“The internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow. – Bill Gates”

Becoming a successfully entrepreneur in this day and age is much easier than it used to be. If you haven’t guess why, it’s because of this wonderful opportunity we call the Internet. We can use the internet and all its features such as advertisements and social media to earn massive incomes as online entrepreneurs.

Many people now, including teenagers are taking the advantage of the internet to make a living. And the best part is it doesn’t require the kind of investment you think it would in traditional businesses. No land, no labour, no tax and even no need to create your own products as you can become an affiliate for other businesses and earn commissions.

You should also understand something important. We are now living in the Digital Economy, and so many jobs are going to be taken away from people in the near future (watch the video in resource section below to understand how robots, literally are going to take our jobs), this is yet another reason you should start to move into this digital age and build an Internet Business.

So let’s get into how you can become a successful entrepreneur or online entrepreneur for that matter, with little to no start-up costs.

There are many branches of establishing your presence or business on the internet, however I am going to be teaching you about the branch of Affiliate Marketing. Affiliate marketing is where you sell a service or product owned by another business and receive a commission/pay for it. This is such a great opportunity as you don’t even need to create your own product to start earning an income.

So how do you go about becoming an Affiliate Marketer?

The first thing is to receive quality training about Affiliate Marketing, so that you can understand the ins and outs of marketing online. You should then look into proven business products/models that sell, so that you can gain the advantage in the market.

Your primary focus is then to look into different channels of marketing to get your products out there on the web. Some are more costly than others, while some are virtually free.

For example Content Marketing is a free way in which you publish content in the form of Blogs, Videos, E-books, Reports etc. so that people can receive valuable information which makes it more likely that they will make a purchase from you at a later date. Other channels include Social Media Marketing, Pay per click ads and more.

Earning Commissions is Simple

It can be tough trying to earn commissions as an affiliate. Particularly when you are just starting out. But you know, it doesn’t have to be this way. Earning commissions is pretty simple really.

A Leg Up the Leaderboards

Here are six secrets which will help you start to bank commissions and climb up those affiliate leaderboards which you see plastered all over Facebook. Just don’t share them with too many people. Competition is tough enough already. It’s a JVZoo jungle out there!

Six Sales Secrets

1. All you need is to get from zero to one. You just have to get one sale to be approved going forward. To get that first sale, you need at least one product to promote of course, and in order to grab that beautiful affiliate link you need at least one product creator to share his or her sauce with you. So where do you find these lesser spotted product owners?

2. The second secret follows on from the first. Befriend as many marketers as you can on social media or by email or at marketing events. You’ll be surprised at how approachable some of the big name marketers are if you use the right approach. The right approach for one marketer might be retweeting some of his tweets. For another it might be saying something intelligent and complimentary to them by email. Some marketers of course, will never reply to your email or private messages so maybe you could catch them by the bar at a marketing event? Offer to buy them a drink or a coffee, mention one of their programs that you bought.

3. Once you have your virtual mitts on your first affiliate link, build a review website or blog on WordPress, for example, to get some organic traffic to the product. You can also use social media and YouTube as well.

4. After you have made your first sale, visit sites like Muncheye to see what products are launching and find out the best converting products which are making affiliates money right now.

5. Send a truck load of traffic to your link using ad swaps, solo ads and paid traffic like Facebook ads.

6. Keep testing to see which offers and traffic sources are converting into commissions for you, then rinse and repeat.

Pretty easy right? So there you have it. My six secrets to winning the affiliate game and winning it big.

Earning additional income without having to take on another conventional job has just gotten a lot easier. Advances in technology, including the advent and widespread use of the Internet, have certainly opened up a number of doors to ambitious professionals who are seeking increased financial health. Following are some of the top ways to generate more revenue, without exhausting all of your free time.

Consider Becoming An Affiliate

Affiliate marketers are able to make considerable amounts in their spare time, without having to pay a ton of startup costs. In fact, some affiliates are able to get respectable businesses started for free. With these opportunities, you simply market the existing products of another company via your own website or blog. When people choose to purchase these goods using the links that you’ve created on your sales platform, you will get a large portion of the resulting profits. With opportunities like these, you can avoid the costs of:

– Designing and developing your own products

– Creating your own business name and logo

– Storing, packaging and distributing products

Nearly all parts of your business plan will be laid out for you. You won’t need a physical storefront or a large team of employees. This is actually true of a lot of the opportunities to earn income online. As such, most people with a reasonable amount of downtime are able to get their side businesses going right away. As an affiliate, it is vital to choose companies or products to represent that you happen to like and use yourself.

