Affiliate Projects for Beginners
through to Super Affiliates

Become an affiliate partner of and be paid by reputable companies for selling their products and earning high commissions – all over the world.

Some of the best-paying affiliate programs are for Forex and Stocks training courses and trader services. Visit our Forex Affiliate page.

How To Become a Successful IM Affiliate; if I Can, Why Not You?

Back in 2005, I managed to convince myself (being taken in by the hype of some slick marketers) that forex trading was a way to earn easy money from the internet. I started to make thousands of dollars, but only on paper with demo accounts.

Feeling superbly confident, but with no spare cash, I managed to talk a friend into lending me $500 to open a 'mini' account with a forex broker. I blew all $500 in less than a month, mainly because I didn't really have a clue what I was doing. In spite of learning a lot since then, I still only 'dabble' in forex and stock trading. Plenty of people make money from it but for me it's a bit complicated and I don't like the risk involved. 

More than that, I found an easier, better and more exciting way of earning much more than I was ever likely to by trying to win with trading. After about one year (and a fair amount of work, I must admit) I was making a good living as an online marketing affiliate, mainly from promoting forex and stock trading courses and services (see more below).

Although that was the start, I haven't limited myself to financial products. I soon discovered that there's a whole world of things to sell, all from the comfort of home almost anywhere in the world, and you don't have to create (or buy) any of them yourself! I've never looked back. Before the end of the first year I was making 5 figures (USD). That grew to 6. For some people, $100,000 a year is not a fortune, but for millions of others it certainly would be; in fact many, especially in developing countries, find it difficult to imagine earning that sort of money. BUT IT IS POSSIBLE.

Even if their claims seem totally unbelievable, there are many internet millionaires and even some billionaires. They don't all show off with pictures of mansions, yachts and Ferraris. Fortunes have been made by ordinary people – some very young – who have started out with little or no capital. They live in many countries besides the USA too. Where you live has little or no effect on what you do.

To me, at this stage of my life, "success" and "financial freedom" simply means having enough monthly income to cover all the bills and expenses of myself and my dependents in my chosen life style, and the ability to put extra money in the bank (or into investments like gold and silver bullion) for the future as currency values dwindle. Affiliate marketing does this for me and more.

Who can be a successful affiliate marketer?

 Anyone who can answer yes honestly to these questions.

The Wealthy Affiliate University is undoubtedly the best affiliate training site on the internet. I joined back in 2006 and attribute a lot of my success to Kyle and Carson, the two Canadian guys that started it. Every year the training and resources get even better. One month trial for $1.00.

How does Affiliate Marketing work and how are you paid?

Affiliate sales are simple in concept, made using automated programs.

No products to buy, stock, receive payment, ship, support or return.

No personal contact necessary between affiliate and vendor (seller) or affiliate and purchaser (buyer) who is often unaware that a 'middle-man' is even involved.

Transactions (order, payment, delivery, even returns) are all handled by the publisher usually through an independent third party 'shopping cart' and affiliate program management system. This automatically allocates affiliate sales commissions at the stated rate and terms. You can monitor this process. Depending on the program, regular payments are made by check, ACH direct deposit or wire transfer to your bank or payment processor account such as PayPal, AlertPay and others.

Generally as an affiliate you don't necessarily need to know everything about what you're promoting. You certainly don't have to be an expert or guru. Once you start affiliate marketing you will see the same principles apply to all markets. Some are less competitive than others. Some appear to be saturated (but it's not true). The idea is to find a few 'niches', learn what you need to and start making money.

Where did I begin my affiliate education?

Admittedly, the easiest part of being an affiliate is the sign-up process. Actually making some money needs a bit more effort on your part! If it didn't, every internet marketing affiliate would be rich and many are not. Just like financial market traders! It usually takes time too, especially if you're a beginner. You may also aspire to becoming one of the online marketing elite – a Super Affiliate. It is not so far out of reach.

Most people just do not know where to start or how to promote their new affiliate marketing business. Unlike forex trading though, while it may take a while to learn to make (or lose) money, but at high risk, with affiliate marketing you always have full control of your spending and there's no need to spend money you can't afford.

Nobody, in spite of promises or guarantees is going to have a successful business without spending something. And there is no way you will make thousands of dollars when you start. It's just not possible even with unlimited time at your disposal. You will in fact need a few dollars available ($50 or $100 may be enough) and some spare time, but you can and should keep your regular job while you are learning the basics.

In September 2009, I was recommending anyone who wanted to get into affiliate marketing and learn how to make passive online income, to invest invest in a the recently published complete course offered by the well-known and respected Ewen Chia. Although a citizen of Singapore, this young man's reputation has spread far and wide. His is a global business, as is all internet marketers'. There is simply no better value on the internet today than Ewen Chia's just released Secret Affiliate Weapon 2.0.

