Affiliate Money Makers

1. Pick a topic for your site. Successful affiliates go about this process two different ways. The first way involves creating a site around a topic that interests you, such as one of your hobbies. You then choose affiliate programs that match or compliment that topic well. The second way involves searching for a few good affiliate programs, all related to one another, and then building a site around them. You can achieve success with affiliate programs either way. Just remember that your site should focus on a specific niche topic, as that will make it much easier to promote when the time comes.
   
   
2. Get web hosting. Most people that earn a living from affiliate programs will tell you to register a domain name and pay for web hosting. I DON'T TOTALLY AGREE with this! First, if I tell you that you must spend money to be successful with affiliate programs, you may worry about losing money (even though domain names and web hosting are very inexpensive these days) and never give promoting affiliate programs a chance. Second, when architects design a new building, they don't just go out and build it, they build a prototype first. This allows them to test their design before spending a lot of money, which is exactly what I suggest you do if you feel nervous about spending any money to start out. One free web site hosting service that you can use is Yahoo! Geocities. While free web site hosting provides a free way to start promoting affiliate programs, I will admit that you will likely be at a disadvantage when compared to your competitors with paid hosting. Once you begin to make per month or so, I highly recommend that you register a domain name and get web site hosting. Another option, would be to register a domain name and redirect the domain name to a free web site hosting account using a URL redirection service. This allows you to save money on hosting but still have your own domain name.
   
   
3. Join affiliate programs. Use AffiliateMoneyMakers.com to find affiliate programs to promote on your site. These are the backbone of your money making efforts, so take some time picking programs that compliment your site's topic well and will be of interest to your site's visitors. I suggest that you choose several programs to try out and then stick with the top performing ones.
   
   
4. Design your web site. Once you select your programs, it's time to start the design progress. Many of the free web site hosting services offer web site builders, which makes the process a bit easier. If you chose to pay for web site hosting, you may want to use a program like Microsoft FrontPage, which makes the design process easier by eliminating the need to know HTML code. When you design your web site, integrate the affiliate links in your content. The more content on your web pages, the more likely visitors are going to find your site and return to it in the future.
   
   
5. Promote your web site. Now that your site is ready to go, it's time to do some promoting. Take a bit of time and submit your site to all of the major search engines, including Google and Yahoo!. Search engines can refer a large amount of free traffic to web sites. Another easy promotion would be to exchange links with other sites that compliment your site's topic. This will not only bring in traffic from other sites, but it may also help your rankings in the search engines. An easy offline promotion you can do is put up flyers advertising your web site around where you live.
   
   

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