1. So What Is It?

It is called affiliate marketing. It, as a matter of fact, is one of the easiest and fastest ways to start your online business and rake in thousands of dollars every month.

2. What's Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing simply to say is promoting other people's product and in return you'll get certain percentage of the merchant's item if and only people who buy the merchant's item buy through your link.

So we can say some sort of online multi level marketing.

Why I said that? Because many of these programs have 2-tier which means you can refer another affiliate below you. Whenever he or she makes sales you'll get certain percentage of those sales.

3. How do I get started?

Well, first off, you have to identify which niche you want in? For example if you are a maniac golfer, then the chance you're more likely to promote golf equipment rather than fishing equipment.

Then estimate the competition, go to Google and type in your appropriate term for example “beginner golf guide” and see how much sites on that subject already exist?

For me personally, I don't care much about the competition if you have more crowded competition that means you'll need to wait longer to make profits and so vice versa. It's just that simple.

However, be sure to do something you really love, because in the end it will be life and death of your business.

4. Let's Find The “Eager-To-Give You Money” Merchant

Now you should have roughly figure on which niche you want to in. The next thing we're going to do is find potential merchant that could bring you the potential income you always dream of.

To faster the process we are going to choose them from affiliate programs directory. Affiliate programs directory is site that already does the hard-work for us in selecting which one the potential merchant, so you just need to pinpoint which one you want to embrace.

Some of the best are:

www.associateprograms.com

www.5staraffiliateprograms.com

5. Skyscraper Website versus “Mini” Content Site

As the time writing, there're 2 current opinions:

The first state in order to get money from affiliate program you have to build skyscraper site and fill it with hundreds of content while

The second state in order to get money from affiliate program you have to build multiple stream of mini site

Which one that works?

Both work, it is ultimately up to you which one you want to adopt for example of the first one in action you can see http://www.sage-hearts.com which has been running by Rosalind Gardner while the second one you can see http://www.dominatesearchengine.com which has been running by Anik Singal (Actually, I haven't ask their permission to cover their web site in this article but I bet they wouldn't mind)

Both is very respected and highly acclaimed both affiliate marketer and internet marketer.

Here're the pros and cons:

If you decide to build mini site then you'll have to forget the possibility of getting traffic from generic search engine.

If you decide to build skyscraper content site then you'll have to invest considerable amount of time and energy to build it.

Don't re-invent the wheel there's no point in doing so just follow what already works. Examine both of their sites carefully and see which part you can adapt to your business model. (But mark my words don't copy them words-by-words!)

6. Ready to Drive Traffic?

Now you have proven business model at your disposal, it is the time to drive traffic to your site. I'd recommend first off you start by going to build reciprocal link campaign. Reciprocal link is the act of exchanging link between two sites in hope to send traffic to each other.

Let's put it into action…

Once again type in your keywords on search engine, next click on each of the site you found, if you like this site then examine it carefully. Are they having something like “submit URL” or “add URL”?

If they have click on the link there should be simple self-explanatory instruction to exchange your link with that website but what if they didn't have one? Just contact them through email or phone and ask if they're willing to do reciprocal link with you.

What's great about this method? Here's what will happen…

Let's say after doing reciprocal link for one month in the end of the month you get 30 links. Each one refer one people per day to your site, now you already have 30 people visit your site without you doing a thing. In one month you will get 900 people visit your site on completely auto pilot. That's the beauty of reciprocal link-)

What happen if you can manage to get 200 links?

7. Final Note

Like any of other endeavors if you expect some results it means hard work and persistence. Don't expect result in a week I tell you that wouldn't happen but expect in a year or so. Trust me though it seems long far away at the beginning but in the end your perseverance will pay off many times.