achieve your own success, one day, one step, and one article at a time.

And by all means, listen to others who have been down the ‘Affiliate Marketing Online Program‘ road, and are willing to share both the mistakes they have made, and the knowledge they have gained while creating their own successful online business.  Don’t fall for all the crap Ecourses, Ebooks, and training offered by unscrupulous people who are only out to take your money (and couldn’t care less whether or not you succeed).  You’re staring at a wealth of information from people who know what this business is all about -  and it’s totally free of charge.

Having an online business, being able to set your own hours, spending more time with your family doing the things you enjoy doing, and having the money to do those things….This is a dream of many people today. And the internet – along with internet pioneers like Ken Evoy and his affiliate marketing course (The Affiliate Masters Course) – have helped to make this dream more attainable for many – leveling the playing field so that even those with little or no business background have a chance to own their own successful businesses – if they are willing to do what it takes.


But even though the potential to be a huge success online is there, you still must master certain skills and obtain the right tools in order to make it happen.  There will be planning that you must do upfront in order to get your business started off on the right track and to avoid problems down the road> And regardless of what you may have read from someone trying to make a buck off of the latest ‘make money online’ ebook, you must put the time and effort in as well.

How do you plan to monetize your new business?  There are a number of different ways to monetize your business, but the affiliate model is probably the lowest risk opportunity, with the most potential for high rewards for your efforts.

How To Start Your Own Business Online

If you don’t have a background in business, and you’ve never tried to build a business online, it can be an overwhelming process.  Where do you begin? The Affiliate Masters Course can help you to get pointed in the right direction and it will answer a lot of questions that anyone new to online business building has.

You will need to brainstorm the most profitable topics for your business – you must develop the best concept/theme for your site – and then you must select the best affiliate programs that are related to your site’s theme.  The Affiliate Masters Course can put you way ahead of the game in all of these areas.

In fact, The Affiliate Masters Course by Key Evoy has been the starting point for thousands of people who had the dream of having a successful business online, affiliate marketing in particular.

In his 10-day course, Ken – of SiteBuildIt fame – explains what you need to know to have a successful affiliate marketing business.  In around 200 pages of useful information that you can put to work right away, Ken over-delivers on the information you’ll need to be a success online. Nothing is held back.  And the entire course is absolutely Free!

An Affiliate Marketing Business Has Its Advantages

As I stated above, there are many different ways to monetize your new business, but let’s look at some of the advantages of affiliate marketing:

  • The products you will be promoting have already been created by someone else, so there’s no need to worry about the costs to create or store inventory.
  • Your job as an affiliate is to just send traffic to the merchants you are affiliated with, so you don’t have the headaches of taking and processing orders.  The merchants handle this for you, and when your visitors make a purchase from that merchant, you are paid.
  • Since your merchants will be taking care of all the shipping and handling of products, you don’t have to worry about that part of the process either.
  • Your merchants will take care of all the customer service.  You don’t have to worry about inquiries, complaints, returns, and other customer service issues.
  • Affiliate programs should always be free to join, allowing you to start a business with very little upfront costs.

Creating Your Own Affiliate Marketing Business

The Affiliate Masters Course….

This 10-DAY course focuses 100% on helping you – the affiliate – succeed.  It leads you step by digestible step – day by day – through a flawless process…

…from developing a Site Concept

… to brainstorming hundreds of profitable related keywords

Free Affiliate Marketing Training-Starting Your Own Business Online

… to building a themed site

… to generating motivated – targeted traffic that wants to click on your recommendations (links) to the related products sold by merchants you represent.

So, all of this begs the question: Why would Ken Evoy give this course away for free?  Well, the answer is simple.  They hope that by giving away this excellent training course you will purchase their SiteBuildIt (SBI!) business building package….But you do not have to.

You may find – as many others do – that the course itself is really all you need.  The Affiliate Masters Course will teach you, one step at a time, how to succeed in affiliate marketing.  You’ll be a super affiliate in the making!  Download the course now and get started on the road to a successful affiliate marketing business today!

