If you are worrying about what it would cost to start up an affiliate marketing business then you can lay those concerns to rest by knowing that you can start off with low to no costs.
Obviously if you have a bit of money to invest you can start off on a bigger scale but for those that are on a tight budget or want to test the waters you can do this without worrying about making a big hole in your bank account.
When you start affiliate marketing the most common method is to have your own website to promote the products you want to earn a commission from, but you can use other means to try and attract your traffic. But no matter what method you choose the objective is always the same you need to attract hungry customers willing to buy what you are advertising.
It doesn't cost you anything except time to write articles which include your affiliate link and submit them to ezine (article) directories. A further advantage of writing articles for ezine directories is that you are able to gain trust from your readers by establishing yourself as an expert on a particular topic.
You will find that some article directories don't allow the inclusion of affiliate links and you need to refer your article back to a website which you own.
The best solution is to have your own domain and hosting. You can buy a domain for around $10 and hosting from as little as $6 per month. But if you don't want to outlay even that you can set up pages on web 2.0 sites such as Squidoo and Blogger that are totally free. These sites don't look quite as professional as having your own website, but many have made nice incomes just from using these free sites alone.
Another way of advertising your affiliate link is to use pay per click (PPC) this can be costly if you don't know what you are doing. But the simple version is you place banner or text ads on other people's sites then, when a potential customer clicks on the ad the click amount is deducted from the amount you have deposited. The amount of the click depends on the value of the keyword you have selected to target your product.
PPC has a bit of a learning curve and it really is recommended you try the free methods such as article marketing until you understand the process, otherwise you can lose your money faster than you can blink.
The biggest advantages of affiliate marketing are that you can start up with next to no money, you don't need any technical know-how and you can get started straight away. How big or small you want to grow your business is entirely up to you and the amount of effort you are prepared to put in.
The one important thing to remember is that to make any money at all you need to do something don't procrastinate.
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