Making a Living As an Affiliate - How You Or Anybody Else Can Do It

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Earning money in any sector has proven to be difficulty in this economic climate. News programs run stories about job fairs, but also show the lines around the block with thousands of prospects for the handful of jobs. Friends of yours have, for the first time in their lives, been collecting unemployment. You probably even know people who have exhausted their unemployment benefits. You may still have your job, but your financial future has never been so unsure. But here is the dirty little secret that no one is telling you: You can make extra money by using proven techniques on the web.
WHO CAN MAKE MONEY?
Individuals think that, since they don't have a college degree or a degree in business, they simply can not make money online. Nothing is further from the truth. Stay at home moms and stay at home dads are able to make money online. As are teachers and accountants, doctors and therapists. Some may be selling products that they have created to further their own client roster, while others may be affiliate and promoting products that others have created. But the fact is anyone with an internet connection and a basic understanding of human interaction can make money in any economic climate on the internet.
WHERE DO I START?
There are tons of different affiliate networks out there that can help connect you to products to promote. Figure out which products you want to promote. In choosing a product, you are choosing a niche. What areas interest you? You might want to help people learn how to read faster, learn how to lose weight, learn how to more effectively train their dog. The chances are good that there is an affiliate product that can be promoted for any topic.
HOW MUCH CAN I MAKE?
Earning potential is always a touchy subject. Most individuals who decide to stake a claim in the affiliate marketplace by using internet marketing techniques don't make more than a few dollars. They think that creating a passive income means that they can just be passive from the get go. Nothing could be further from the truth. In reality, there is some heavy lifting that must be done at the beginning of creating a strategy for making money online. Some people are able to see thousands of dollars month in earnings. Even a select few boast of making millions of dollars a year in affiliate sales.
BRING PEOPLE TO YOUR SITE OR AFFILIATE
Connecting people to your website and your affiliate product is the most important part of making money through promoting affiliates. You can do this through any number of traffic promotion techniques. Advertising online through advertising networks such as Bing, Google, and Yahoo is the most expensive manner. You can also promote the affiliates through your signature blocks in emails and in online forums. Creating footprints on other websites are also very effective ways to bring people to your product and--hopefully--increasing your sales.
Interested to see how I am succeeding in my money making experience? I am creating a step-by-step blueprint on ThatsAwesome.org in hopes of showing people that anyone has the potential to make some money online.

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Affiliate Marketing: 5 Common Mistakes That Lead to Failure

Creating lifelong customer value with your affiliate marketing business. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

From the outset, I think most affiliate marketers will agree that making money online is not rocket science. While it may not be as easy as many squeeze pages like to make it sound, it also isn't as difficult as it initially seems. Once you have discovered the perfect niche and an affiliate product or program within this niche, making money is merely the benefit of following a strategy and sticking to it.
However, far too many people are unable to realize any level of financial gain in internet marketing and creating an online passive income. Individuals who are new to the world of internet marketing do not fully understand how focused, organized, and productive one must be in order to make money online. Through making mistakes, knowledge is gained. As a former newbie myself, here are five mistakes that most newbies make that will guarantee failure.
Newbies take what is given to them. I remember a few years back, there was an online ad network guru who was selling instructional videos on the ins-and-outs of using a very popular advertising program. In each example, he attempted to demonstrate his theories by using dog grooming as a niche. Inevitably, hundreds of thousands of dog grooming websites and blogs appeared online as a result of these instructional videos, as most people didn't understand the nuance in the example. This happened to me, as well. I remember that I downloaded an eBook that suggested I build affiliate review sites for products in niches spanning from cake decorating to teaching people how to give sermons. Needless to say, my affiliate earnings remained flat in those areas.
In addition to doing your research to discover the perfect niche for you, you should also pay attention to what your own passions and interests are and develop websites, blogs, and promotion of products around a knowledge base you already have.
They don't try the product first. Another mistake newcomers make when trying to create more passive income streams is one of total and utter ignorance. Often times, people are attempting to sell a product without being able to bring anything new to the discussion because they haven't tried the product first. If the product costs money to try, and you haven't purchased it, what makes you think that I will? Chances are a visitor to your website will understand your lack of knowledge about a product and be able to see through your smokescreen.
Making wild and unsubstantiated claims. Even though billions of people are online and--on any given night--millions are surfing the internet trying to find an easy way to make a six-figure income in their spare time, by making wild and ridiculous claims about your revenues and earnings will only lead people to identify you as a fraud. People are looking for help. They don't want to be swindled.
Wasting time learning by reading, instead of learning by doing. The internet is an incredible treasure chest of information. In starting to develop ways to increase your income by promoting affiliate products, there is the danger of spending far too many nights reading blog post after blog post or thread after thread on popular forums. After a certain point, you need to realize that there is such a thing as information saturation. At that point, the only way that information is going to stick is if you learn through your own experiences of successes and challenges.
Dropping out too early. This is a classic experience. The internet is a graveyard of abandoned projects and forgotten plans. Some nights, meandering through links on the internet is like walking through the dusty, ramshackle remains of an Old West ghost town after the gold vein went dry. People think that promoting a product will create a "virtual ATM machine" or will "create riches overnight." After three or six weeks of little to no returns, the creators vanish, leaving behind half-built visions of success. If you are going to make money online, then you are going to have to commit to the process for three, six, nine months or more. And, besides, why quit five minutes before the miracle?
Avoiding these common mistakes in internet marketing will not guarantee financial success beyond your wildest dreams, but you will probably avoid total failure. At the start, making money online is hard work that takes a high level of focus, dedication, and determination. Are you willing to see the payoff?
Jay Monroe is highlighting his money-making exploits on ThatsAwesome.org, a website detailing his experience with one money-making program.
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4 Ways to Use the Internet to Pay Down Debt and Make Money

