One of the fastest ways to get started with an online business is with affiliate marketing. With affiliate marketing, you are selling someone else’s products and they pay you a commission for everything you sell. They develop the product, the ads, and they handle all the transactions. All you do is find the customers for them and you get paid.

There are several types of affiliate programs out there. Most are managed through an affiliate program “broker”. If you create your account on these affiliate broker sites, you can browse the affiliate programs they support. They always provide statistics on which program pays best, has the highest success rates, and other information to help you determine the best affiliate products for you.

Commission Junction tends to focus on very established companies such as VistaPrint.com, Carbonite.com, Symantec.com, and many other products and services. ClickBank.com tends to favor information products and software products. The right program for you depends on many factors. It is my understanding that ClickBank.com has produced more internet millionaires than any of the other affiliate programs because their products typically have higher prices and higher commissions as well.

Once you sign up for an affiliate program, you can place ads on your website. Some of these work best if you include the ads on your blog or other pages on your site. Other programs, especially the more expensive products, may require a dedicated landing page in order to help generate sales. People might click on a banner ad to purchase business cards. But people rarely click a simple ad to purchase a service worth thousands of dollars. Basically the harder the item is to sell, the harder you have to work to sell it.

Some companies will provide you with completely finished web pages that you can host on your web server. Others provide special affiliate links and you have to write your own ads on your site. This is something to consider as you try and make your decision. Keep in mind that even if they provide you with a completely finished web page, you still have the problem of driving visitors to your site, page, or ad. That is where the real work is.

To drive traffic, you can use the common search engine optimization techniques, but you will probably fail at it because you are competing with other affiliate marketers who are probably much better at it than you are. The most common traffic driving method is to buy pay-per-click (PPC) advertisements from Google.com, Bing.com, or Yahoo.com. PPC ads can be expensive and you are likely to spend as much, if not more, on ads as you make in commissions. Some people lose money. But others make millions this way.

What’s the key to success? First, carefully choose the affiliate programs you want to market. Second, make sure your sales pages and ads are very good. Do small tests and learn what works and what doesn’t. Keep the winners, cancel the losers, and continue to refine your affiliate marketing business. Be careful to learn how to manage your ad bids and don’t overdo it. Keep in mind the guy you are in a bidding war with might be losing money himself. Set your ad prices based on what works, not on what others are doing.

Never get attached to any affiliate program or any ad campaign. What works today might not work tomorrow. Judge everything on the statistics. Learn how to analyze the traffic, the conversion rates, and the ad costs and make a solid educated decision. Reevaluate everything routinely and continue to optimize your business. Before you know it you’ll be making a nice living online. How do I know this? Because there are thousands of internet millionaires out there and this is how most of them built their wealth.

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