There are many benefits surrounding the affiliate marketing business model.  While regular brick and mortar businesses require commercial space, liability insurance and employees, running an affiliate marketing business can be accomplished from the comfort of your home; providing you have web hosting, a reliable merchant account such as Paypal and a high speed internet connection.

Because affiliate marketing is based on promoting other peoples products, you don’t have the added stress of creating your own market-busting product or service.  A great affiliate program will have all of the tools you need to start promoting; including banners, sales copy, website templates and even fully tested email and Google ad campaigns – keywords included.

To reach super star affiliate status, conversions is the name of the game.  You start by sending traffic to your website or landing page that is promoting the particular affiliate offer.  If your content is fully optimized and relevant, sending targeted traffic to that page will result in more clicks on your affiliate banners and text links.  From there, if the affiliate offer itself has a high quality landing page you can count on getting a healthy conversion rate between click throughs and those who actual purchase the product or complete the offer.  A 5% – 10% CR is considered by many to be lucrative.

At the end of the day, affiliate marketing is not easy.  Everyday more and more people are chasing their tail in circles trying to be successful with affiliate marketing, and everyday more and more people are failing.  Just like any other business, you have to put in your time, learn from your mistakes and continue to educate yourself.  Nothing can guarantee success, but you can definitely increase your odds.

How can you top Google and get free traffic to your affiliate offers?  Great question, and luckily for you and I Google owns and operates one of the largest free blog networks on the Internet:  Blogger aka Blogspot.  Because these free blogs are owned by Google, they have a tendency to carry a lot of link juice and generate great traffic.

In reality, there are endless ways to promote your latest affiliate venture, some are paid and some are free.  It’s no secret that when you’re first starting out with affiliate marketing you are going to try and use as many free resources available.  As you start making money, you will cycle those funds back into your business for various expenses like web hosting, domain names and PPC advertising.

This is where using Blogger blogs can help you make money online.

You can set up a free blogspot blog to promote the product itself, or you can use the blogspot blog to funnel traffic to your main website.  Regardless, you will find Google has made this service extremely user friendly and you can have a blog set up in a matter of minutes.

If you’re using a blogspot blog to direct traffic to you main page, there are some important points you want to consider.  First, be sure that the content you put on this blog is unique, targeted and easy to read.  Use your main keyword in the blogspot address, for example, http://dogcareguide.blogspot.com.  Also use the keyword in the title of your articles, category names and for the links within the article content.

This will help you rank very well for your selected keywords in the major search engines, as well as leave no questions unanswered with regards to what your blog is about, the product or service you are promoting and what they need to do next in order to purchase or find out more information.

Almost anybody who has read a marketing book in their lifetime will have heard about Pareto’s Law.  It is essentially the concept of 80/20 and with affiliate marketing it definitely holds true.  It’s a fact that 20% of affiliates online produce 80% of the market sales.  This means that out of the millions of affiliates online only 20% of them are actually doing anything with this opportunity – while the other 80% get lost in the shuffle of sales pages and push-button products.

To help better your chances, here are 3 killer tips to help affiliate marketing newbies increase their chances of success online.  Read these affiliate marketing tips and put them into action today.

Always cloak your affiliate links

Many affiliates get commissions stolen because their links are visible to the public – this is not good.  Be sure that you cloak your affiliate link, as well as keep it short and sweet.  People do not click on long, suspicious links so try to implement a php script or a plugin like GoCodes to make your linking life easier.

Never compromise content

Content is king on the web.  Whatever you do, whether it’s writing your own content or outsourcing it, make sure that your articles are fresh, unique, targeted and engaging.  These prerequisites apply for sales copy, ebooks, blog posts and any other type of content online.  Take advantage of the many SEO article writing services available online.

Free traffic is good traffic

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is an absolute must when promoting your affiliate products organically.  Gaining placement in the search engines will insure you get loads of free, targeted traffic to your review pages and offers.  Brush up on your SEO and stick to a regular schedule.  If you’d rather, you can always outsource this to an SEO expert.

I’m sure at this point in your “make money online” career – regardless of how young it may be – you’ve received at least one email from an affiliate marketing guru raving about the latest and greatest affiliate marketing conventions.  With around 20 major events across North America and Europe every year, it’s hard to resist the urge to save up some cash, get a plane ticket and schmooze with the affiliate industry experts.

If you’re considering attenting an affiliate marketing convention this year, there are some points you should consider before taking the leap.  Hopefully this list will help you get the most of your convention experience!

What are your goals?

Are you interested in beefing up your Pay Per Click game?  How about networking and meeting specific players in the industry?  It is important to write out your goals before hand so that way you can reap the many benefits of your first affiliate convention without feeling overwhelmed.  Make a list of the keynote speeches you want to sit in on, which after parties you plan to attend and any other workshops worth checking out.

How will you brand yourself?

When you think of affiliate marketing and branding, who’s the first person that comes to mind?  For me it’s Jeremy Schoemaker aka Shoemoney.  When he was starting out he would walk around conventions with Shoemoney t-shirts and other swag – this obviously caught some industry attention.  Whether it’s your domain name stamped on a hoodie or some promotional beer mugs, do not attend a convention without your visible brand and business cards.

Important: Have fun!

At the end of the day, attending your first affiliate marketing convention should be about having fun.  Be yourself, shake as many hands as you can and let everyone know who you are and what you’re about.  I can almost guarantee that your first affiliate marketing convention will be one to remember.