"The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple."
Oscar Wilde



Affiliate Marketing Guide For A Five Figure Monthly Income 
Copyright © 2007 Titus Hoskins


Reaching the five figure mark in monthly affiliate earnings 
has been my own personal benchmark for online success. 
I have struggled for years to reach my goal, an ongoing 
battle of staggering proportions which will consume 
anyone who enlists.

Countless strategies, countless programs, countless gurus,
countless hours of examining and dissecting how affiliate 
marketing truly works on the Internet. 

Truth be told I have enjoyed every minute of it. 

A complex virtual game played with real sweat and all too real
money, but also a game with some very real benefits and rewards. 
It is truly the most complicated structure I have ever created. 
A very complex creature that has a life of its own, bringing 
together sites, links, search engines, affiliate partners,
subscribers... all in order to produce a healthy online
monthly income.

Coming from an art education background, creating complex
structures has been a life long passion for me. I once created
a drawing with over 1,000,000 dots! Now that really trains
the mind.

Setting up an online affiliate marketing system was very
similiar in nature to that drawing. You have millions of 
factors that intertwine, interact and play off each other; 
your main task is to make sure all the dots connect.

Creating an online affiliate marketing system which produces 
a monthly income is relatively easy. With one catch, you
have to know exactly what you're doing and how the whole
online marketing system works. Figuring out all the details
can take you years to learn.

Compounding the problem, in my opinion, are the countless
so-called 'marketing gurus' who bombard beginners with
products offering the latest ways to earn money online. 
Many beginners jump from one marketing product to the next 
without any real understanding of the basic foundation
every online marketer has to build before he or she
can take advantage of these latest marketing products.

Many often come away from Internet or affiliate marketing
with an extremely negative view: this online marketing
stuff is only for suckers who jump at all those 'get rich 
quick schemes'. In their minds it is total hogwash.

What the beginning webmaster or marketer doesn't realize
building a solid online business takes time and patience.
It is not done overnight, despite what the latest marketing
gurus are trying to sell you, it simply takes time and
a lot of hard work.

First, you must have a basic understanding of how the 
Internet works and the future role you will play in it. 
You must understand the net is basically an extension
of the real world: it is an enormous virtual playground as
well as a vast storehouse of the world's collective knowledge. 
But you must also understand the web is a global marketplace 
unlike anything that has been seen before on this planet.

If you want to be an affiliate marketer you must
place yourself or your site into this whole online
environment. As an affiliate marketer you must play
some sort of role in the transfer of information within 
this complex structure. 

How?

Simply give surfers what they're looking for: information.

Supplying valuable, needed information is your key to 
online affiliate success.

Here are some strategies or tips to get you started on
your affiliate marketing career. Each is a brief summation
of some of the factors to keep in mind as you create your 
own complex, yet simple, online marketing system.


1. Acquiring Knowledge 

Your first step is to acquire the basic skills and 
knowledge needed to run an online site or business. 
When I started I had to learn how to write HTML from 
scratch and go from there... today there are many online 
site builders and wysiwyg editors to get you started. 
Plus, you now have whole online site building systems 
you can use - Ken Evoy's SBI comes readily to mind.

No matter which route you take, you must understand how 
an online site works, how to use keywords, how to create 
valuable content and how to tie in your affiliate links 
with this content... all this basic knowledge you must 
acquire.


2. Get The Big Picture: Your Role - Your Content

You must fully understand your role in the whole
online affiliate marketing process. Your content
must be valuable to the Internet user, it must
offer information, solve a problem or offer a
special deal. There must be some reason why the
surfer will use your site to find what they're
looking for on the web. They must benefit in some
way from using your site.

Again, offering valuable, helpful information will
spell online affiliate success for you.

3. Build Your Foundation

You must have your own domain or domains. You must
create your own piece of virtual real estate that
you can build and gradually add to as you proceed.
Be wary of free sites. Don't rent, own your real 
estate outright. Your sites will become your valuable 
properties that you will build for years to come.

When picking a domain name try to get as close as you 
can to the main keyword or keyword phrase represented
by your site's topic. Use hyphens if you have to but
choose a name that is short and can be easily remembered
and typed directly into a browser.

