A lot of people would kill to discover how to make money online, and you certainly dream of finding out the secrets too, even though you still don’t hold all the cards. Well, there is no use in spending your time trying to come up with a great idea or product – the market is stuffed with them, so why not become an affiliate and promote a product or a service that you believe in?

What Is Affiliate Marketing and How to Make Money Online with It?

Affiliate marketing is the part of online marketing that involves building your own website and using it to direct the traffic to another website, selling the product or service that you promote. It is an easy way to make money online, because, for every purchase made by the visitors you send to the respective site, you get a commission.

The best part about this activity is that you can dedicate only part of your time to it and turn it into a priority the minute it starts making serious money. Many entrepreneurs started like this and, when they discovered how much money they could make, turned it into a full time job.

How to Make Money Online as an Affiliate Marketer in Six Steps

1.    Choose the product or service you wish to promote

This should be the first step, because it will influence your keywords research and may be helpful when choosing the domain name. Settle for something you have used, something you know very well and you can easily sell to others, no matter if it is a book, a membership or an Amazon products category.

It is important that you see things in perspective and focus on something of quality, because you need to keep your up-sell opportunities open, meaning that in a month or so, you could sell different products or services to the same customers, on the condition that you do not disappoint them.

2.    Research your keywords

People use these keywords to look for the product or service that you are promoting with the search engines. The secret on how to make money online, is to choose the ones you find representatives, to make sure that they can attract the number of visitors you want and to optimize your blog or website based on them.

Settle for something common, easy to remember, for groups of two, maximum three words that people can relate to and even recommend to others.

3.    Start your own blog or website

Any resource on how to make money online will teach you that you need a blog or a website on which to promote the products or the services that you decide on. In order to keep the investment lower, you should start by buying a cheap domain, hosting it on a free or shared server and setting up a free blogging service.

The domain name is probably the most important here, and the rumors have it that, if it is based on your target keywords, the site will be easier to optimize for the search engines.

4.    Write or buy the content for your website

You have two major options:

• A “how to” website, offering people articles or videos on how to accomplish various tasks related to the product or service you sell and offering them the solution in the link to the website you affiliated with;
• A “reviews” website, analyzing, praising and criticizing (not so much) the products or services you promote, offering links to the site from where people can buy the respective products or services.

Here, the choice is all yours, with the difference that promoting one product or service is easier than promoting a whole category, as it requires less content, less research and less demanding graphics, not to mention that the competition will not be that tight.

5.    Optimize your website for the search engines

Approximately 90% of your target visitors use the search engines in order to find the products or services they are interested in, so, unless you gain a leading position in their results pages, they will not even know you exist and you will never be able to state that you know how to make money online.

The key is to publish original and curated content on your website regularly and to build as many backlinks as possible, preferably from high rank sites in your niche, using varied anchor texts, so that they appear natural.

It wouldn’t hurt to try and do everything by yourself, at least for the sake of learning how to make money online, but, if you find that the results do not live up to your time and effort investment, you can buy backlinks packages and original content at very low prices, on the condition that you do your homework and find reliable providers, of course.

6.    Draw as much traffic as possible

There are several methods you can use, depending on how much you are willing or you can afford to invest in order to discover how to make money online and turn it into a stable source of income, but the most popular are: paid advertising, email marketing, social marketing, articles marketing, guest blogging and pay-per-click campaigns.

Although apparently difficult and overwhelming, affiliate marketing is the best way to make easy money online, but you have to take things slow and give your website the time and attention it needs in order to gather traffic and redirect it.

Of course, there is much more to affiliate marketing than this, especially if we consider that, online, everything is more dynamic, from business ideas to strategies implemented.

There are factors that have to be taken into account, small affiliate marketing tips and tricks that, if applied, can boost your revenues, but also mistakes that many beginners make without realizing and that can significantly interfere with the success of an affiliate site.

Uncover the tips, tricks and mistakes that can make the difference between the success and failure of your plans and discover how to make money online with affiliate marketing the easy way!