Part 1: What You Need to get Started
Despite what most of the non-free, get rich quick guides might tell you, there are a few things you need to have ready in order to make money online, at least with the methods I’m going to detail.
If you don’t have them, you can get them, but it might take some time. If you’re not willing to commit time, then you might as well stop right here anyway. So….
What You Need to Have:
- a web site
- an email address
- an affiliate account or an Adsense account
- basic HTML and CSS skills
A Web Site
Yes, you need a web site. This is probably the hardest requirement to fill, because it can’t just be any site. It’s got to be an established site, which is a site that’s been online a while and actually has some content and traffic.
You need an established site because most of the pay-per-lead and pay-per-sale affiliate companies out there require you to have one. Adsense requires you to have one when you apply, although after you’re in you can add it to any other site, new or not.
When you fill out a form to apply to an affiliate network or Adsense, one of the things they ask for is your web site URL, a categorization of you site, and approximate traffic figures.
That isn’t to say there aren’t some affiliate marketing programs out there who will let you sign up without a site, but all the ones I deal with require it coming in the door, and, after all, I’m not telling you how to make money, I’m telling you how I made money.
Bear in mind that this site is only to get you in the door. Chances are it’s not the site you’ll be using to actually make money through affiliate offers, so don’t feel as though you this site needs to be he end all be all of web sites. Just get it up, get to posting, and start getting some visitors.
If you don’t already have a web site, you don’t have many options. Three in fact. You can:
- Start a new site
- Use someone else’s site on your affiliate application (with their permission of course!)
- Find an affiliate company that doesn’t require you to already have a site
1. Starting a New Site
Starting a web site is not as hard as it sounds. Probably the best option here is to sign up for a blog at Blogger. There are more sites than you could count in your lifetime that tell you how to start a blog, so I’m not going to go in-depth here.
Sign up at Blogger, create a blog, and start posting. Pick a topic that interests you since it’s hard to write about something you have no interest in. Keep the articles simple, 300 – 400 words long, stick an image in upper right, and, most of all, make sure they are original. Don’t cut and paste wholesale from other sites. Do research on the, grab some bits here and there, and rewrite in your own words.
Now do 3 articles a week and you will be on your way. Yes 3 articles a week. If you want to do more, fine, but no reason to do more than 1 a day, since the main things you are going for here is content and age.
You’re goal here isn’t to build a blog to make money, it’s to build a blog that shows growing content and that’s been around for 4-6 months. No matter how many articles you write, your blog won’t be 4 months old until it’s 4 months old. More content is great, sure, but more than 3 articles a week is probably more than you need to do.
There are a ton of advice site on getting blog traffic, but here are two quick tips:
- Sign up for an account on Feedburner and add your new blog.
- Every time you write you 300 – 400 word post, condense it down to no less than 250 words, and post it as an article on eZineArticles.
- In your article footer, put something like: “Read the full text of [Your Article Title] at [Your Web Site], along with other posts about [Your Blog's Main Topic].
2. Use Someone Else’s Site
If you have a friend who already has a web site that’s been around a while and beg, borrow, or offer a six pack of beer (or a case if you have to) to get his or her permission to list their site on your affiliate application.
You could also try listing a totally random site, but I don’t recommend it. If you do try this, don’t list an uber popular blog or site. Pick something that has around 50 – 100 pages of content, has recently been updated, and has been on line at least 4 months. Product review blogs are particularly good prey. Go for a Blogger or other free blogging/site builder site.
3. Find an Affiliate Company that doesn’t Require a Site
The only one I can think of off the top of my head is ClickBank. I’ve barely tinkered with them, so I can’t speak as to their full offerings when it comes to affiliate marketing. I know they do eBooks, but I’m not sure what else. So if you go the ClickBank route, you’re on your own.
An Email Address
Since your online reading this, I’m going to assume you already have an email address. Nevertheless, I’m putting it here because some people still don’t.
Even if you do have an email, I recommend you get a separate one to use as you business email. That’s right, I said business, because the sooner you start think about this as a business, the sooner you’ll be prepared to succeed in running it.
There’s are plenty of free email service out there. Personally, and for no real reason other than it’s what I use, I suggest GMail.
Be aware that there are actually some affiliate companies that don’t accept email address from free email sites. In that case, you’ll just have to use your personal email address.
An Affiliate Account
Ok, so you’ve got a web site and you’ve got you business email and you’re ready to sign up. As are the stars in the sky so are the number of affiliate companies out there. I’m not going to go through them all, or even a fraction. I’m only going to tell you the ones I work with because I’ve actually made money with them.
Full disclosure: some of the above links are affiliate links. That means if you click through and sign up and actually make some money for those companies, they will give me a percentage according to how much you make. The percentage I might get IS NOT taken from what you earn–you don’t get any less by using the links, and it would be a nice thing to do to repay me for all the effort and handy information I’m putting out here (hint, hint).
Some of these companies are more strict than others when it comes to approving sign ups, so I can’t promise you’ll be approved. If you have a decent site with decent traffic that’s been around a while, you’ll probably get the nod.
Basic HTML and CSS Skills
More on this later, but suffice to say you’ll need some basic HTML and CSS skills. You’re not going to be doing and web developing, but you might run into occasions where you want to changed the way something looks, and to do that you might have to tinker with some HTML or CSS to make it happen.
More on that when we get to it.
So you’ve got your email, got your web site, and are approved to be an affiliate. You’re prepared to learn whatever little bit of HTML or CSS you need to make this happen.
In Part 2, I’ll cover Choosing Offers to Market
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