Every day, around the clock, there are millions of people online looking for products, services, and solutions to their problems, and with affiliate marketing, you can get paid for showing them where their solution lies.  Imagine the potential of reaching just a minute fraction of them. For example, the woman who just had a baby and needs to lose her “baby fat”, the new gardener who can’t figure out why his weeds won’t die., or the person who just lost their job and wants to find ways to ways to make extra money online while they look for new employment.

The opportunities are endless and affiliate marketing allows you to step in the middle of the consumer and the product and receive a nice commission for helping out.

Here are a few of the basics steps you need to do in order to get started with affiliate marketing.

A website or a blog
A website or blog will be your affiliate tool. Your visitors (a.k.a. potential customers) will arrive there and either click on a product or service after reading your recommendation. You will also have an opt-in form set up to capture these visitors and put them on the email list that you’re building for further contact and promotions.

Although it’s not necessary to have a static website or blog in order to make affiliate commissions, because there are other ways to make money as well, it’s very typical to use it as a major source, especially starting out and while you’re building a list.

It’s also important to note that affiliate marketers do not usually only have one website. In fact some have hundreds and even thousands all in different niches and micro-niches. That’s because the more narrow your target customer, the more likely you are to make a sale.

Link building
The search engines will be the ones sending you the most targeted visitors, unless you use PPC, or other paid advertising. Starting out, it’s better to get organic search traffic since it’s free.

In order for the search engines to drive customers over to your site to make affiliate sales, you’ll need to have your site indexed and ranked well for keywords specific to your niche.

One of the best ways to do that is do become important by getting back links. Using the keywords you are trying to rank for in the search engines, you will link back to your site using that phrase as the anchor text (the text the user sees to click on), on relevant forums and blogs as well as in article directories, social media profiles, etc.

Find the right affiliate programs
As important as it is to research your niche and figure out who it is your targeting, it’s just as important to find the right product or service to show them. A great tip is to try and put your self in the shoes of your targeted visitor, read the vendor’s sales page and ask yourself if you would buy from that page.

A great place to start looking for good affiliate programs is Clickbank.com. Many start their affiliate marketing efforts by promoting affiliate products and services in Clickbank because it is easy to sign up and get started. It’s a great way to get your feet wet quickly.

You may have heard or read the term “the money is in the list”. That’s because once you have a targeted email list of people in a specific niche that you can contact whenever you like, it becomes increasingly easier to make sales. List building is one of most important foundations of success in affiliate marketing.

Over weeks, months and years, you can build a huge database of targeted customers who are at least interested enough in your niche to agree to be on a list and receive more information.

For example, imagine what you can do with a list of 10,000 people who are all interested in collecting action figures.Think of the affiliate sales for the actual figures, price guides, shelving units, cases, cleaners, and who knows what else.

It’s important to realize that you can’t just bombard your list with sales though.

You must build a relationship with them so you gain their trust and don’t come off as a spammer just trying to steal their money.

How can you do that?

Well, in the case of the action figures niche, maybe you could offer them regular tips on fluctuations in pricing, what’s new on the market, etc. to keep them interested and wanting to open your emails. The idea is to give them free information regularly that actually helps them with their interest. Although the information is genuine, you are also using it as a sort of prelude to an affiliate marketing promotion that you slip in now and then – still with their interests in mind though.

Basically, it boils down to gaining trust with free information and not being an over-the-top salesman with pushy marketing tactics. Sure, you might make a few sales at first, but your list will decline instead of grow.

Build a solid relationship with yuor list, be genuine, and you will gain trust and make sales.