One of the first things most experienced online business owners learn when we learned how to make money online was how to make money from affiliate marketing. This is a great way to get started because you don’t need to create your own product or pay and then test a sales page, it’s all done for you!
The cheapest way to get started with affiliate marketing is what is known as “bum marketing.” All you really need is the ability to write a basic article, or rewrite inexpensive private label rights material, and work with a simple content management system like Word Press.
So how do you make money from affiliate marketing, using this low-cost or no-cost affiliate marketing strategy?
First, you need a website or at least a blog in your chosen niche. You can buy a domain name at Namecheap.com for less than $ 10 a year and a host at Hostgator.com for less than $ 10 a month.
Make sure your domain name is keyword rich. If you can’t find YourKeyPhrase.com, try hyphenating the words. If that doesn’t work, see if you can get a .net or .org name. You can also get .info names for significantly lower annual costs.
Now write about 10 pages of content for that site. Focus each page on a specific long-tail keyword phrase within your niche.
What is a long-tail keyword phrase? It is one of the ultra-specific but least searched keyword phrases within each market niche. These phrases have less competition, but are more targeted at buyers – just what you need as a beginner. (Don’t worry. You can also focus on higher-traffic keywords once your site is actually up and running. However, right now, it’s best to go for long-tail traffic.)
At the top and bottom of every web page, place an affiliate link to a niche product. You don’t even have to mention the product name in your content; in fact, it is often better if you don’t. You are not trying to sell with your content. Sales writing is a time-consuming process that you don’t have to worry about. Product owners likely paid thousands of dollars to have someone write their product sales pages.
Instead, you want to use emotional buttons for your key phrases. This will help pre-sell your affiliate products (you must have at least three of them) by getting your readers excited about your niche issues or concerns.
Now, you’ll want to write and submit one or two articles a day, every day, to Ezinearticles.com. Target both your long-tail and high-traffic niche keyword phrases for these articles. This is where most of your traffic will come from.
Lastly, make sure you have a proper author bio at the end of each article. You will want to tell a little about yourself (or your pseudonym) and your website. Relink multiple frames to multiple pages on your website, using link text that matches the target phrase for each page.
And that is! Very soon you will be able to make affiliate sales without spending a dollar on advertising.