Maybe the single greatest part about affiliate marketing is the incredibly low initial investment you need to start earning money for yourself. All you really need is a website. That’s it. There are so many free programs out there that will walk you though basic web design, even if you know nothing about it, you can be up and running in the span on a day. All that’s left at this point is finding an affiliate marketing program to subscribe to.

Here are a few tips on starting up your affiliate marketing campaign today:

• Never pay to join
  There are tens of thousands of affiliate marketing programs you can subscribe to. The list is essentially limitless. An important piece of advice, though, is that if an affiliate marketing program wants you to pay money to sign up, you might want to think twice. I personally don’t like signing up to a program that will make money out of me anyway. Unless the initial investment is very small, there are many other choices that you could make.

• Join a program that cares about you!
  Some of the big time programs will even train you and give you tips on the right keywords to put on your web pages so random web surfers will find you, click on your link, buy a product and earn you money! They support you, help you and teach you. I have found a few of them but one that really stands out is Moreniche and Trafficsynergy.Moreniche offers the most amazing help with keyword, landing pages, techniques and the list just doesn’t stop. What I have experienced with Trafficsynergy is their awesome support from affiliate managers to anybody working there. So go on and give them a try!

• Don’t use a low-quality webhost provider.
  This can be a tough choice for those looking at keeping their costs at zero or as close to zero as possible. Your new money making website need stable and good hosting, not some free hosting site that crashes all the time. Your web site is a money-making machine for you, don’t trust it to a company that isn’t going to do everything they can to make sure it’s up and running 24/7.

  There are a few good and affordable web hosts like Thinkhost and Hostgator that has great packages and deliver great customer service. I personally host websites at both of them and I’m a very happy client. The last thing you want is to buy some ads to run and in that time your site goes off!(it’s happened to me). Use them and rest easy knowing that your website is in good hands.

As you can see, there are a few ins and outs to affiliate marketing that everyone needs to know. But the key here is the fact that you can earn money with not much work involved. It can get complicated, but that’s why you need to work with great companies like Moreniche and Trafficsynergy.

If you haven’t ever tried affiliate marketing, why not give it a try?

Related posts:

1. Free Hosting (5GB) – Ad free and no strings attached!
2. Free Keyword Research Tool
3. Affiliate Lounge Official Launch!

New websites in 2008

I am an affiliate marketing junkie. That’s where the money’s at, so that’s where I am focusing on. Building websites around a niche or a product with a good affiliate merchant. I am still in a struggle about launching websites local(.co.za), international(.com) or both?

Projects I’m busy with at the moment and in this year is:

Lifechanger.co.za

It’s a project I am working on with some of my Canadian friends and it holds great opportunity of revenue for me, them and anyone else joining the system. Unfortunately it’s South African only for now…

Gaming Websites (including egames.co.za)

I am moving slowly but surely into the online gaming sector, because the market is huge. People play online games every day, at work, home or just when they are bored… I will also be launching more interactive game websites all over the net and not just locally. I am still testing different affiliate programs on these websites but I personally think that ring tones might do the job. I’ll let you in on the best way to monetize these types of websites as soon as I know.

AffiliateGossip.com

This is like my baby, my joy, my pride. Launching early this year it will be the main and leading Affiliate Programs review website. I’m not doing the XHTML/CSS myself, rather decided to get the pros to do it for me.

Here is a preview of the search results:

You will see a list of programs like the above and then click on “Template Monster” in this case to get a full page overview of the campaign.

The great thing about the website will be that there will be tons of great functionalities like:

• Search by Niche / product / service your website delivers
• Search by Country, so that you can get international and local campaigns to run
• User reviews of merchants and networks

There will also be other areas like:

• Forums
• Free guides for beginners to experts on affiliate marketing
• Monthly Newsletter with all the new merchants added

So I look forward to launching some great resourceful websites this year, so keep tuned in to hear all about it.

UPDATE: Oh yes, I am also planning to release a couple of nice Wordpress Themes this year!

So what ideas do you have for 2008?

Related posts:

1. Affiliate Lounge Launching Soon!
2. Heads up on what’s coming…
3. Start with affiliate marketing for free!