As for site design and layout - a simple solution
is to use a blog format such as the free WordPress
program and host it on your own domain. Extremely 
effective way of creating a full-powered content site 
without having to worry about learning HTML code or 
programing. You can have a website up and running 
within minutes.

4. Know Your Partners & Their Products

As an affiliate marketer you will be selling other
people's stuff. You must get to know these future
partners and their marketing systems. Pick affiliate
products directly related to the topic of your site. 
Something your visitors are interested in and would
likely purchase after you have supplied them with 
valuable information on those products.

To find potential products and partners you can join the 
well established major affiliate networks on  the web. 
These networks represents most of the top 500 companies 
in the world. Affiliate networks like Commission Junction, 
LinkShare, ClickBank, Amazon, Shareasale... these networks 
have been around for years and offer excellent payment 
structures and commission rates.


5. Long Tail Keyword Marketing

Develop content and high rankings for long tail keyword 
phrases related to your site's topic. These are some of 
the least competitive keywords yet they will also prove
to be the most lucrative for you. Find the long tail 
keywords within your niche and exploit them. Using exact 
brand names of the affiliate products you're promoting
make for effective long tail keywords.

Consistently use and develop this long tail keyword 
strategy and you will succeed at affiliate marketing.



6. Build Your One-Way Links

Take a pro-active approach to link building. Don't sit
around waiting for links - go out and get them. Use
keyworded anchor links in the resource box of your
articles. Distribute these articles to all the major
article directories... make sure Ezinearticles.com,
Goarticles.com, ArticleAlley.com... are on your list.

Recommend products that you use, make forum posts,
create viral videos, join social media sites, offer
a free newsletter and build your own subscriber base,
create follow-up autoresponder series on the major
products you promote... these are all ways of creating
traffic and customers.   


7. Embrace Google But Don't Ignore the Others

Embrace Google as if your affiliate marketing life 
depended on it - chances are it will be!

Google is the search engine that you must optimize for
if you want your site to really succeed online. Don't
ignore the others, but Google has become the most
popular search engine in the world and even accounts 
for 50% of all the searches made in the USA. (comScore)

So short of a brown-nose, do everything you can to please
Google. The rewards are worth it. Whether you're a Google
fan or not, Google has gained the trust and respect of 
the majority of Internet users. Getting a top 10 placement 
for your targeted keywords will often mean
money in the bank.


8. Be Aware Of The Social Media Revolution

Be aware the Internet is constantly changing and in the 
next few years everything will be turned topsy-turvy. We 
are talking about the growing popularity of user-generated
content sites such as MySpace, FaceBook, YouTube, Digg, 
Technorati...  

Stay within the flow by making sure any site you create
has a blog and RSS feed attached to it. Make sure all
your content can be easily bookmarked in all these
different social bookmarking sites. One simple solution 
is to use the easy bookmarking system supplied by
Addthis.com - place their code on your content pages 
and let your visitors bookmark your content for you 
in all these different media sites.

9. Model It

In art one of the best ways to learn is to model
or copy the masters. You learn by seeing how
someone else has approached and solved a problem
and then use their model or example. In affiliate
marketing, one of the best ways to learn is to
copy or model your business on one that has already
been proven to work.

This is NOT literal copying of a site or business
but simply modeling your own business on an existing
example that works. Same structure, same marketing
techniques, same principles... building your affiliate
business on an existing mold or model is a wise
route to take if you want to succeed.


10. Be Patient For Results

Building a viable online affiliate business takes some 
time so be patient. If you're building a content rich 
site and targeting specific keywords it can take months, 
sometimes even years, before you obtain significant 
results. So have long term goals in place and expect 
plenty of hard work before you reap the real rewards.

Just remember becoming a full time online affiliate 
marketer is well within anyone's reach. However, like 
most things in life, the journey is always much more 
enjoyable than your final destination. Many of you will 
probably discover, like I did, that 'the reach is the 
grasp'. Actually doing something is the main reward, 
all those monthly affiliate checks are just pleasant 
aftershocks. Very nice aftershocks that add up very 
quickly into a healthy monthly online income!


...

Everyone has a story! Mine is called: "In Search Of The $100 Click 
or How I Found A Full-Time Online Income And Came To Love The Internet" 
It's located here: Online Income
Copyright © 2007 Titus Hoskins. This article may be 
freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

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