When one first gets into affiliate marketing, there is a tendency to think that spending a lot of money on advertising will guarantee a return on investment. Sadly, this rarely happens. New affiliate marketers often spend more money than they make, get frustrated, and quit. Don't let this happen to you. Follow these 3 steps to promote affiliate products for free.



1. Set up a blog or a Squidoo lens, or better yet, both. Blogs and Squidoo pages are free and easy to set up. This is where you will promote your affiliate products. Many affiliate marketers use blogs to review their affiliate products, comparing the pros and cons in an effort to "pre-sell" the product.

Squidoo lenses are similar to blogs, except that each lens is composed of a single page. This means that you need to use each Squidoo lens to focus on a particular product, instead of the usual blogging way of having multiple categories. As with blogs, you can have multiple Squidoo lenses. You can also use your lenses to promote your blog.

2. Set up a Twitter account. This is another platform that is free and easy to use. Twitter is basically a "micro-blog." You only have 140 characters to use in each of your posts, but you can post several times a day. If you update your blog or Squidoo lens, tell Twitter about it.

Twitter may seem like an odd concept, but it is surprising how much traffic it can drive to your other sites. You can add a link in each of your posts that others can follow back. It's actually easier to just visit Twitter than to explain it, so go check it out.

3. Start driving traffic back to your blog and Squidoo lenses by writing articles and posting in forums. In your article resource box, you can link back to your sites, and you can post links in your signature on forums. Article writing and forum posting are two of the most effective forms of free advertising available.

You can find hundreds of places to submit your articles for free by simply typing "article directories" into your favorite search engine. Find forums in your niche by searching for "yoursubject forums." In other words, if you are trying to sell internet marketing products, search for internet marketing forums.

Articles and forums are also great places to find useful free advice. When you are first starting out as an affiliate marketer, you need all the free information you can get, so you should use these resources as often as you can.

Try these free affiliate marketing methods before you start spending a bunch of money on advertising or expensive ebooks. These techniques work as well or better than most forms of paid advertising, and you are much less likely to get frustrated and give up if you can make money instead of spending it. Good luck!