I have a question please

[a2h9bb]

Hello,

I am a long time WAHM.com user and wanted to try my hand at affiliate marketing. I was a member of Wealthy Affiliates and while they are good and legitimate, I was finding that for the monthly membership fee, I wasn't understanding what I had to do to start earning money. I have never done this sort of thing before. So, I thought I would come here and I found this thread which I am so happy I did. I have been reading through a few threads and came across one that said good things about the ebook, Super Affiliate Handbook, so I bought it yesterday. It seems to explain everything so much simpler for me to understand.

My question is this, I know there is a way to start making money before you buy and build a website and that is through article marketing. I am just not sure how to proceed and am hoping someone here would be willing to walk me through it. I need to make money very soon and I am hoping that this might be an easier way to begin.

Any thoughts and/or advice about this?

Thank you so much,
Pam

[LilBlackDress]

Truly Pam it is difficult to make money from article marketing WITHOUT a website. You will get much lower conversions when you send people directly to a sales page as opposed to a website. It can be done but it is difficult.

In addition some sites such as ezine articles will not allow you do to direct link to affiliate products.

If you are not ready to start a site you can write for content sites such as eHow, Xomba or Infobarrel and see how the articles do, then base sites around them. That is how I got started. I built websites based on how well my articles in that niche on the content sites did.

If you wanted to try what is called "bum"marketing without a site, you would need to find a product that you like, that converts well. You would then find keywords that are low competition and high search. Next you would write articles with these keywords. In your anchor text you would use your keywords and link to the affiliate offer. You would then post these on article directory sites. Next you would want to social bookmark and ping these articles. If you selected your words correctly the articles will rise high in the search engines.
Then if people read the articles and you have a good resource box, they will click through your link to your affiliate offer.
Direct conversions are low without sending them to a website first but it can be done.
Travis Sego (sp?) has a free report out called "Bum Marketing" which explains this technique in depth. Some of it is dated though but you will get an overview.


BTW the affiliate marketing handbook is great but you have to remember she started out in the business years ago. Though she does updates to the book there are many techniques not covered. In addition if I recall correctly, she focuses on driving traffic with PPC and that is a skill within itself. Can be very expensive if you don't know what you are doing.

Hope this helps!

[TiffanyB]

Most article directories don't accept affiliate links in their resource boxes or articles. There are only a small handful that does and these sites don't rank as well with the search engines as Ezinearticles does.

If you want to do article marketing without building your own website you still need to buy a domain and do a redirect on it to the offer you are promoting. This still takes money to buy the domain name but you don't have to pay for hosting, which is very, very cheap. I think I pay $4-$5 a month for unlimited domains hosting at Hostgator.

You can try to do article marketing on sites like Squidoo and Hubpages for physical products on Amazon as I have seen this done many times with newbies as well.

What is the reason you don't want to have your own website? Is it the money or you just not sure how to build your own website? Depending on this reason I can help direct you to sources to help you get started.

[Laura B]

I agree that it'll be tough to make money quickly without a web site as a beginner. Someone who already has a complete foundation in AM might be able to, but even then, having your own site(s) is really a huge advantage.

It really isn't difficult to set up your own site using Host Gator, as suggested, and probably WordPress, which can be installed very easily and for free. I don't know if Rosalind's book covers that or not, but if not, there are lots of tutorials on the web how to do it or we can give you tips.

I have to say, though, that if you need to make money very soon, affiliate marketing may not be the answer you think. I guess it depends on what "very soon" means to you. If you're talking days or weeks, that may not be realistic. If it means months, then you might have a shot. I mean, you could make a dollar here and there within weeks, but it will take more time than that to make anything significant.

Not to discourage you, but I hate to see you have unrealistic expectations and then be disappointed. Don't get me wrong: affiliate marketing is an awesome source of income, but it just doesn't happen super fast.

[AmyKay]

Don't forget you build a website for free at blogger.com. Choose a niche, promote related products. Then, use article marketing to get traffic to your blogger blog. It's not as good as a hosted wordpress site, but I'ts pretty close, and it's free!

You can do it! Affiliate marketing is a great way to make money. Getting traffic is hard, but once you know what to do, it's just busy work. Do it while you watch tv in the evenings with your husband.

[msanofsky]

I would recommend that you go onto article sites such as ezinearticles and articlebase and look at the articles that were posted by others that are in a similar line of work. Take note of the way they write their articles and the topics that the choose to write about. The best way to achieve success is to follow the expample of those that are already achieving the level of success that you desire.

[a2h9bb]

WOW! Thank you all for all your help and advice! All of you gave me some great things to do and to focus on. It isn't that I don't have money, I just don't have a lot of it to buy and build a website, unless I can find something that is pretty inexpensive and will give me the exposure I would need. I will try the ideas eveyone mentioned here for that. Also, it is that I am not sure how to go about building a website that will be effective. All of this is new to me but I am ready and willing to dig in there and give it my best shot.

Thank you all again for all your suggestions, insights and giving me the reality check I need! I want and need to do this; right now all my efforts are going towards finding a job that will give me the income so I don't have to stress out so much.

Pam

[Yuliya Mironova]

The kind of "pre-sell website" you need for article marketing, to do affiliate marketing by directing your prospective customers from your articles to your affiliate-link to the vendor's sales-page, needn't cost a penny.

You can do it at Blogspot (running some risks, because you don't own it yourself, that way, though it's a free way to start), or you can even host your own WordPress blog (safer in the long run) free of charge, for example by using the free hosting at byethost.com - but this requires learning how to use WordPress to some extent, of course.

The point is: the type of website you need, to be able to have a landing-page for article marketing purposes, doesn't need to be "all that much", and something assembled out of blogging software will easily do the job.

[QueenMaa]

Weebly is also a good place to start and it is also free. It is a blog/website. It's very easy to use and they are really making improvements. I have a site/blog with them. The templates are nice too.

[ContentQueen]

Squidoo Lenses are also good for getting traffic and exposure. What anyone really needs to take on board though is that you need to commit, in my opinion, to writing at least 3 articles every single day to get the traffic and backlinks.

You can redirect the URL of your own domain name straight to your affiliate link that many people use in article marketing. This is useful if you are not interested in having your own opt-in list and are just interested in one off sales. Technically Ezine articles frown upon it but many get away with it.