670 kb – Windows and MacOs

The process of starting an affiliate marketing business (or whatever business model you have chosen) requires a lot of hard work and persistence, along with lots of skills and the proper tools – in spite of what you may have read elsewhere on the internet, especially if you are serious about having a successful online business and not just a hobby.


However, if you don’t happen to be the “techie” type, that doesn’t mean that you can’t still enjoy the rewards of starting your own business online, and you don’t have to buy into all the hoopla that is being hawked all over the internet just trying to get money from people who are new and feel like they have to buy every ebook and ecourse offered out there to learn how to build a successful business.

I don’t know how many of you have heard of Ken Evoy and SiteBuildIt, but it is a suite of internet tools that reportedly will save you many hours of your time building your internet business because you won’t need to learn HTML, FTP, domain hosting, search engine optimization and so forth, in order to build a website. How’s that for a dream come true?

In a nutshell, SiteBuildIt is purported to be an all-in-one site-building, hosting, marketing, and site brainstorming, step-by-step system of software tools that makes it much easier for even the most technically challenged amongst us to have a professional looking, traffic-pulling, income producing website, designed to accommodate “newbies” to internet business, as well as sophisticated webmasters.

Clearly, designing and creating a website can be difficult for someone who is not technical-minded and who does not have graphical or programming skills. But if you are willing to put in the time and effort necessary to learn what is involved in building an internet business, there probably is no need for you to fork over the moola that sites like SiteBuildIt charge.

Everything you need to know and every tool you need to use to build a business online can be found right here under your nose and it doesn’t have to cost you a thing but your time.

The Perfect Blueprint For Starting Your Own Business – NOT!

Two years ago when I decided I wanted to stay at home and have my own internet business, I was just like many others who come here hoping to find that “perfectly laid out blueprint” that will launch them into a successful online business. I had no clue what to do, where to turn, or even where to go to try and learn what to do. I was willing to do whatever work needed to be done, I just had no idea “what work”!

I looked at so many different “programs” that promised to be just the ticket I was looking for, that I was soon in information overload, more confused than ever and knowing that I could not afford to buy every single “business in a box” offered, and yet I didn’t know which one – if any – might be helpful to me.

I don’t remember how I found out about SiteBuildIt several months later, but I sure remember the excitement I felt at the thought of not having to go through that dreaded learning curve, and having someone to “provide everything I needed, including 24-hour technical support that was second to none”, and I didn’t even need programming skills.  Are you kidding me? Sign me up!

With Site BuildIt, I was going to have more than 70 “programmed” modules and sub-modules (whatever that meant), they would cover all of the tedious, technical jobs that are normally required in the process of creating an online business, and my primary focus would be on building my business. Yup, I had found my magic blueprint – and yes I forked over the $300 (that I certainly couldn’t afford) for my brand new “all-in-one business in a box” so to speak, that was going to make this process so much easier for me to get through.

Well, I’m not sure exactly why my big plans of a successful affiliate marketing business through SiteBuildIt bombed, but I’m relatively sure that because I was so new and inexperienced, my expectations were probably entirely unrealistic, and the fact that I chose a niche that was big time saturated didn’t help either. But I will say that the few months I spent trying to create my “perfect SBI! website”, I felt like I was somehow cramped and stifled (maybe I knew more than I thought).

Sinking all of my time into building just one website seemed to be awfully restrictive, and I sure as heck couldn’t sink another $300 into this thing just to have one more site. And anyway, the more I read, the more (painfully) clear it became – even to a newbie like me – that you could do this a whole lot cheaper – if you could find anybody willing to just point you in the right direction without charging out the ying yang.

I just somehow felt that there had to be something different than this information overload called SBI! So I commenced looking again, not really believing that I would ever find the help I needed without poring even more money that I could not afford into what would most likely be just another pipe dream.

But, through hours of searching every little nook and cranny I could find, do you know what I found? I finally stumbled on the help I needed – and the most shocking part was that it was all free. No one telling me that if I would just buy their “guaranteed auto-pilot money-spitting machine”, they could make me rich overnight. None of that crap! Just honest, free information that was actually worth a fortune!

