Did you know that you can make money online without having a product or even a website? Well, it’s possible by using a combination of affiliate and article marketing. It’s a great way to supplement your own income, and for some, it can even be a full-time endeavor if done correctly.

Here are the basics:

What Is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a way for you to make money online by referring people to products and services that have an affiliate program. When you join an affiliate program, you are given an affiliate URL – a special code that lets companies know that people have purchased a product from your referral. All you need to do is get people to click on your affiliate URL, and if they purchase the product, you receive a commission!

Now, the question is, how the heck are you supposed to get people to click on your affiliate URL? Well, one of the methods is through something known as article marketing.

What Is Article Marketing?

Article marketing is when you use written articles to promote a product or service. These articles are usually anywhere from 500 – 1000 words, and can be about virtually any topic. After writing an article, you can submit it to any number of article directories. Some of the popular directories include ezinearticles.com and articlefeeder.com.

Now at the bottom of each article that you write, you can include what is known as a “resource box”, which is essentially a bit about yourself and what you are trying to promote. Just insert your affiliate URL into the resource box and send it to as many article directories as you want!

3 Steps to Success

Getting started is simple:

1. Find a product with an affiliate program that you would like to promote, and sign up for the affiliate program. Be sure to copy down your affiliate URL.
2. Write a 500-1000 word article related to the product or service you are promoting.
3. Go to articleavenue.com and submit your article. Make sure your affiliate URL is included in the resource box.

A short 500 word article doesn’t take that long to write, and you can submit it to several directories. Best of all, some online publications will actually reprint your article – resource box and all – on their websites!

Advantages

The advantages of this kind of Internet business are many:

• Low start up costs. All you need is a computer with an Internet connection.
• Easy. There’s really not that much to it! Anyone can make money using this method.
• Massive earning potential. Commissions range between 5-15% for hard goods, and up to 75% for digital downloads (eBooks, video courses, etc.)
• Fun. Writing about products we like can be very enjoyable!

You Can Make Money Online

Using the proper system, almost anyone can start earning a massive income online. Alex Goad, famed Internet marketer and author of Google Conquest, is rereleasing Google Conquest as Conquest Authority – a complete marketing system designed to bring anyone from zero to hero in affiliate marketing. On June 16th, Alex is opening the gates to the kingdom once again for a limited time. To find out more about one of the most effective Internet and affiliate marketing systems available, read this Conquest Authority review and amazing Conquest Authority bonus.

Start writing and start earning today!

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The key to making the most out of niche affiliate marketing is to find the best products to promote. You need to find the hidden, undiscovered niches that have low competition levels that you can thrive in, but have a high customer demand.

These could be a small niche that most people would not consider but actually has a surprising amount of prospects. It could also be a smaller niche within a much larger and competitive market. If you can drill down in these markets and find the longtail keywords and phrases that customers search for you could be onto a winner.

In order to find these niches I would recommend three things;

Firstly, take a look at Google Trends and Ebay to find out the hottest searched terms. When you know what people are searching for you can then find an affiliate product you can market.

Secondly, have a look at books and magazines in a bookstore. If there is a magazine or popular book in the market then you can be sure there are potential customers you can target.

Finally, select a popular market in its broadest term. Then take a look at the forums in this market. By browsing through these you will find the niches that people are talking about and you will have a long list of niche ideas you can find products for.

I provide much information on this in my niche blueprint bonus.

The next step is to go out and promote to these prospects and you will stand a good chance of prospering. For more info take a look at the niche blueprint.

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Earlier this year, when I joined Affiliate Cash Secrets By Derrick Van Dyke, one of the main focus of setting up a successful affiliate campaign is actually to create a squeeze or optin page. It’s a type of landing page which you can see an example of one of my affiliate offer early on at freePPCads.biz The purpose of a squeeze page is mainly captured your visitor name and email address before they head on to the merchant site. When I was taught it is extremely important if you are paying for traffic such as Adwords, Yahoo sponsored search, or various form of paid advertising.

Why a Squeeze Page?

The reason for a squeeze page because can either buy the offer or leave the offer totally and buy getting the leads, you can following them up throughout an autoresponder squeeze, and hopefully they will buy. At the end of the day if they don’t you will still have a chance to show them other offers later on which I am currently doing with my private label rights products as well as some affiliate offers as well. So it leaves to how actually you can create a squeeze page for an affiliate offer.

Cookie Pre-loading

After reading the ebook affiliate rescue, they taught a quite “sneaky” method which some merchant may have problem with you…i.e. copy the merchant site entirely and stick your affiliate link in the web copy with a 1 by 1 pixel transparent image. The actual HTML looks like:

[quickcode] <img src=”YourAffiliateLinkHere” height=”1″ width=”1″>[/quickcode]

Indeed I’m doing that today with all my affiliate offer, as examples, you can go to blogtradesecrets.biz and biggestfiresale bonus page but I am necessary copy the merchant but create a simple squeeze or landing page for each offer. The purpose of sticking your affiliate link is with a transparent is important (it’s also known as cookie pre-loading or cookie dropping) because your visitor doesn’t have to go the merchant site before your affiliate is recognized. Well you don’t know what your visitor will do, some may fill up their name and primary email address for your squeeze page form and some may close that page and don’t bother to enter their information! Therefore by pre-loading your cookie with your squeeze or landing page, you increase your chance of getting commission.

Next time I will talk about how to set up a sales funnel so that you know what price range of products that you can market to your list so stay tuned!