BitCom Affiliate Services

Affiliate Learning-Beginner

There are many ways to do affiliate marketing on the Web. Some approaches are site-based, some approaches use Pay Per Click programs like Google AdWords. And some marketers are committed to email marketing.

All approaches work well and we recommend you learn all of them. In fact, a combination of the above is probably the best strategy and what we see most successful affiliates do.

Build A Content Website

By far the best place to start for a beginner is with a content website. That site can be a full-fleged, content site with many pages or a simple Blog with fewer pages. For long term success we recommend a full website. You'll have continually building traffic and a better chance to create a sustaining long-term business.

Start by building a site about a subject you love. Pick a hobby or a subject you know something about. It will make the process easier and more fun and give you better credibility. Credibility is the key for getting return visitors and putting your audience into a "open-to-buy" frame of mind.

Blogs do have their place however. They are easy to set up and relatively inexpensive. They often attract strong initial traffic and get indexed by the Search Engines quicker than a full site. Word Press and Blogger are two blogging platforms that are excellent ways to get started with a Blog.

What many more advanced affiliates do is have a blog for frequent, "newsy" content and website for more enduring content. Sometimes particularly strong blog "posts" get moved onto their sites and become more "evergreen" content. The kind of content that will probably stand the test of time. It's a strategy that works well.

Building a full-fleged site is still the best idea. It will allow you to build an enduring business and learn the full-range of site-based promotional strategies and online marketing techniques. Particularly if you find a hosting platform or sitebuilder that gives you adequate support and training.

Site Build It!

Site Build It! or SBI! as it is called, is a good example of a site-building system that will provide a complete education in how to succeed in site-based marketing. Building an SBI! site amounts to a post-graduate level education in online marketing. The guidance and support are that deep.

This suite of tools provides not only great free downloads on the basics of building successful web sites but also offers a complete step-by-step method for making your site successful. The complete package includes niche research tools, domain name registration, hosting, search engine submission, a guided step-by-step process, a very friendly forum, and traffic reporting.

It also offers an easy, anyone-can-do-it site building process that requires no design or HTML experience. Experienced site builders can use their own design tools like Dreamweaver or FrontPage as an alternative.

Everything is done through their web portal so issues of software installation and compatibility are eliminated. You can check your stats and work on your site from anywhere you are attached to the web.

Support is excellent and their forum is a very friendly place to learn and solve problems. Their $299 annual fee is actually a bargain when you see how many tools you get. It may take a year or more just to learn and use them all.

Ken Evoy, the founder, has written may great free books that are classics on the subject of affiliate marketing.

Go here to learn more.

Other Resources

Rosalind Gardner - The Super Affiliate Handbook

This book has become a classic and just about everyone mentions it as way to learn and become successful in affiliate marketing. It's not really a beginners course but it does explain her viewpoint and how she got to be successful.

Click here to take a look.

Jeremy Palmer - Quit Your Day Job

Another book that's very nice overview of how to be successful in affiliate marketing. Very simple, clear and to the point. It was one I read myself when I was learning. It used to sell for about $50 but now it's free.

Click here to take a look.

Affiliate Classroom

Anik Singal's Affiliate Classroom is an excellent, online course in becoming a successful affiliate. It provide a learn-at-your-own-pace curriculum and is regarded as the leading affiliate training program available.

Click here to learn more.

Google AdSense

This is "Monetization 101." Unless you have your own product to sell every site should offer Adsense to their visitors. It's a no-brainer really. You won't get rich from AdSense but it does provide an nice steady stream of income. In particular, if you have a strong content site, with lots of good information (even just a hobby site) you can make steady money with AdSense ($100-$200 per month).

Here's how it works... Google will place ads on your website (AdWords) that are contextually relevant to your content. When someone clicks on those ads you make money. It may just be a fraction of a penny per click but over time that can add up. If your site niche has expensive advertisers you can make more.

By the way, those ads to the left and right of this page are Adsense ads.

Click here to learn more

Article Marketing

Even without a website the average person can promote affiliate programs. Just write some good articles, put your affiliate links at the bottom and distribute them around the web. This is also a fundamental traffic building strategy for a website too. So it's worth doing on many levels.

The number one site for article submissions that I've found is EzineArticles.com. There's plenty of others though.