Affiliate Marketing

OK, so you keep hearing people talk about making money as an "affiliate". What does that even mean? What's an affiliate?

When I was in school preparing to be a teacher, I developed research skills and had to become confident in my ability to interpret this research in order to reach my students.

Basically, a company will pay for online advertising. One of the places that money goes is to what's known as an Affiliate Network. The Network hires Affiliates (you and I) to promote the product in various ways such as reviews and article writing. You then share in the profit of each sale.



The short answer to the question most people are asking right now is that Yes, this is a real thing. But it's not something you just pick up and do. It's not a get rich scheme. If you believe in those, please read the following truth: there is no way to easily make money online. I say no way because the ways that are out there are either immoral or illegal. Anything I tell you will be what's called "whitehat". "Blackhat" is the opposite- those shady fly by night things I won't even provide information on (I know that 99% of people my age (37 so far) are making Good Side/ Dark Side of The Force connections right now- works for me).

There are skills you will need to develop or learn outright- as my Grandfather always said: "There's no royal road to learning". That applies here too. Be prepared to fail and learn from your mistakes. Be prepared to put in real time to learn this and even more time to implement it correctly. Be prepared to do research and be prepared for the *lightbulb* moments when it all starts to just "click".

Beyond that, all I can say is the longest journey begins with the first step. Unemployment checks don't last forever, so don't dawdle. Learn and grow your knowledge- be prepared to look for answers on your own. Others may not help you because guess what? They're busy working on this too- so make Google your homepage (your computer is now more than just a source of entertainment- it's turning into a source of income.

So do some maintenance on your computer if need be. If it's been a while, reformat your machine. If you've done that in the last 6-12 months, go through and do some cursory checks like virus scanning (use AVG Free), Registry repair (Eusing Free Registry Cleaner) and defrag while you're at it. Restart and make sure your machine is running in tip top shape before you begin this. Your computer now should be ready for some heavy duty usage while you do your affiliate research (you could check out my Lens on the subject for a decent start).

Feel free to post comments. I'll be glad to help people along.