Start Blogging About Something You Love And Monetise Your Posts

With affiliate marketing, people often blog about the products that they are writing. These blogs usually include how to posts and detailed product reviews. Surprisingly, however, there are ways to make money blogging without having to use your online content to actively sell products. For instance, you can write about something that you’re incredibly knowledgeable or passionate about and then you can let other advertisers pay you for advertising on your pages. Some companies will pay you every time someone clicks ones of your links, while others will pay you for productive clicks or clicks that lead to sales.

Build A Large Fan Following On A Video Hosting Site

A fan following on a video hosting site can help you generate wealth. That’s because, with lots of subscribed viewers, advertisers will be willing to pay you a veritable fortune to run ads at the start of your videos. If you have a conspiracy you would like to share, information that is not being disbursed by the mass media or a crop of funny clips that you think others would like to look at, start posting these and build an impressive channel.

Provide A Fee-Based Service As A Private Contractor

You may have a skill that you can provide with a contractor status. Bookkeepers, tax professionals, tutors and more are all using the Internet to advertise fee-based services like these. If you lack a viable skill, take a quick online course to get one. Completing a bridal makeup course or a computer coding program will give you the ability generate extra revenue during your free hours by selling your services to local and online consumers.

In this article I am going to explain to you what an affiliate marketer is and how an affiliate marketer earns money. I am also going to share with you a few affiliate programs, which are both popular and reputable, for you to consider joining.

An affiliate marketer basically promotes a company’s products or services for them and if they make a sale they will receive a commission which is an agreed percentage of the sale price.

An affiliate marketer is a sales person working on a commission. It is not a job and you don’t sign any contracts with the company, you can decide when you want to stop promoting the products at any time without giving any notice.

The affiliate marketer does not hold any stock of the product, they get what is called an affiliate link, which is a unique tracking ID associated only with that affiliate marketer. How this works is that the affiliate marketer promotes a product and has their tracking ID, affiliate link, somewhere within the promotion for a person to click on and go to a sales page. If they decide to make a purchase this tracking ID traces the sale back to the person who promoted the product, they will then receive a commission.

Programs like Amazon Associates let you promote lots of their products and you can swap and change those products any time that you wish. The advantage of having the freedom to do this is that if you find that a certain product is not selling then you can decide to stop promoting that product without giving any notice to Amazon.

A number of company’s use affiliate’s to promote their products and one that most people will have heard of is Amazon, a huge website with perhaps tens of thousands of products. The advantage of using Amazon is because of their reputation, a huge online retailer with an incredible reputation for great customer service.

Other programs like ClickBank.com and JVZoo.com are a little less known by the public, but offer a much higher commission rate than the larger retailer Amazon. They do not have the same kind of reputation like Amazon but offer a huge amount of online digital products which can be downloaded directly onto the buyers computer. These digital products vary widely from an eBook to purchasing a monthly subscription with a digital service.

A great opportunity exists for the affiliate marketer who can successfully promote products, there are an endless number of products to choose from under an endless number of topics. The key is to know who to market those products to and how to market them successfully.

You surely have heard that in order to make money on the internet, you have to attract traffic, lots of it and convert them into paying customers. Lots of internet marketers, even so-called gurus send email marketing courses to your inbox every day with the promise of making you a ton of money. Yet, after buying all the books, videos and courses you are still not getting too much conversion although you are getting website visitors. How to get your website visitors to become paying customers is the dream of all marketers. You still need to convert that dream into reality though!

Imagine having a list of 10,000 subscribers and only 200 of them buy your $50 product. All of a sudden you are making $10,000 a month. Not bad if you asked me. Some marketers with huge buyers list are making 10 time that much a month. Now let’s say that you become an affiliate with a seminar training course selling for $947.00 and get 50% commission, that is $473.5 and you still manage to sell 200 of them. Now that is a whopping $94,700. If you can do that every month then you are a happy marketer. You can see why many people are leaving their day job and try to make a living off the internet.

