One of the fastest, easiest ways to get started with an online business is to promote affiliate products. This way, you eliminate the time-consuming task of having to develop your own product. Promoting digital e-books through Clickbank is an easy way to go. You can simply pick one of the 12,000 plus e-books listed, run some pay-per-click ads, or write an article or two, and wait for the checks to roll in. And there's nothing wrong with this model, if you want to make a few extra bucks on the side.



But as you become more experienced, you will quickly learn, as I did, that the customers you send to these affiliate links are now long gone, and they are no longer YOUR customers. They are now your affiliate program's customers. So, while you may have made a few bucks in commissions, you were really working for free to build a nice list for your affiliate program. They now have those customers for life and can continue to promote new products to them.

Now, think about it. What if 1,000 people read your ad and clicked onto your affiliate website? Well, you may have made a few sales, but what happened to the 1000 people who clicked on your ad in the first place? Someone else has those names, and you gave them away for free! This is a big mistake and one that is easy rectifiable.

I'll bet you've heard the phrase, ?The money is in the list.?

I know I ignored this important bit of wisdom for a long time. I knew that the right way to promote affiliate products was to have customers go to your website first and then on to the affiliate sales page. This way YOU could capture their email address and they could become your customers. But if you're not a techie, the thought of building a website, getting an autoresponder to capture email addresses, and following up with emails might send shivers down your spine. The thought of it all made me dizzy.

So I tried a few different things. At first, I bought a CBMall,

www.clickbank-success.com and signed up as an affiliate. This is a wonderful concept. You simply run ads or write articles to promote this Clickbank Mall and when someone visits the mall, all nicely sorted by topics and buys a product from Clickbank, you get a commission. You as the mall owner, are allowed to purchase any Clickbank product at the affiliate discount, which is a wonderful benefit. I save tons of money because I buy LOTS of e-books. Another great benefit is that once a customer makes that click, the CBMall sends a free newsletter and does the follow-up for many months. The only downside is that you don't capture the email addresses and you don't build a list.

So then I also joined a plug-in Clickbank affiliate website, which means that you can build a basic website without techie knowledge. You simply point and click to the Clickbank products that you want to offer and they magically appear on the screen, image and all. You write a little copy and presto, you're done. Now you have your own website. What you don't have is an autoresponder. You can purchase one yourself and add it to the website, but this is where it gets a little tricky. You have to know how to use a Cpanel, which is very complicated if you don't have the training and you also need to have some knowledge of HTML. If you visit www.home-biz-advisor.com, you'll notice that I didn't get that far. If this isn't a problem for you, then this company has some good benefits.

Finally, I discovered a new idea created by a pure genius!

It works like a plug-in-website in the sense that you simply point and click to instantly create a website designed to promote any affiliate products that you choose. You simply enter your affiliate codes. However, the features are incredible. You just point and click to set up a free autoresponder and a sign- up page to capture email addresses. You choose a domain name, write some sales copy and that's it. You can easily add audio if you'd like, by calling a phone number and taping your message. Ad tracking is included and is very clearly set up, so you can see where your clicks come from. The instruction manual is well written and everything is clearly spelled out, step-by-step. Anyone can follow the process.

The benefits?well, finally YOU can have your own mailing list and you need no technology knowledge, whatsoever! It took a total of about 45 minutes to get my website online, from start to finish. Take a look at it at http://instant-web-builder.smmsite.com.

So if you'd like to promote affiliate products, remember that the secret to making big money is in the list. Check out the myriad of opportunities, and see what works best for you. Then GO FOR IT!