Guest Post by Trent Brownrigg

There are literally thousands of affiliate programs on the internet that you can join for free and market the products for commissions on each sale you make. Being an affiliate marketer is one of the best ways to make money online and here are some of the reasons why...

- You don't have to create a product
- You don't have to build the sales site
- You don't have to deal with customers or refunds
- You don't have to stock inventory
- You don't have to ship or deliver the product
- You don't have to do anything except market and get paid

As you can see there are several positives of affiliate marketing and those are not nearly all of them. There are also others such as the potential to earn thousands of dollars per month and the ease of entry into becoming an affiliate marketer.

Most people who work at a regular job could work at the same place their entire lives and still not earn as much money per year as a good affiliate marketer makes in a few months. It is very possible to make a very good living online by marketing products and services through affiliate programs.

Here are some tips on how to make money online with affiliate programs...

1) Pre-sell to Your Visitors

You need to warm up your website visitors to a product or service before all out selling it to them. This "warm up" process is called "pre-selling" and it is a great way to make more sales. Pre-selling on a blog or website usually involves posting a review or a personal experience you've had with the product. Don't just describe all the positives or your review won't feel genuine to the readers, you need to list any negatives as well.

2) Cost Per Action (CPA) Offers

One of the hottest ways to make money online right now is through CPA or pay per lead offers. This is great for affiliate marketers because it's almost always harder to generate a sale than it is to have someone fill out a simple online survey or submit their email address on a form. Sites like Market Leverage, Never Blue Ads, Azoogle, and many others have great CPA offers that can be a great addition to any affiliate website.

3) Build Your List

All the top affiliate marketers have a list of prospects that they can email any time they want to get several sales of any new affiliate offer they are promoting. To do this you will need to sign up with a reputable autoresponder service such as Aweber or GetResponse, and put up lead capture pages or opt-in forms on your website.

Your visitors will submit their names and email addresses, and you can email them anytime you want. It's best to send them free and useful information on a regular basis to keep a good relationship with them so they will buy from you when you do send them an affiliate offer.
You can't just hammer them with affiliate offers or they will opt-out and never buy from you again.

4) Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Getting your website to the top of Google and other search engines for your keywords is a sure way to get a lot of affiliate sales and make a lot of money. The traffic you get from having top search engine rankings will come in day after day with very little extra work on your part once you have the high rankings. And the visitors will be very targeted and looking for what you have to offer.

SEO isn't very difficult but it's also not something you can learn from one article. It's a whole other subject all in itself. Spend some time at internet marketing forums and you will be able to learn all you need to know about SEO in a short amount of time.

5) Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising

This can be a great way for an affiliate marketer to make a lot of sales but it isn't something you should get into very heavily until you have done some learning and know what you are doing. PPC seems really easy on the surface and the basics of it are quite simple, however you can waste a lot of money very quickly if you aren't careful.

Another thing you need to consider when making money with affiliate programs is to research properly before spending your time marketing an affiliate product or service. Find things that are selling well without an overwhelming amount of competition and make sure the product delivers on its promises. Your reputation is on the line so you don't want to be promoting crappy stuff, and you don't make money if the product doesn't sell.

Basically what I am trying to say is that affiliate marketing can be a great way to make
money at home. So, don't hesitate any longer, go find an affiliate program that interests you and get started right now!

Author Bio:
Trent Brownrigg is an internet marketing strategies expert who has been making money online since 2003.