Have you tried affiliate marketing yet? If you are in the learning phase, you are probably lost between your swelling inbox and your countless e-books. Well, I know I was. Then I made a big clean-up, kept all the good ones with the great info and ditched the rest. I’ll review those books, where you can get them, whether they are free and the ones you can even sell. But all books on affiliate marketing suggest that even though you don’t need a website, you need a squeeze page, an autoresponder and a thank you page…Well, what if you don’t have the time or the budget or the heart for  all these things? I’ll give away a few tips but just for beginners, here are some definitions:

Affiliate Marketing: Basically, an affiliate is someone who brings in business to another person or organization/company. So you are either helping someone make money promoting their business or they are helping you promote yours. The good thing is, many of you are already doing it. You have an referral ID on Triond. Or Bukisa. Or Factoidz. You refer to them in your articles and bring in more writers and revenue. In return, they pay you. This is a type of affiliate marketing. It is simple and fun. Sure it takes a while for your earnings to get rolling in, but the more established and popular you are, you will be able to bring in more people. All this is done with your own number and link.

Squeeze Page: It is any one-page website that is trying to sell you something. Even free products have squeeze pages. If you want the free product, you leave your name and email. An email arrives at your inbox to confirm your subscription. After you confirm it, you get a free product. But of course, the free product will not be the only thing you are getting. You will get information and links and many, many offers that are about products you have to pay for. Now, if the sender emails you too frequently, it gets annoying. You can always opt out and stop receiving those emails.  But if the marketer is smart, he will provide value and you will be open to both free and paid products.

Autoresponder: Autoresponder is an email service that makes sure you get all those emails and newsletters you subscribed too. Any internet marketer will tell you that you need to have a list. It makes sense, right? Because even though people may not buy, they are the target audience. You are communicating with exactly who you should be communicating with. Now, there are two downsides: autoresponders- the ones that work without limitations and glitches- cost you money. Aweber is the one I hear most often from all the internet marketers. Now, I know I keep saying internet marketers but don’t be fooled into thinking we are just talking about people who only sell stuff for a living. Affiliate marketing is something all probloggers use as well. In fact, for most of them, that is their number one income source, not advertising. Aweber costs about 19$ /month, with the option of 1$ /month trial for the first month. If you can afford this, and if you are confident you can build lists and sell, then please go ahead and try.If you hate selling in the classical sense, like me, you can wait and test your waters. Are you good at making new contacts? Can you use Twitter, Facebook and other social media to find buyers? Do you even like marketing? This is not something that pros advice. This is just me talking. But I’d try the hard way to see if I can make a sale without a spending money first. I again remind you- it is not how prod do it. But I made a habit of finding out how to make money without spending it first. I’ll explain how in a minute.

Your Website: A lot of marketers brag that they have a system or a method that enables you to sell stuff without building a website. But the funny thing is, building a website is not difficult. There are lots of places online that allow you to build your own free site. Sure, you can also spend a little money. I have a website and my own domain name. I spent money on that, and I continue to. Because the webhost gave me my domain name and total freedom. There are tools in your disposal and tutorials on how to build everything from scratch. You can also host your blog on this domain.

Now, some marketers suggest you buy cheap domain names from someplace as and use a host for the website. But hosts also provide a domain name. I spend 3.45/month for Justhost. If you want to see what I have done with my blog, you can visit pinartarhan.com. I choose what to advertise, what to promote and wordpress has no say in the matter because they are not hosting me. But it is a wordpress blog that comes with all the widgets and advantages wordpress provides. I got the best of both worlds. But remember, you can always blog on free platforms and build links to wherever you want.

Why all this talk on webhosts and blogs? You see for your squeeze pages, you need an autorsesponder. But for a newbie who isn’t even sure he/she wants to sell, 3.45/month is much easier to let go then the additional autoresponder cost. That being said, the moment I make my first couple of sales, I am subscribing to Aweber. They come with their own affiliate program. So it is a service that comes highly recommended, plus it gives you a chance to make money even if you are not using it. I will come back to this in a bit.

As for Justhost, it also has an affiliate program. As far as I know, it is only for its customers because you really need to know how a host works. I chose it because it is the cheapest host that brings in the best quality and it supports wordpress just fine. And when there is a problem, they have both email services that return to you in an hour and 24/7 live operatives. They solve an issue related to your website, even if it is not about them. And they pay to their affiliates, for each subscription.  There is also another way you can make money when it comes to webhosting, but it is a subject to another article.

