Introduction to Making Money with Affiliate Marketing Associate Programs

There’s a wide margin of difference between affiliate marketing associate programs and the tacky sales pitches for MLM scams you come across on the internet. You’ve seen many of them before. The pitch goes something like this: “Are you dreaming of making $50,000 a month? Sign up with us and we’ll show you how!”

Legitimate venture capital investments do not run cheesy ads like this, only scammers do. In fact, most internet scams are pyramid schemes that you want no part of. Remember that any money made in MLM is not made in any actual real estate investment or resort vacation property offer; it’s made in recruiting people to join your “downline” who must pay an “enrollment fee” to be part of your “sales team.” These are ponzi schemes and are no way to make money on the internet.

But I hope you don’t think that affiliate marketing associate programs are in the same league. They aren’t. As an affiliate publisher your website promotes and reviews the goods and services of major brand retailers such as Netflix, Comcast, Office Depot, Wal-mart, Amazon, QVC, Lands’ End, and many, many more.

As an affiliate marketer you are never required to pay anything to join a merchant’s associate program. You never touch any merchandise, or do any dropshipping, or collect payments. You simple write about the products you know well and provide a link so customers can shop at the merchant’s site. If they buy, you get a referral commission. If not, you get nothing.

So that’s the game. Are you ready?

Be an Expert, or at Least Act Like One

To be a successful associate promoting affiliate marketing programs, you must learn how to Pre-Sell and the best way to do that is to be perceived by your readers as being an authority on a subject. Most readers will be searching for information which is how they happened upon your site. They’ll be looking for testimonials, best places to buy and at the most competitive price, comparing one product to another, and so on.

By providing them with expert information you are effectively pre-selling to them the product they will soon start searching for. Once you’ve established yourself in their mind as an authority on the topic, they will be more likely to follow a purchasing link you provide for them.

Fortunately, there are affiliate marketing associate programs designed specifically to teach you more about this. For example, if you desire to work from home you’ll want to learn how to build simple websites that can be found by the targeted internet audience who hopefully will be using the keywords you select to bring in those readers.

You may have read it already but I need to mention James Martell’s Affiliate Marketer’s Handbook which covers the topic of making money with associate programs in detail. You can download the first 35 pages for free so you can get an idea of what it’s about before you hand over your credit card info. But the handbook comes with a money-back guarantee so there’s no risk involved at all.

Just keep in mind that when you join affiliate marketing associate programs your only job is to pre-sell the item -- that is, to condition the customer in advance for later purchase of the product. It’s all about being able to market what someone else is selling. My best advice to you is this: don’t overly concentrate on being an “affiliate” and forget to do the “marketing.”

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