Step #1 in Affiliate Marketing

If affiliate marketing is what you’re interested in, then the first thing you should do is decide what it is that you want to market. My suggestion would be to pick something that you enjoy, that way you won’t get discouraged as quick. Plus, you’ll already know all about the subject which will enable you to fully concentrate on all the rest that you’ll have to learn.

Believe you me, there is a lot to learn and it takes a lot of work to set everything up before you’ll see any money. I read somewhere that 98% of marketers don’t succeed. The majority drop out in the first week, which tells me that once they understand the amount of work that goes into it, they’re not willing to do it.

So go ahead and think about something dear to your heart—it could be anything from fly-fishing to soap-making! Come up with catchy name. Make sure the name has at least one keyword, like ‘Fred’s Fly-Fishing” or “Susie’s Handmade Soaps”. This will help people to find you easier.

Once you have a clear picture in your mind of what it is you want to promote, you should set up a blog with blogger. All you have to do is go to http://blogger.com and set up an account. It’s very easy, click on the blue “TAKE A QUICK TOUR” button and take a quick tour or just click on the red “CREATE YOUR BLOG NOW” and simply follow the instructions.

Now it’s time for you to start blogging. Stick with the topic that you chose, and start building quality content around it. It’s very important that you stick with the topic and not wander off, because the more content you can build around one topic, the easier it will be for the search engines to pick up your blog. This will greatly increase traffic to your site!

Your success will depend on the amount of traffic that you’ll be able to attract to your site. So it’s important that you build your content first, so that when you get visitors, they’ll like what they see and keep coming back for more.

Take a deep breath and relax, make this a fun experiment. Your writing doesn’t have to be perfect, whatever you post, you can edit or delete later if don’t like it.

You can also go to the following sites for some great content: http://articlecity.com, http://goarticles.com>, http://ezinearticles.com , and http://ideamarketers.com . These sites are all free; just make sure you read their guidelines before you publish any of their content on your site.

You can also submit articles to these sites for others to publish. You don’t get paid to do this, but, you are allowed to put your web or blog URL on the article and this will generate an awesome amount of traffic leading back to your site.

There’s tons of free ways to generate traffic to your site which I’ll cover more in later posts.

So once again, make this a fun experience and remember that success is only the elimination of failure.