Good day to you all, Steemers! I hope that word sounds ok :) I dabbled into affiliate marketing since four years ago and that path made me hope for a better future when all roads looked closed for me. I know many of us grew along side the Internet and making money online is a secret (or not so secret) desire for many of us. Unfortunally there are also a lot of unscrupoulos fake gurus and nasty tactics that promises riches with zero investments and so on. I'm not here to do that. I'm in no way a marketing guru nor a multimillionaire. I'm a simple guy with much to learn. As my introductory post I will share some tips on how to become a successful Affiliate Marketer. Read it if you will and just maybe it can be a first step for many in this area. There are all kinds of ways that you can make money through the Internet. No matter what the method, it boils down to one just formula. Have a product to sell plus a target audience who may want it and making sure they know about it. All of these things lead to money made! Find What You Want To Sell You may be wondering how you find something to sell. Sure, you can create your own item but that takes hard work, dedication and time. However, there is another way… an easier way! How To Find Products To Sell For Profit and Fun Many people are trying to sell products they have designed or developed, and there’s no doubt that they want to sell more. The kinds of things they want to sell include online games, paid dating sites, mortgages, etc. If you can persuade folks to purchase these items, you help developer… and yourself. If you sell their items, you get the money. That’s Affiliate Marketing 101 – the basics. Think of yourself as a bounty hunter! However, many times, there’s no need to sell items. And, that’s because you may have found people to purchase it. You Have An Easier Way At Your Disposal It’s difficult to find people who may have an interest in the product you’re trying to sell. However, if you’re able to persuade someone try something for free, chances are much higher that they’ll buy it. However, these days on the Internet, it’s not so easy to persuade folks to try something… even if you dangle to word free. Everybody is so skeptical. How we can help with this skepticism. There are many business people that will pay a bounty for a trial registration, meaning they’ll get people signed up for free on a website. It’s called Cash Per Action or CPA, for short. If you can create persuasive advertisements that get people to sign up on a website, you earn a lot of money from it. And, that’s what you’re learning about right now. Where Do You Find People To Market To When it comes to being successful in affiliate marketing… you must have people and a lot of them. After all, affiliate marketing is a numbers game. For the most part, the percentage of people you can persuade to purchase a product is between 0.1 percent and 1 percent of people who see the ad. From that point, the percentage of people who sign up for the product you’re advertising is between 2 percent and 15 percent… especially if you’re marketing it for free. And, if the item isn’t free, those percentages drop to 0.5 percent to 2 percent. Therefore, for each signup you attain, you’ll need to show the ad to up to 50,000 folks. And, the money you earn is roughly $5 for every person you can get signed up. Access to a great number of folks is so necessary! Venture Into Traffic Sources The places you find folks to buy your product is called “traffic sources” and there is a slew of them around… you just need to know where to look. Some common traffic sources include: Creating and updating a successful website – something you can control and put advertisements on. Use SEO methods to attain visitors from search engines like Google, Yahoo, etc. to websites you have control over. Pay owner of popular website to permit you to do advertisements on their website – Facebook, popular blog, etc. Pay advertising network to allow ads on various managed websites. Pay for ads in mobile apps or software that support advertising. Consider putting your attention on ad space. There is so much out there, and it’s rather cheap most of the time. If you’re able to earn more money than you spend it on your traffic, you can make a large profit. What are some worthwhile traffic sources to check into? Plenty of Fish – It’s a website where people look for someone to date ExoClick – This is a space for advertising, typically on porn websites. How You Can Tell Folks About Your Product Of course, you always want to turn a profit – making more money than you actually spend. And, this is the time that you need skill. After all, affiliate marketing is an art and science. Science comes in when you’re testing. You look at various offers to determine which ones will motivate people to sign up. You test the various traffic sources to determine which ones pay you a hefty sum. Finally, you test your ads to see which ones have been the most convincing. It’s the art of persuasion that you’re trying to go after. Here’s where persuasion comes in: Think about the item you’re offering Think about what the target audience wants Try bridging the gap Come up with ways to showcase the offer – images that enthrall folks And remember… don’t put all your eggs in one basket… diversify! What’s The Secret To Making Money Okay, so you may be wondering what the secret is in affiliate marketing that ensures you make money. Believe it or not, it’s diversifying your ideas and trying various things. After all, there’s no way to predict what ad is going to and what ad isn’t going to produce results. Plus, there’s no way to telling if the offer is going to sell to your audience. If you’re going to make money, you need to experiment. And, you need to constantly experiment and take notes of the results. In later mentionings, you’ll learn how to do this, what things you can test and how to experience with new methods without being so random. Here’s some good news though: if you constantly do some experimenting, you’re going find a lot of things that will work for you. What Do You Do Now? Make sure you read through this guide to ensure you fully understand the affiliate marketing basics. It may be a good idea to write down the important points to ensure you remember what you read. If you are on a budget check out AffiliateJinn for some free landing pages and other info.