I was unable to resist getting this myself (I have bought other products from Ewen – his printed book is a great read and reference source for me as well – if not only for his great prices) as I saw that there was just so much good stuff for all levels of affiliate, from someone thinking about it or just starting out – and even the old hands who know what this business is capable of producing in terms of income – for life if you do it right as Ewen has and continues to do.

Banking your earnings, then getting them as cash – anywhere

Affiliate marketing is a truly global business and can be based anywhere there is an internet connection. Here's a typical example: I am British but I live in SE Asia, making a good income from affiliate sales all over the world. I just made $700 (by no means the first time) selling a $2,000 American training course to someone from Sweden now living in Spain. We don't know each other and have had no direct contact. The money was automatically paid into my US bank account. I can get the cash using my VISA card at any ATM. US citizens will probably have tax liabilities wherever they live, but many others do not. It depends on nationality and country of residence.

There's nothing stopping you from moving somewhere else, though! All you need for business these days is access to a computer; it's not even necessary to own one yourself. A 'smart phone' or iPad could suffice. Internet and mobile phone connections are almost synonymous, even in relatively undeveloped countries, some of which by 2011 already had GPRS and 3G.

Good affiliate programs (there are many scams, by the way) pay either by PayPal, check, direct deposit or wire transfer to a bank account. You can use PayPal money to make online purchases but if you want your earnings as cash you will need a bank account somewhere, preferably with an ATM card. If your country allows PayPal accounts to be linked to a bank account, getting your cash is easier especially if you have an ATM cash or Visa/MasterCard which is usable internationally.

Unfortunately some potential affiliate marketers live in countries where this is not possible and international money transfer is difficult or not allowed. Certain countries allow PayPal accounts to be opened but they cannot be linked to a bank account from where the money can be withdrawn as cash.

One alternative is to use the services of a US company such as Valis International who can provide an non-US resident or citizen with a US business address, incorporation of a company with bank account.

Second or multi-tier affiliate programs

There's another important feature of affiliate marketing and that's 'second tier' commissions. Basically if someone joins an affiliate program through your link, any sales they make (for which they will get the full commission) a percentage will come your way too. So when you choose programs like these, you automatically add another 'stream' to your income - without actually doing anything! I wrote the banking report myself, so giving it to you as a 'thank you' for becoming my sub-affiliate really costs nothing and I may enjoy some extra commission from the programs I'm recommending if you're successful. Everyone wins, and the publishers are more than happy to increase their affiliate numbers!

Remember that all administration and commission payments are managed securely and automatically by the publishers and affiliate programs. You don't have to do (or pay) anything except monitor your performance statistics and earnings to see how much you are due to be paid. There's nothing sweeter than waking up each morning and checking to see what you made while you were asleep or partying the night before!

The only way to earn money is to get started!   

Start writing content for your first money-making website or blog, or use those that others provide for you, saving a lot of work on your part.

Most website owners, including budding affiliate marketers start creating web pages or blogs or submit articles about some topic they are knowledgeable about or interested in, sometimes passionately. Others choose a new topic that they research thoroughly and find there is a market for a related group of products which have affiliate programs.

While you need to know what is entailed, as is described in the following paragraphs, there is a shortcut. See below under Are you prepared for all the above? and then watch the video. This is the way forward I would recommend. It is what I use now and only wish something as good as this was available a few years ago when I was starting out and struggling.

One more thing ...

Once you start depending on your computer or laptop for your income, you will soon realize how important it is to keep your machines in good running order and regularly back up your data files.

The worst scenario is when your system crashes and won't reboot – unless you are prepared and have an emergency boot CD or USB available. This is something that many PC users don't even think about until disaster strikes. And chances are, it will.

The program I use is $49.95 but that is nothing compared to the cost of downtime, repair and possible loss of programs and important data. It's called BootSuite 2011 and in my opinion is worth every cent.
 

GETTING YOURSELF OR YOUR PRODUCTS 'OUT THERE'

Even if you've never owned a domain name or built a website, it's really not difficult. When you've done it once, it's plain sailing.  If you're unsure whether to use your domain name for a conventional website or a blog format such as WordPress, then I would recommend the latter.

But whatever your intentions are to make money online, one way or another you will need to use text – and quite a lot of it – on your web pages or blogs and emails.

WordPress (free to use and most web hosts have automatic installation) sites are easy to build and manage and your choice of appearance or 'theme' determines whether it looks more like a blog (posting and inviting comment) or a normal website.

