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What is an affiliate marketer?
As an affiliate, YOU can join these programs and promote them to earn commissions. You can earn commissions by referring customers that buy products or services, or by referring visitors that complete a certain action on the merchant's website, eg. signup for membership, complete a form/survey, download something, etc.
So, affiliate marketing is about users like YOU, sending referrals to merchant sites and then gaining commissions if those visitors complete a certain action.
If you're still not sure what affiliate marketing is, you can find a load more definitions here - Google Search.
So How Can I Send Visitors To Merchants?
There are basically 5 ways you can start sending visitors to a merchant as an affiliate;
Website - the most popular and obvious method is to create your own website. Takes time to build a website and produce content to make it interesting for visitors, which is vital to generate referrals.
Newsletter - most programs allow you to place affiliate links in your newsletter to help generate traffic. This does NOT mean you can send unsolicited SPAM emails though!
Blogging- one of the most effective forms of free advertising is through blogging. What is a blog? A blog is a series of short stories, or thoughts and ideas.
Social Networking- another good way to stay connected with and gain new customers, is to join several social networking sites. Make some friends, apply the three foot rule here, instead. It's much more natural of a process on the net.
Pay Per Click Search Engines - some programs will also allow you to place bids on Pay Per Click Search Engines (PPC) so you can drive referrals to their site. You don't need to build a website or get a newsletter started but you do have to pay for every visitor.
How Do I Get Started?
First you need to know what kind of merchants you want to join. Don't just join every merchant you come across. Figure out what merchants your visitors would be interested in and then select them.
Plastering your site with irrelevant merchants doesn't help you earn commissions, plus it makes your website look bad. Have a few select merchants that are relevant to your visitor's interests.
Once you have found a merchant you like, review the Affiliate Agreement and then check the box - then click the Signup Button. You will then receive a confirmation page confirming that you have just joined a merchant.
The next step is to now get a link to place on your site.
Now you'll have a few options to help you narrow down the search for links.
You'll now see a list of different links for that particular merchant. Have a look through them and choose which one you'd like to use. Once you have chosen one, click on the 'Get HTML' option. It will open up a pop up box with the code you need (along with some other options if you require them).
The code will probably look something like this:
Text Link Code
<a href="http://www.myaffiliateprogram.com?kbid=1001">Click Here</a> Banner Link Code
<a href="http://www.myaffiliateprogram.com?kbid=1001"><img src="http://www.myaffiliateprogram.com/u/a/images/banner3.gif" border="0"></a><img src="http://www.myaffiliateprogram.com/u/myap/showban.asp?id=1001" border="0">
Simply copy all the code in the text box and then paste it onto your page where you want the link to appear. Once done, save your page and then upload it to your website. Now when you view your webpage, or newsletter, you should see the link appear. Click on them to make sure they work.
If you are looking for links to use in the Pay Per Click Engines, then you should only search for text links, as the PPC engines do not display banners in their results.
Moving Forward.
Once you know how to add links to your pages then you need to learn more about where to place your links, how to make landing pages, how to build your website so you can include more merchants and increase the opportunities to earn commissions and a whole lot more.