ByJay Monroe

Personal and consumer debt is absolutely insidious. Debt impacts your intimate relationships and has a strangle-hold on your dreams. While it is easy--far too easy--to create debt, it is very difficult to find ways to pay it down. For many, bankruptcy and debt settlement are not options, as they own up to the responsibility of living beyond their financial means. Once you have decided to pay down your credit card and loan balances, you most likely need to find a way to make more money.

Earning money online is one of the easiest ways to increase your personal bottom line. The internet is a vast landscape of full of endless financial opportunities. The majority of people who make money online do it in a part-time capacity and expect to earn a couple of hundred dollars a month. Others have seen their earnings climb throughout the years. Many people have decided to turn to the internet to help them make more money, eliminate debt and build wealth.

Sell Your Junk The easiest and most well-known way to make money online is to use auction sites to sell your stuff. Sites like eBay and Half.com are excellent sites that help you get rid of all the junk and stuff that you no longer need. Using the internet to get rid of your stuff is one way that you can put in a dent in your consumer credit balances.

Blog and Make Money from Ads It is actually possible that someone can take the approach of blogging away debt. Blogs are incredibly easy and cheap to set up and are incredibly accessible for readers to find. However, they can be hard to keep going. Most blogs fail within a year. But, if you do spend time creating a blog full of incredibly helpful and sought after content, you can make pretty good money through advertising on your website. You might even want to blog your experiences eliminating debt and making money!

Create and Sell Products You can also create your own products online. Sell your handmade arts and crafts on sites like Etsy.com. Sell photos that you taken. Write an ebook that can help answer questions for others. You no longer need a brick-and-mortar store in order to sell things. We have been in a new era for some time now.

Promote and Sell Other People's Products Promoting and selling other people's products and services is one of the most lucrative ways to earn cash and eliminate debt. Affiliate marketing means that you get people to buy a product or sign up for a service and your are provided with a commission for each purchase made or action taken. People earning tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars a year are often very keen and astute affiliate marketers.

Billions of dollars are made on the internet every year. From Amazon Affiliates, to eBay sales, to AdSense payouts, to the millions of other products that are bought and sold on the internet each and every day. Don't you want your slice of the pie?

Jay Monroe writes about his financial success on ThatsAwesome.org, a website detailing his experience with one money-making program earning him cash.

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Finance: Debt-Relief
Jay Monroe

Email Address:SubscribeDebt Relief Article FeedFind More ArticlesSearchSimilar ArticlesPay Down Debt: Make Money OnlinePaying Down Your DebtMajor Online Investigation Names Best Debt Relief Program Among Ways to Pay Off Debt, Cost-free WayEliminating Consumer Debt - How Consumers Can Realistically Eliminate Their Credit Card DebtHow to Reduce Your Credit Card Debt With the Debt Snowball Method From Dave RamseyHow to Legally Get Out of Paying Unsecured DebtsEliminating Your Credit Card DebtBest Online Resource to Pay Off Debt - Fast and FreeDiscover the Simple Way to Pay Off DebtThe Credit Card Debt Pay OffRecent ArticlesThe Impact of Domestic Inflation to a Nation's DebtCracking Down In Debt NegotiationsStudent Loan Debt and the American DreamHelp Me Get Out of Debt! Getting Rid of Financial StressBest Means to Settle Old DebtsSolutions For Long Term Debt ProblemsReasons Debt Settlement Programs Might FailGetting Government Grants to Pay Off DebtsAre Your Wages Being Garnished? Here's WhyPartnerships Are Trouble When an SBA Workout Is RequiredSubmitted On August 19, 2011. Viewed 14 times. Word count: 512.

MLA Style Citation:
Monroe, Jay".".19 Aug. 2011EzineArticles.com.14 Apr. 2012 .APA Style Citation:
Monroe, J. (2011, August 19). . Retrieved April 14, 2012, from http://ezinearticles.com/?4-­Ways-­to-­Use-­the-­Internet-­to-­Pay-­Down-­Debt-­and-­Make-­Money&id=6507390Chicago Style Citation:
Monroe, Jay "." EzineArticles.com. http://ezinearticles.com/?4-­Ways-­to-­Use-­the-­Internet-­to-­Pay-­Down-­Debt-­and-­Make-­Money&id=6507390EzineArticles.com© 2012 EzineArticles.com
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