Everything I needed to know, every tool I needed to use – it was all right there in front of me and I just didn’t know how to go about finding it. And frankly, I still don’t remember exactly how I came across this 1% of the internet business owners who really are willing to openly discuss exactly how they build their businesses, attract traffic to their sites, and make money online (for free), but I am so thankful that I did. And if you’ll just look around my site, you can find out who I turn to when I need honest, informative information that I can actually use.

Think Site Build It Is For You?  I Would Think Again

My purpose for this post is not necessarily to bash SBI! – like I said, I’m sure it was my fault that it didn’t work for me (no one product works for everybody) and Site BuildIt does offer some very informative free material such as the free Affiliate Masters Course, and Make Your Knowledge Sell, as well some others.

I have also found a couple of programs that have further helped me to pull together the tons of information that I have learned along the way (that I consider money well-spent, by the way).

However, I do feel an obligation to let other people (who are where I was just a short time ago) know that you don’t have to continue to shell out this kind of money to have your own affiliate marketing business, or any other kind of online business.

With SBI!, each website that you build will cost you $300 per year, plus fees for various other add-ons (and trust me you will need many more than just one website). That is a lot of cash unless you get lucky and start making a lot of money right away. Good luck on that.

Instead, wouldn’t it make more sense to purchase your domain names for around $10 each (per year) through hosting companies like GoDaddy or HostGator, have them host your domain names for less than $10 per month (and most will host unlimited domains for that same 10 bucks), and take advantage of all the free tools available that will accomplish pretty much the same things you get with SiteBuildIt?  I’m just saying….

Before you decide to shell out your hard-earned cash, do your homework. Do a Google search for free online business building tools or check out Free Affiliate Marketing Website Tools & Training for some great free resources.

And you can get a lot of differing opinions by reading reviews like Lissie’s Site Build It Scam Review instead of relying on all of the SiteBuildIt cheerleaders who are hoping you will buy the product from them.  Wish I had seen this discussion a long time ago…..

If you have been on the internet for any length of time, and done any research at all into making money online, you have no doubt come to the conclusion that affiliate marketing is an excellent place to start as an online business owner because of its low risk and high reward potential.


One major advantage to affiliate marketing, especially if you are new to online businesses, is the fact that you don’t have to create your own product in order to start generating some cash fairly quickly, because there are thousands of product creators and owners who are actively seeking affiliates to promote their products.

But “newbies” are not the only ones benefiting from affiliate marketing.  Some of the most successful online business owners earn a substantial part of their income from selling other people’s products or services as an affiliate. Affiliate marketing can, in fact be a very lucrative business if it is done correctly.

Choose Suitable Affiliate Programs

There are so many different types of affiliate products to choose from, that literally anybody should be able to find the kind of product that they are interested in promoting. And of course, having some knowledge about a particular product can make it easier to sell than trying to sell something that you have no knowledge of.

But before you start searching for the best affiliate marketing program, you need to determine first which type is most suitable for you and your business.  Are you only interested in pay-per-sale programs where you earn a commission on products purchased by customers that you refer to a merchant, such as digital products or tangible goods?  Or, are you more interested in some of the other types of affiliate programs such as pay-per-click or pay-per-lead?  Maybe you’d even like to try all of these methods.  That’s totally up to you.

Software programs and ebooks, known as Digital Products, are very easy to find, and you can find an ebook on virtually anything you can imagine, therefore making it easier to find one that will be suitable to promote on the website you already have, assuming you already have one. They are also instantly down-loadable upon purchase, and you don’t have the other costs that are usually associated with tangible products, such as shipping and handling.

Becoming an affiliate and promoting digital products is an easy process as there normally is no waiting period like there sometimes is with tangible goods – and the commissions payable on digital products is considerably higher than on tangible products, usually 50-75% compared to 10-25%.

