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Affiliate marketing is one of the fastest growing and most popular internet businesses, and it is easy to see why. It offers the possibility of a quick start to make money with no investment, and unlimited income potential based on the possibility of earning commissions from selling other people’s products and services. Compensation is usually based on sales or leads that you generate for that business and you are paid a percentage of every sale.

There are many affiliate networks online which you can join, and joining them is free. Sometimes you will have to be approved by the network first, and in some cases you will need to be approved by the merchant you will be promoting. Most of the large online companies such as eBay and Amazon offer affiliate programs. Also many brick and mortar businesses like Home Depot and Wal-Mart along with thousands of others do as well. What makes affiliate marketing so attractive is essentially anybody can join and start to make money promoting recognizable products.

Of course, the very simplicity of joining an affiliate program means that there is plenty of competition. You need to have effective ways of driving traffic to your affiliate offers, and you need to make your offer stand out from the competition. The best known method being utilized today is pay per click (PPC) campaigns using search engines such as Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo; however this can be a bit intimidating to the new affiliate marketer due to the expense involved with PPC. You pay for each click-through regardless of whether or not the prospect buys the product. Therefore, PPC is usually ineffective with the new and inexperienced affiliate marketer.

As mentioned above, this is the approach of many lazy affiliate marketers. They will usually do nothing more than just select an affiliate offer, and then begin buying pay per click advertising to drive traffic to it. While this basic business model can work, it is fraught with danger to the inexperienced affiliate marketer. As the method is so easy to apply, competition for competitive keywords will be very strong, and bids will be pushed higher. Unless your sales are producing enough money to cover your advertising expenses and still leave a profit, you are risking your money for nothing.

A much better way for a newcomer to affiliate marketing to start is by writing articles and submitting them to article directories. This is free to try apart from the expense in time. A well written article, optimized for the right keywords, can even appear in the organic search results of the search engines, giving you the same benefit as a pay per click ad without the expense.

Articles can even be picked up by ezine publishers, giving them another traffic surge. Article marketing is a proven and risk free way to begin in affiliate marketing.

Scott Geertsen Is An Expert Internet Marketer Who Has Teamed Up With The Very Best To Teach Other Network Marketers How To Use Cutting Edge Technology To Generate Huge Profits and Endless Leads In Their Business At: http://www.ProLeadFunnel.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Scott_Geertsen