I read a great blog posting by Steven Aitchison this morning for beginning affiliate marketers titled “Your first $400 with Affiliate Marketing” where he really breaks down the entire process and clears up the misconception that only insiders with secret knowledge can make money through affiliate marketing.

I’ve linked to the posting above and really urge you to read it if you’re interested in affiliate marketing at all.

There are a few points I don’t necessarily agree with Steven on, for example I don’t think someone just starting out should stay away from certain markets like losing weight just because of the existing competition. In my experience, if you’re passionate and/or knowledgeable on any topic you can create content that builds a following of traffic to your site and converts into revenue for you. Seriously, if you’re really passionate about a topic you can bring something to the table that the most experienced marketers probably aren’t, and that will resonate with people online and allow you to carve a piece of the niche out for yourself.

Something that I don’t really disagree with anything Steven said on, but do think is a bad idea for someone just starting out is to use Google AdWords for driving traffic to your pages. Google AdWords can be a very effective way to gain visitors, but it’s a complicated system with literally tons of nuances that you must master before you’re going to do well with it. Most people lose a lot of money in the early stages on AdWords, and even experienced marketers will have campaigns from time to time that don’t break even. In my opinion, focusing more on some basic SEO for your site pages, perhaps generating some buzz for your site among online social communities and some free article marketing are the best methods for a beginner to use. Plus, the lessons you learn about your target market, site traffic (how it flows and converts), as well as how people are finding your site and responding to the content of your site and those articles you published will be of great value to you in moving forward for getting even more free (natural) search traffic and save you money on AdWords or other PPC campaigns you may run in the future.

Remember, article marketing is all about targeting keyword phrases that guide visitors to performing specific actions on your site (making a purchase). You can learn an awful lot about the market you’re trying to sell to and the keywords that work best if you track your articles, watch which ones generate the most traffic to your site and which ones tend to send the highest percentage of buying visitors to you.

One key point in Steven’s posting that I think everyone should read twice is the portion on Landing Pages. He not only hits the nail on the head in explaining what they are and how to best use them, but actually gives a live example. It’s rare for folks to share so much and I applaud Steven for his transparent approach here.

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