If you become a regcure affiliate, for instance, you would earn a 75% commission on all of your sales for simply offering your customers the best registry cleaner on the market, which also happens to be very reasonably priced.

We will be discussing other types of affiliate marketing programs in other articles, but if you don’t have a lot of time or money to sink into your business right away, digital products are a no-brainer in the beginning. So our primary focus here will be finding and promoting digital products because of the low (or no) overhead to sell them, and higher commissions paid on them. But, ultimately you will have to decide which type of affiliate marketing business is right for you.

Above all else, you must find a product that people are interested in and are willing to buy, and we’ll talk a little bit about where to find these products, and how to get an idea of whether or not  there is a demand for them.

Where Can You Find Affiliate Programs?

The Major Affiliate Networks, such as Clickbank, function as middlemen between merchants and affiliates and are an excellent place to start looking for companies to affiliate with because they generally offer the higher-quality programs, and the signup is free. They also make it simple for you to find programs to promote through their search facilities (catalogs), and your HTML (affiliate) links and other promotional tools will be provided for you to copy and paste right into your marketing material or on your website.

You can sign up with Clickbank and immediately start promoting any of their more than 10,000 digitally delivered products, ranging from ebooks to software. Clickbank has a catalog of all their products listed by categories, subcategories, keywords and product type so that you can easily find the perfect products that are relevant to your online business.

Through the use of the search features at the Clickbank Marketplace, you can also find which products seem to be very popular right now (high affiliate gravity), and the less popular ones with less advertising exposure (lower affiliate gravity). Note however, that in some cases, those with the higher gravity rating may actually be too popular, meaning that many of the heavy hitters are already promoting them, and the market for that product will be very competitive.

So you might have a better chance at making sales if you choose the products with a gravity in the mid range, around 40- 50, and up. To get this information, just put your keywords into the search box, and the ones listed at the top of your search results, with the highest “gravity” rating, are likely the most popular ones. The following screenshot from the Clickbank Marketplace shows more clearly how the results are listed.

(Click image to enlarge)

best affiliate marketing program,affiliate marketing guide

These results were sorted by “Popularity”, and you can see the “grav:” number  (gravity) in the bottom right corner of each listing.

Once you have carefully chosen a product that you feel would be a good complement to your website, there are some things you might want to consider in order to maximize the profits you earn for your efforts.

For instance, before you start promoting a product, you might want to visit the owner’s website, which you can do from Clickbank, and take a look at the sales page you’ll be sending your prospective customers to. Is it professionally written? Is the ordering process clearly laid out for ease of placing an order?  Would you be likely to buy from that site? If not, chances are your visitors wouldn’t either.

Other Considerations For Your Affiliate Programs

A program’s commission rates, and whether their’s is a two-tier program are a couple of the things  that are good to know when choosing an affiliate program, and you should be able to find this information out from either the Clickbank or the product owner’s websites.

Also, do they offer lifetime, or residual commissions? This means that if a customer returns to the merchant’s site and makes a second or third purchase later, you earn a commission on ALL of those purchases, as well. And in most cases, when your referral signs up for a product or service that requires recurring payments, you get a commission on each of those recurring payments for as long as your referral is a customer. Does the program offer an affiliate section on their website so that you can check your affiliate account stats 24/7?

All of these are important considerations before you choose an affiliate program.  Choosing the wrong ones can cost you a huge amount of wasted time, effort, and money, so it’s best to promote the ones you choose for a reasonable amount of time, and if you have no sales on a product, stop promoting it and look for another one.

Newcomers to Affiliate Marketing might find it easier to sell a lot of less expensive products than it is to sell the higher priced items, especially in the beginning. It makes more sense to promote a product that pays lower commissions if it is actually converting into sales, than it does to try to sell a higher commission item that nobody is buying. Many internet business owners make very decent incomes promoting the smaller “stuff”, and if you choose to take this route, you can gradually build up to the larger items later as you get more experience.

It’s Time To Monetize Your Affiliate Marketing Business!