With that much competition it’s not easy to make the big bucks, unless you are a marketing god who can write crafty email messages that is designed to make the subscribers open, read and fall in love with them. Once your subscriber likes you, trust you the money will be coming soon enough.

In case you wonder why are there so many courses on the psychology of a good email copy, what attract the subscribers to your message and get him/her glued to your very last words? As you can see learning how to write good email content is very important to a career as an online marketer.

You have to be able to tell them a good story, an entertaining story that relates to them in some way shape or form. It may not relate to all of your readers but it should relate to at least a good portion of them. That is why the savvy marketer tells you that you have to know your audience well. What do they do? What movies they like? What they eat for breakfast, etc.

Once you know your audience, it is easier to relate to them in your message. Make them feel special. The subscriber has to feel like you are talking to him/her personally. It makes them feel special. If you can talk to your subscribers as you talk to a friend, they will listen and they will anxiously wait for your next email message with anticipation and devour every single word of it.

What is the big secret of getting the website visitors to become paying customers? Well it is more like a recipe than a secret. A secret recipe like the big companies are using everyday in their business. Get the customer in, amaze the customer with your product and he or she will be coming for more.

As an online marketer, you need to attract the visitors to your website and get them to subscribe with an enticing bribe. Find all you can about them and make them fall in love with you with good, solid content that talks directly to them.

Offer them more of that good content to make them love you more and trust you. You will develop a relationship with them and build trust. From there you can help them find a solution to their problem by introducing them to an affiliate offer (solution to a problem) that can help them with the problem and help you fatten your wallet. Pretty nice recipe if you ask me.

You Can’t Please Everyone

When you are marketing online, it’s very hard to please everyone. Most of the time, my customers are like a loyal fan-base hanging on my every word and waiting for my next missive. On the other hand, sometimes I manage to annoy people. Like a recent customer, for example, who complained that my email headlines hurt his sensitivities.

Time is A Factor

Now, I don’t set out to insult anyone (usually) but I refuse to compromise on being myself. By being myself, I mean that I sometimes shoot from the hip and use whatever medium I think best to get my message across. As Mr Wolf said in Pulp Fiction: “If I’m curt with you it’s because time is a factor. I think fast, I talk fast, and I need you to guys to act fast… ”

Salesmen Sell

You see, as an affiliate marketer, I am basically a salesman, and guess what salesmen do? Correct! They sell. I have been selling online for many years and it’s something I know how to do well? How do I know this? Because people subscribe to my list, they stay on my list (well most of them anyhow), they buy my stuff and I make commissions. Very healthy commissions too.

Grumpy Old Men

If you are a seasoned marketer or just starting to make money online, you will get people’s goat up, you will tread on people’s toes. My advice, however, is if something is working for you and making you affiliate revenue, then don’t change because one or two grumpy old men get insulted by the language you use. That said, if using “street language” doesn’t suit your personality then don’t do it. Use whatever medium you need to get your point across, so long as you stay true to yourself.

But You Make This Look So Easy

When you are successful, most people will applaud you, but a small minority will be green with envy. They are struggling in business and are trying to convey a professional demeanor and yet here you are simply being yourself, talking normally and making $60,000 a month in commissions. So when they say they don’t like your language, what they really mean is they don’t like the fact that you make affiliate marketing look so easy.

Here’s The Door

So, here cometh the lesson: just be yourself. Some people will love it. Some people will hate it. But you will sleep at night (and make a lot of money in the process). If you get this, then you have what it takes to succeed in this business and do so ethically. Those who hate it can always unsubscribe. Now, if a paying customer genuinely didn’t receive what you promised them, or feels short-changed, then you need to address their concerns of course. But, to answer the title of this article, when customers or prospects complain about you being yourself, you don’t have to do anything. They know where the door is.

Whether you’re new to affiliate marketing or a seasoned pro, it’s always good to see what others are doing. The best affiliate marketing resources will not only give you ideas for your own content (never plagiarize), but can allow you to connect with successful affiliate marketers. Many of whom blog, because it’s a low-cost way to get in front of readers. Organic SEO (search engine optimization) can be achieved by following the “Best Blog Format” found on YouTube.

The best affiliate marketing resources include blogs, podcasts, books, events, forums, social media groups, and YouTubers. Today I’m going to tell you about my favorite affiliate marketing blogs, in no particular order.