There are so many ways to improve and attract customers to a WordPress blog, both free and/or cheap add-ons called plugins and widgets. Even more importantly, the 'theme' (the way your blog appears on the web) has a great effect on visitors to your site. If it's a plain 'WP default' theme, everyone knows you are new at this. Free and paid-for themes are easy to find, but you can also personalise the look of your site to reflect its topic with a matching theme for under $10 with a copy of WP Minisite Themes.

For adding content quickly, you can try automation. I recommend the WP Robot which will actually create multiple pages of posts for you, and include your affiliate links too. A simple start would be joining Amazon as an associate They have millions of products you can sell. Commissions are relatively low compared to some of the other programs I mention below, but it's a great way to start. Visit the Lunatic Studios site where they sell WP Robot. If WordPress site automation is your thing, you'll love it!

CHOOSE THE RIGHT TOPICS – popular, but not much direct competition

Before you actually do all this you need to prepare by finding a suitable 'niche' or topic for your web presence. On a piece of paper, make a list of topics you could write about from your own knowledge or experience; everyone has some pet topic or hobby. There are almost certainly products related to it that you will later find, promote, sell and earn commission from. If not search Google to see what's selling.

Using any text editor like Notepad, Wordpad or Word itself to create pages of simple, unformatted text which will eventually become part of a website or blog devoted to that topic. Each page should relate to and include keywords for a 'sub topic'. Don't worry about formatting or trying to make it look nice. That comes later. The important thing is 'content'. Content is and always will be king on the internet. However, there's are a couple of adjectives that need to be added and they are 'original' and 'unique'. This is important. To keep the search engines happy and index your pages, you need to provide unique content for your websites, blogs or articles that you write and submit (or copy from somewhere else!) to directories in order to get links back to your sites to generate traffic.

Article Writing is a topic on its own and will not be covered fully here, except to mention that if you do use this popular method of 'spreading the word', then there are several tools that will make your life easier and save hours and hours of valuable time. These include article writing and re-writing programs and article directory submitters. Re-writing is also called 'spinning' and it means producing several – even hundreds of – versions of basically the same article to avoid duplication and plagiarism (unauthorised copying of another person's work).

There are several of these programs I have bought and tried myself, but without doubt, The Best Spinner lives up to its name. It's quite amazing (just watch the video on the sales page) and for the $47 price, is a 'no-brainer' for anyone who produces text for any purpose whatsoever – especially for someone whose English grammar and vocabulary are lacking or English is their second language. Get Best Spinner and you'll never be lost for words!

English is not the only language on the internet!
If you have no personal topics and/or cannot write well enough in English (or your own language – remember there are 'foreign' language markets that are lucrative too), then you can choose any topic that might earn you money and harvest existing related articles from various and excellent free sources. You either modify these yourself or use an automatic editor. You can even translate them to a different language before posting them on your site. Take this one step further and produce multi-lingual sites. You can add the free web page translation tool from Google.

'Spreading the word' to potential customers

Once you have armed yourself with 'ammunition' there are numerous ways to get your message around the whole planet, the best being your own website(s). The World Wide Web is not a misnomer; there are over 220 countries with internet access.

Registering domain names and getting web hosting for them then uploading your pages are simple procedures. You simply visit a such as HostMonster (one that I use) or HostGator (both have similar offerings, including your first domain name free, so have one in mind; HG is slightly cheaper. Fill in your personal details, pay by debit or credit card, possibly PayPal, and get easy instructions to access your account. Otherwise 'point' domain name(s) you have already registered elsewhere such as GoDaddy.com, Spry.com or NameCheap.com to the host's server and you're ready to upload pages. Tutorials and FAQs are available on the sites.

Traffic, traffic and more traffic

One way or another (and there are quite a few) you need visitors to your website or blog. This is known as internet traffic. You cannot sell anything if you don't have potential customers. While there are countless people ready to buy solutions to their problems, they need to know about you and what you are offering that's better or cheaper than someone else's product or service.

Your own sales marketing campaigns can be supplemented by sending emails to friends or other contacts who have a possible interest in whatever it is you want to promote. In my case it was initially financial market trading products. However, having your own blog or web site allows greater exposure to potential customers. Sites can be free if necessary, but there are better alternatives that cost only a few dollars and there are valid reasons for choosing them.

Look for independent product reviews, forum comment and users' opinions. Forums and user groups are sources of potential new business for you too. Preferably write your own reviews, or at least modify others' texts enough to make yours look original! Publish information on your website or through emails to your contact or subscriber lists. But never spam!  

Build up a list of contacts or subscribers

One of the most important requirements for successful affiliate marketing is having a mailing list usually built from from visitors to your web pages. You can offer those who join your list free items such as reports or other incentives at low cost or even for free. This is the quickest way to build a list of prospective customers, who, if you treat them with respect will begin to trust and purchase from you. And they come back for more! Using a managed service like AWeber, you can monitor exactly how your subscribers respond to your marketing emails. You can try it out yourself for free.

