Starting An Affiliate Marketing Business

There are two major decisions to make when starting an affiliate marketing
business. First of all one must choose from thousands of affiliate programs
to promote. Secondly is what methods to use to drive traffic to an
affiliate website to start earning commissions.

The best way to choose an affiliate program is to first choose a topic of
interest. It is much easier to promote a program that one finds
interesting. Clickbank has a marketplace where affiliate programs on nearly
any topic
can be found to promote. The amount of commissions an
affiliate program pays is also a very important consideration. A good
affiliate program should in almost all cases pay at least a 20 dollar
commission. Also when starting an affiliate marketing business it is best
to focus on a single affiliate program rather than try and promote several
at the same time.

The fastest way to drive traffic to an affiliate site is to use google
adwords. Adwords can be a very effective way to
generate quality targeted traffic and sales. However
anyone new to affiliate marketing should learn as much as possible before
using google adwords due to the potentially high amount of competition and
cost of traffic.

Blogs are another excellent affiliate marketing tool to generate targeted
traffic. Blogs that are frequently updated with relevant and useful
information centered around a single topic often receive traffic from the
search engines. It's also important for a blog to provide a RSS feed to be
successful at drawing in traffic. Links can be put in the text of the blog
to send traffic to an affiliate site.

Another way to send targeted traffic to an affiliate site
is to write articles and publish them online. This
affiliate marketing method works because the article along with the
affiliate link is generally reprinted on many websites of similar topics and
traffic will come from these sites. Also articles often can be found
ranking high in search engine results.

Advertising in ezines is another option for sending traffic to an affiliate
website. To be effective advertising platform an ezine should be about a
topic very closely related to the affiliate site.

Traffic exchanges can also be used as an effective affiliate marketing tool.
The quality of traffic from exchanges is much less than other sources
however the potential volume of traffic received from exchanges makes using
them appealing.

All the traffic methods outlined have certain advantages and also drawbacks.
It's important to use multiple ways to promote a site to be successful at
affiliate marketing.

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Aaron Ballantyne owns a blog with useful information and links to resources
about affiliate marketing. To learn more go to:
http://ajballan.typepad.com/affiliate_marketing