ProBlogger.net – Darren Rowse began blogging about photography school back in 2002 and has since become one of the most well-respected names in the field. I’ve learned quite a bit from his blog and podcasts and definitely encourage you to check out his site. The information he gives away for free seems almost endless. His blog introduced me to BuzzSumo, which provides analytical information that you can’t get from Google Analytics. BuzzSumo can tell you what content is being shared from your blog, what key words trigger that sharing, and even allows you to analyze competing blog’s content.

SatoriPrime – Brothers, Guy and Ilan Ferdman offer mindset training, coaching, and all sorts of tips for online marketers. They focus quite a bit on Facebook and YouTube strategies and share those strategies via blog posts and YouTube video. One of the first things I learned about blogging was from SatoriPrime, and that is to only pitch product or try to sell to your readers one or two out of every ten posts or emails. They really stress the importance of attraction marketing and building trusted relationships with your readers. Provide unbelievable value to people for free and the success will follow.

LukePeerFly – Chad French’s blog is associated with his affiliate platform, where members publish affiliate offers to the PeerFly network. PeerFly then takes a 5% commission from completed purchases. One of the things I learned from his blog is to check BuzzFeed for ideas, when I’m stuck and am having a tough time coming up with content to blog about. He was in a rut and decided to start a blog on one of my favorite TV shows, It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, and with that blog he’s since accumulated over 115,000 Twitter followers and 60,000 email subscribers. We don’t always have to blog about affiliate marketing or blogging itself. LukePeerFly is also a great resource for highlighting useful software for bloggers. His blog introduced me to Amplifire, which allows bloggers to create a full-screen pop up call-to-action, proven to make your blog’s visitors far more likely to opt-in. His blog also introduced me to PtEngine, another resource for converting blog viewers into customers.

SmartPassiveIncome – Pat Flynn is another great blogger who offers all kinds of tips and tricks for free. He has an active YouTube channel as well and has taught me about repurposing blog content. A written blog can be made into a podcast, eBook, YouTube video, etc.

Jack Canfield’s Blog – Jack Canfield is the well known motivational speaker who wrote the famous book, Chicken Soup For The Soul and he appeared in the movie The Secret, with many other respected guests. Jack coaches entrepreneurs from every walk of life and has lots of positive pep talk when you’re feeling like the odds are against you and your business endeavors. His goal is to inspire success in others by teaching mindset techniques and sharing what he knows about universal laws. He takes a spiritual approach to success in life. I do too, so I relate to him.

The Best Affiliate Marketing Resources Part 1 was about blogs. Look for part 2, coming soon!

Affiliate marketing can be a great way to make some extra money in your spare time and if you are very successful, you can even turn it into a full time income. This article is full of tips and ideas to help make all aspects of your affiliate marketing endeavors rewarding.

Always make sure to check on a company’s conversion numbers before you decide to work as an affiliate for them. Many new marketers are sold on bright and colorful websites and fail to check the sales conversion numbers. If the company is not turning a lot of visitors into customers, this means no commissions for you.

Affiliates need to make sure that they’re receiving full credit for every sale. For this, you want to find out what type of tracking software a company uses and make sure that it’s a legitimate, reliable service. If you are not properly tracked, you could end up losing your commissions. And the company is not going to shed a tear over this.

When selecting your channels in establishing affiliates, try different types to see which are the most effective. When you compare the results coming from different channels, you will start to see what types of channels bring you the most business, and which ones are just mediocre. You want to retain the ones who are making the most money for you.

Be passionate and enthusiastic. Readers want to know that you truly do love what you are doing, and they are interested in why the products you are helping sell are beneficial to you. If you show them that you are genuinely excited about a product, they are much more likely to take an interest in it themselves.

If you are giving a particular affiliate a large amount of business, take some time and see if you can increase your commissions with them. A lot of companies will be willing to discuss an increase, if they see that they are getting a lot of traffic from you.

To keep your affiliate marketing business generating the most money for you, you should use an auto-responder. This will send them a series of emails or tweets that keep bringing your affiliate marketing product in front of them which will increase the chance that they will click through and buy.

Whether you are a seasoned professional or just beginning your affiliate marketing adventure, by utilizing some of the advice and ideas contained in the tips featured in this article, you should be on your way to achieving your goals and becoming an expert affiliate marketer, capable of earning a substantial income.