Here is what you might want to have on your own web site, and if you subscribe to mine, you will receive useful tips and information from me, but only if you give me permission to add you to my list:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

The two most common ways of website selling are either paying Google or someone for PPC advertising – or, cheaper, even free, by using the search engines to generate visits originating from keyword searches on Google, Yahoo, MSN and many others. That takes time unless you really know the ins and outs of SEO mastery.

Here's how to get good, no-cost high rankings from major search engines and the smaller ones too. I have been using Keyword Country for over two years now, and it has brought thousands of extra new visitors to my sites. Ones I didn't pay a cent for. They came simply from having high rankings on Google and other main search engines for carefully selected keywords. which I knew had high search numbers.

You can certainly use PPC programs like Google AdWords to drive traffic to your own site or direct to the publishers' sales pages. However, you need to know what you're doing because it can be expensive.

Build links to your websites or blogs

Having independent websites 'hyper-linking' to pages on your own is a well-known, important way to increase your number of page visitors (and ultimately customers). There are many methods of website traffic generation, such as posting text with a link to your page or site on blogs, social networking sites, article sites, review sites, ezines, placing classified ads in digital or printed newspapers and magazines, leaflets, flyers, even on notice boards at your local supermarket or shopping and community centres.

However, while these methods are effective they can also be tedious and time-consuming ways to get links back to the page where you are ultimately trying to sell products and generate commissions for yourself as an affiliate.

Site links can also be bought, but beware. Much of this is detectable and your site can be excluded by the search engines. As opposed to two- or three-way reciprocal links bought through link exchanges or 'farms', the best ones are one way back-links; these are far more likely to give the big search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN, Bing etc) the idea that your site has genuine content that is sought after by others, and they promote your pages as a recommended source of information on a particular topic or keyword, by placing them in the top ten listings of searches.

An easy way to do get these one-way links is with recently-introduced back-link generation software. Links from relevant sites can be placed automatically on every page of your website. This will work over a couple of months to slowly but surely (in a natural way that goes unnoticed by the SEO 'spies') significantly improve page ranking and search engine listings. You can try this service free for 2 weeks too, without paying anything upfront. We use this ourselves now and it does work.

Are you prepared for all the above?

As you have probably seen by now, there is quite a lot of work involved in setting up and 'monetizing' blog sites – and it's easy to get bogged (blogged!) down by the mere thought of it. However, if you work to a clear-cut plan in a methodical fashion, setup and management become quite easy.

Running multiple blog sites are likely to be your best chance of success as an affiliate and there are ways to set them up semi-automatically. But don't believe that there will ever be a 'push-a-few-buttons-and start-making-money' system that works. However, you can save yourself a lot of time and effort.

There are many so-called 'auto-blogging' programs that claim to take you through the whole process, but I have only found one that actually lives up to its claims. It's from a couple of guys named Jason, well-known in such places as the Warrior Forum which allows honest comment about products from other affiliates and website marketers. The Blog Blueprint program covers everything in a step-by-step training course, plus all the tools and support you will ever need.

Rather than try and describe what's contained in this impressive offering, I'm giving you free access to the 7 minute video I received as a member after I purchased it myself in March 2011. Watch it now, then visit the Blog Blueprint website.

While most internet marketing course providers recommend you promote their product as an affiliate too, this is probably the most difficult market to penetrate as an 'unknown'.

New affiliates, unless they have specific interests or expertise, will have quicker results by seeking out less crowded or even completely untapped niches, of which there are thousands.

HOT NICHE TOPIC: Forex and stock market trading products

Although this market might be considered by some as saturated, the potential for affiliates is still staggering. Whether or not you are a stockmarket or forex trader yourself, you can offset trading losses with virtually no outlay. Just a little effort can make you hundreds (even thousands) of extra dollars – there's no upper limit. You may well decide, as I did, that your chances of making money are greater than if you trade the markets yourself!

Learn more about promoting forex and stock market trading products, and check out some of the recommended publishers with affiliate programs on the Forex Affiliate page. Get as much information and free resources offered by those publishers both to their potential customers and their affiliates. Learn how a Super Affiliate recently made over $50K from one of the programs I recommend there.
 

How to become a Forex and Stock Trading Affiliate

and

The Difference between Affiliate and Super Affiliate
 

FTC Disclosure: I am happy to tell you that I use affiliate links on this site and if you follow my recommendations, I will be compensated by the vendor. You will pay the same price if you buy direct. However, your support will be appreciated and let me know I have done my job encouraging you to earn money from affiliate marketing too!

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