Article Marketing: Now, countless posts and articles have been written on article marketing, just here on Triond. Probloggers/marketers debate on how useful it is, as all article directories come with their limitations on the links they allow. I go to detail in this on my 28 Ways to Increase Traffic to Your Website/Blog/Article post. It is up to you to how many article directories or online content publishing websites such as Triond/Bukisa/Wikinut you will use. You can combine the two tactics. Beware that I am not talking about Factoidz, because it is more limiting. Triond is liberating and Bukisa lets me put links to my blog. As many as I want. So let’s say you wrote a promotional/affiliate article on Triond. You republished it on Bukisa but it got reject ed because it was too promotional. Don’t give up. Leave the promotional links out.  Instead, write a little different article and place your Triond article’s link. You see you will be making money three ways. You will be getting pageviews from both Bukisa and Triond and plus your affiliate programs will be paying you. And in the mean time, if you have a blog or a website, you also have promoted  them. If you had advertising, you earned directly. If not, you gained viewers, and authority (considering you wrote well and provided value).

So whether it is article marketing, online content publishing or both, you can’t afford ignoring this message. Because this is the one free way that will make you money without you spending money. And if the worst happens and no one clicks on your referral links, you will still be earning from pageviews.

Your Affiliate Options: Basically, you have endless options on what you can promote. Of course if you have your own products, you can make people affiliates for you. But that will be discussed later. For now, let’s talk about what you can promote without owning websites, squeeze pages or autoresponders:

-The sites you are writing for: Triond,Bukisa, Factoidz, Wikinut

-Amazon products

Getting individual links might be tricky, but once you figure that out, you can put links in your articles. Hubpages and Squidoo have special modules designed for you to do just that.In fact, I read these really great ebooks that guide you on how to make money using Squidoo and Hubpages as your website/squeeze page. Get an amazon affiliate id by joining amazon associates. And promote whatever you want, however you want. But if you do have a website, you can even choose from lots of amazon widgets and link types.

-Advertising/Publishing Networks

My blog is a publisher of ads. But luckily, most ad networks give you the option to promote the network as well. Even if you don’t have a site to place ads, you just promote the network. The beauty of it, just like promoting writing websites, people don’t pay you anything. It is free. You are providing free information to people so that they can go and sign up for free and make money. If this is not affiliate marketing heaven, then what is?

- Peerfly

Affiliate netwotrk. You promote any suitable offer. Sure some offers have country limitations but peerfly doesn’t. And you can always promote peerfly. Of course like any other network and websites above, you get paid when your referrals make revenue. But, once they do, you will be making money effortlessly. One referral may not be much and your second person might be lazy. If you have 100 referrals, some of them will make you money.

-Membership sites

When you know something really well, when you have accomplished in an area, you can try and coach others. That’s how there are probloggers. The guys blogged, made money and now, they are selling their services. Mind you these guys offer a lot of great free info. I learned so much from them. But I didn’t have money. I had time so I gathered my own knowledge. That took me months. But if you can afford these guys, you should enroll and get to make money blogging or make money online right away. But if these guys are offering affiliate programs even to those who haven’t undertaken the course, join in. In fact, I should do a research and write about it too. Bloggers play nice with each other. Each problogger makes a living by not just selling his own product but selling other bloggers’ too.  Of course there are guidelines to promoting a product you haven’t used. You start your review by admitting you haven’t used it.

-Buyblogreviews

I just registered yesterday. It is free and if your blog is accepted, you can get job offers top write about   websites, products and services. And you can also promote the site as an affiliate. Ain’t selling without selling grand? And guess how I found this site. From a free e-book  I subscribed to  on someone’s squeeze page…

              – Advertisement Viewing:

There are sites that pay you to click and view ads. They also have affiliate programs. Now, there are lots of sites like this. I haven’t got a paycheck so I don’t know if they pay. The minimum is . But you can reach it by referring a lot of people. You get paid every time your referral signs up. You get paid a lot more if they upgrade. A similar site is golden galaxy. They pay out at a much smaller amount. I am using the site, but I haven’t reached the limit so I don’t know if they pay. However, it is free for you and your referrals so why not give it a shot?

This is all for this article. I’ll be back with more affiliate terms, options and more. My plan is to come I up with a list for best resources on teaching affiliate marketing. We just touched the surface with this.Happy Affiliate Marketing!