Affiliate Marketing Resources

I am often asked questions like “How do I get started in affiliate marketing?” or “Can you help me learn affiliate marketing?” The answer I usually give is that you can figure it out if you want to put in the time. There are an unbelievable number of affiliate marketing resources online, many for free and some even legitimate (but not all!). I can’t review them all, but the ones listed below are where you should start if you are serious about learning.

Steps to take: First, check out all of the free resources below. Read, listen, interact with the experts giving all of that great advice. Second, put together a plan and start jumping into it to test the waters. Third, once you have established a site and learned the basics, that would be the time to hire a consultant to focus on helping you fill in the gaps.

Resources I recommend:

• The Extra Money Answer by Affiliate Summit owner Shawn Collins. He walks you through the basics of monetizing a site with affiliate marketing.
• “How To” Guide to Affiliate Marketing by Geno Prussakov. What I really like about this guide is that it links to very specific topics that you can learn from in small chunks.
• Blogging ABCs: A podcast/blog I participate in that features industry experts talking about everything from SEO to monetizing blogs to social media.
• The Affiliate Summit Forum is the official networking site of the Affiliate Summit conference. You can sign up for a free account there and interact with merchants, affiliates, OPMs, and networks. It has lots of great current news about the industry as well as a good place to ask questions.
• Billy Kay’s ABCs Plus posts actually teach you how to build a mini product niche website.

There are thousands of other sites with good, legitimate information but I think these are the best to start with for new affiliate marketers. Once you get further into it and decide what your path will be, there will be people to follow on Twitter, Facebook groups to join, and blogs to read just about every day. Feel free to leave your favorites in the comment section.