There's no doubt that affiliate marketing can be extremely profitable, but with so much information around how do you know who to trust? When starting out, a beginner can easily become overwhelmed by all the different strategies, keywords and advice. It's important to remember that making money as an affiliate is effectively a very simple process, and the more you over-complicate things the harder it will be to make money.

When you break affiliate marketing down there are three main steps:

1. Find a good product to promote

This is where many people make mistakes. Always choose a product that is selling well and is popular, as this means people are buying. Remember that if there is lots of competition that's a good thing, as it means there are people willing to purchase the product.

2. Send traffic to the affiliate link

This is probably the hardest part, but there are plenty of options when it comes to traffic generation (see below).

3. Get paid commissions

For every visitor you send that buys the product you get paid a percentage. These commissions are then added up and paid to you either by cheque or directly to your bank account.

Of course, it is how you go about these steps (especially 1 and 2) that decides whether you will make a lot of money from affiliate marketing. However if you ever find yourself overwhelmed by all the available information just come back to these three points and remember the underlying simplicity of affiliate marketing.

Once you've picked your product it's time to start generating traffic to your affiliate link. There are literally hundreds of ways to do this, but many aren't worth your time and will get you very few results. Some of the more popular ways of sending traffic to an affiliate page are:

• Article Marketing

• Forum Posting

• Blog Commenting

• PPC

This is definitely an area you need to track. For example, if you find that article marketing is making you a lot of sales but forum posting is taking as much time and not making any sales at all, then you know either to concentrate more on article marketing or optimise your forum posting strategies.

One very important technique when learning affiliate marketing or any business strategy is tracking your results. If you properly keep track of questions such as which products sell well, which articles attract the most views etc then you'll be able to see what works and what doesn't for yourself. For example, if you find that a particular product sells well when you send traffic through one technique but not through another than you know to concentrate your efforts on the technique that works to maximise your profits. It's vital to work out what is effective for you.

Remember that affiliate marketing is not a get-rich-quick scheme, but if done properly it can make a lot of money. Focus on learning what works and what doesn't, and this will allow you to hone your strategy to make the most possible profit.