Once you have created your Affiliate Marketing website with lots of useful, quality content for your visitors, it’s time to find some good companies whose products you want to promote, and get some affiliate links into your content so you can start earning some commissions.


At this point you should know what the topic of your website will be, and therefore the kinds of products you will most likely be promoting.  You can do a search to find lots of companies to consider by entering “your topic + affiliate programs” into the search box.  For instance, if your website is about shoes, you would enter “shoes + affiliate programs”.

Generally speaking, you’ll want to look for reputable companies with excellent products that are relevant to your site’s theme. And as tempting as it may be to choose only the companies that pay the highest commissions (or whatever the mode of payment is), it’s important to know what the conversion rate is for a product or service.

If the company pays well but their product/service isn’t selling, you’re probably not going to make a lot of money with them.  However, if the commissions are lower, but the product is a good seller, your chances of making a decent income are increased.

Find out whether or not the company offers life-time – or at least long-term – referrals (‘cookies’). If a visitor comes to your site – likes a product or service you offer, but decides not to buy until sometime in the future – will you still get credit for that purchase?

A good program will provide excellent training tools and resources such as banner ads for their affiliates. Ideally, they should have a member’s area where you can log in and grab promotional materials, your links, and also check your stats and commissions.

Note that even though many websites continue to display lots of flashy banners on their websites, it’s becoming more common for webmasters to use more text ads than banners.  The choice will be up to you, and it’s a good idea to try it both ways and see what works best for you.

Good Communication Is Important

The best affiliate program will respond to your questions in a timely manner. But – by the same token – a good affiliate will make sure they read all the materials provided on the website before contacting the program/merchant.

When you join their affiliate program (for free) the company will in turn assign unique-to-you URL links to place on your website. These links will let the merchant know when a visitor to your site has clicked through to them and made a purchase.

Affiliate Networks

These networks function as middlemen between merchants and you – the affiliate – and are another great place to find suitable merchants to affiliate with. One of the larger Affiliate Networks – Clickbank – is a huge retailer for digitally delivered products such as ebooks and software, and has a vast inventory of products for you to choose from to promote… Or you can just link directly to the Clickbank Marketplace if you so choose.

You can do a search from the Marketplace by category or by keywords, and choose Clickbank affiliate programs that are suitable for your site. If you haven’t signed up for a free Clickbank account yet, you can do that here. It’s free and easy, and only takes a couple of minutes.

Where appropriate – it is always a good idea to purchase and use the products that you plan to promote so that you can give an accurate review of all it’s features – good and bad. Customers appreciate honest feedback and will be more likely to buy from you if you give them good quality information and honest reviews. This will help to promote trust – and your customer will be much more likely to come back and visit you in the future.

Advertisements and Google AdSense

If you’re promoting an ebook, or other product from your site and sending your customers to a sales page, be weary of sales pages with all sorts of ads all over them. Your efforts will most likely just be spent wasting your own traffic.

Google Ads on your own website or blog can be a very powerful source of revenue – but sales pages that you send your customers to are probably not the best placement for them. If you haven’t signed up for a free Google Ads account yet, you can click on the link and sign up now.

High Sales Minimum

Watch out for programs that ask you to sell a certain amount before you get paid. For example – the commission on a $20 book is 10% (or $2 per sale) and the company’s policy is to send out checks only when the affiliate has accumulated a minimum of $200 in commissions.

You’d have to sell a boatload of books (100 – to be exact) before getting paid one dime, which may be fine if you have a lot of targeted traffic that is converting to sales, but if not you may have to wait a while (if ever) before you see any affiliate checks.

Some of these programs operate on the theory that most affiliates will not make that many sales, so they’ll never need to pay out. It’s unfortunate – but this does happen.

Always read the Terms of Agreement (they DO have one, don’t they?) before signing up for any affiliate program. It’s important to know what their rules and guidelines are before you commit.  (More on Finding The Best Affiliate Marketing Programs).

And finally, selling other people’s stuff is not the only way to monetize your new Affiliate Marketing website, and we’ll be covering some of the other ways in later installments of the Affiliate Marketing Guide.

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