First, you need to know what you are looking for, and what you can expect to find. Unfortunately you will find that most free material out there is intended to get you interested in a bigger and better report which will cost you money. These generally include a few useful tips, but don't really have any meat in them. Some are very basic and not helpful.

Search and read, don't buy

You will end up asking more questions than you find answers. Why? Because that is what the writer wants. You find the answers in his big and expensive report.

So be careful when you are searching, or you will spend a lot of time reading stuff going over the same ground. Here are some basics so you don't need to read all these reports.

1.To start out as an affiliate, make sure you devote enough time to do the job. It is a job, but not one with a boss or set hours. You can work whenever it is convenient for you, but do make sure you set the time and have a place to work.

2.To get a feel for what is available, spend some time searching through Clickbank, and you will see the huge number of products available for you to market. The products with the higher gravity are the ones to get interested in.

3.Make sure there is a market out there. You can do this by studying magazines in a store, or by checking that there are plenty of adverts in Google for the products you want to promote. The market comes before the products.

4.Go back to Clickbank and find some products that fit your niche exactly.

Now you have a basic idea of how to go about the business of being an affiliate. The next step is to build a website to promote the product, in about four or five pages. So you will need go start writing some articles to do the job.

Again, there are lots of affiliate marketing guides you can use to move further ahead, and a good place to start is by googling for 'associate programs' or 'affiliate programs', and look for sites that have forums where you can swap ideas.