By now most of us have heard of network marketing and most of us have heard of affiliate programs. The majority understand network marketing basics much better than affiliate programs. So let's cover a few basics so that you can determine whether network affiliate marketing is of interest to you.

"Getting started with affiliate marketing" secret #1

Affiliate programs also go by a host of other programs names, all meaning the exact same thing. Whether you find them under affiliate programs, profit sharing programs, referral programs, associate or reseller programs, they are all based on the exact same principle. When you join one of these programs, you receive a special web site link form the company that identifies that web site as yours. It is your job to market the site. When you refer people to your site and they make a purchase, you receive a commission for that sale.

Affiliate programs allow people to create online businesses with little effort. There is no need to worry about warehousing, inventory, employees, insurance or licensing. You are in effect "borrowing" the site for your own profit, hence the term, profit sharing programs. These are ground floor opportunities with remarkable potential for profit. Your job is to simply direct the traffic to your site. There is no need for you to ever place a phone call, close a sale, or chase down your friends and family. You receive a commission from any purchase made on your affiliate website.

"Getting started with affiliate marketing" secret #2

Some affiliate programs will allow you to create your own domain name for the website and use that web address for the site link. This often looks a little more professional and is also easier to use. Affiliate links are easy to recognize, Affiliate website followed by your id "hopefully they should be short links". This is a simple web address followed by a user name. I have seen some affiliate links that are nearly a mile long, too long to remember and too long for the potential client to retype into their browser should the link fail. Using your own domain name looks more professional and is easier to use.

Now that you are all set up, it's time to start getting traffic to your site. Some people try buying traffic, but pre purchased traffic has its downside. The idea is that a marketing company will guarantee that you will receive a specified amount of traffic to your site within a specified time frame. Enough traffic should play the percentages right and you should end up with sales.

The downfall to pre paid traffic is that most companies pay individuals to click on the web links provided to them. Very few paid traffic companies truly do any marketing on your behalf. You might get lucky and someone might actually look at your website while they are there, but chances are you'll be paying for a lot of uninterested people to click on your link without any intention of reading the content on the site.

OPT-IN MARKETING "Getting started with affiliate marketing" secret #3

Now you need to explore marketing methods. We will cover a few methods of affiliate marketing, but there are many more out there. E-mail marketing is popular, but you have pay close attention to the very strict spam laws. Not only will spamming decrease your chances of success and make the entire company look bad, but most affiliate marketing programs will terminate your account and even fine you if you are caught spamming.

Opt-in e-mail lists are specifically designed to reach a market of your choice. People have to agree to receive the e-mails so there is no chance of being accused of spam. Using e-mail lists can be successful, and wonderfully free, if you can be creative enough to not only get your e-mail opened but to convince the prospect that you have something better than they are probably working on themselves. Using false promises may be attention grabbing, but it is certainly not a recommended method of advertising. Remember that you are in effect a subcontractor for a bigger company. What makes you look bad also makes the entire company look bad, so be careful about the content of your e-mails.

If you truly have a good and solid opportunity, and most affiliate programs do, you should be able to have some success with opt-in e-mails. Remember these are people who are looking for the exact same thing you are, success in internet marketing. Not all programs are quality programs, so those that are become much easier to market even to those who are already doing their own marketing for something else. Solid companies with marketable products are not the easiest to find.

"Getting started with affiliate marketing" secret #4

One of the best examples of affiliate programs would have to be Amazon.com. They have a remarkably high success rate because they offer a solid program and have done a lot of the marketing for you with their own advertising. You do not have to introduce a new plan. However, because of its success, there are already over a half a million associates marketing their affiliate site. That's a lot of competition and it may not be the best for the amateur marketer.

Free opt-in e-mail lists that barrage its customers with hundreds of email daily are not effective marketing tools. There are too many e-mails being sent to everyone else to really have much of a fighting chance of getting your email opened and read. Again, you may want to play the statistics game, but you should at least add opt-in e-mail lists that send out only a few ads per day to their subscribers. You will receive higher quality results this way.

One of the best free to join opt-in- e-mail lists comes from SubscribeMe website. Not only is it free to join but they allow you to join a vast amount of lists at once. You will have to confirm your subscriptions as they come through to your mailbox for your ad to run in every possible issue, but they keep the number of ads they send out per day restricted so that there is an opportunity for everyone's to be opened and read.

Again, you will want to be creative with you subject line and really write some quality ads, but this is a good free resource for e-mail marketing. You will also receive e-mails telling you when you can expect your ad to run and in some cases they will tell you how many subscribers they have at present.

COMBINED MARKETING METHODS "Getting started with affiliate marketing" secret #5

Opt-in email marketing is a solid marketing method for any type of internet business, but they seem to work especially well for affiliate programs. Most affiliate programs are either free to join or are very low cost. Although most free to join programs require an upgraded status in order to receive commissions. The low cost of these programs make them desirable for the average person who doesn't have a lot of capital to sink into a new venture.

When writing an opt-in e-mail ad, be sure to take into account the word limits and line limits. Getting straight to the point and writing attention grabbing ads may take a little time and practice, but they are well worth the effort and can be successful.

Opt-in e-mail advertising is not the only method of marketing a person should use, but it can lead to effective advertising when combined with other methods. Not all of these methods are all that expensive and can enhance your marketing efforts to produce results.

When using combinations of methods, it is best to start with a particular method and then gradually add to it as that you have a method of tracking your results. It is senseless to pay for marketing that isn't bringing anyone to your affiliate web page.

Some of the better combination methods include, but are not limited to, banner advertising, pay per click advertising, and rotator web page advertising. Banner advertising can either exist on top of related emails and websites or alongside the relevant information. Pay per click advertising is an agreed upon bid to major search engines to include your website for keyword searches. Keyword searches vary significantly and it is best to do some research before attempting this method. It can get costly to do keyword search pay per click advertising, but it can also be very effective. Rotator ad pages are simply full page advertisements for the same affiliate company that simply rotate the URL link to various participants in the ad. This also can be a fairly low cost and effective method of marketing.

This information and a whole lot more can be found on affiliatepit website. This website is an independent site that carries a variety of sound information regarding affiliate programs and internet marketing. Their informative articles are a wonderful education for anyone trying to achieve success through online marketing. It's worth a lengthy visit to this site to bone up on all the latest news, reports, and information to make your affiliate marketing plan a success.