Here are some tips you need to keep in mind and put to use in order to succeed with affiliate marketing.

1. Set financial goals. Before you dive into affiliate marketing, it’s absolutely essential that you set some goals and objectives. How much money do you want to make with affiliate marketing? Make sure you write down your financial goals and review them often. Begin with a reasonable amount that you can realistically achieve and increase it over time. Once you begin affiliate marketing you will then have a clear destination that you can work towards.

2. Follow your heart. If you’re just starting out in affiliate marketing then it’s really advised that you stick to niches that match your hobbies and interests. While more experienced Internet marketers have more flexibility in this regard, beginners simply lose motivation if they are promoting a product or service that doesn’t appeal to them.

3. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Once you find a market that interests you, make sure that it is one that is profitable. This may seem obvious, but many people end up focusing on niches that lack in profitability. Nearly any niche can be monetized, but for the majority of the time if you don’t see other affiliates promoting that particular product or niche then you should seriously think twice.

4. Ensure credibility. Make sure the affiliate program you decide on is managed by someone with a good reputation. This is to guarantee that the product not only sells well, but also that customers will be satisfied and not ask for refunds. Remember, a refund sale means no income for you so don’t waste your time on dishonest products and services.

5. Understand your audience. Prior to promoting the product or service you’ve chosen, take some time out to study those interested in the particular niche. By doing so you’ll be able to engage the people in a way better than others since you will be able to relate to them and understand their needs.

6. Provide value. When you launch your website to promote the affiliate product or service, make sure it is helpful, motivating, and rich in content. People will feel more likely to follow through and purchase the offer you’re advertising if you over deliver on value due to the feeling of trust you’ve established.

7. Optimize your site. Along with strong content, make sure you choose the best keywords and use them properly to increase your ranking in the search engines. If your site can’t be seen in the search engines then you’re going to have a hard time driving traffic to it.

8. Build backlinks. There are many different types of backlinks and your site needs a variety of them to increase in ranking. When building backlinks, be sure to include your top keywords in the anchor text of the link so that you rank higher for these keywords in the search engines.

9. Track your traffic. Use quality tracking software so that you know exactly how people are reaching your site, what they’re doing once they reach it, and where they end up going afterward. An excellent, free solution to tracking is Google Analytics.

10. Do article marketing. Make article marketing a strategic part of your overall affiliate marketing plan. Writing and distributing articles for free on various article directories, such as EzineArticles and ArticlesBase, still proves to be one of the best ways to generate traffic to your site. It’s also a fantastic way to put the reader into the buying mood.

11. Diversify affiliate programs. Never put all of your hopes in one product or service. If something goes wrong and you don’t receive payment from the merchant or the product simply isn’t selling as well as it once did then you will still have other programs to fall back on.

12. Don’t give up. Affiliate marketing is not about instant results. This business requires consistency so don’t be easily discouraged if some time passes before you see sales.

Melissa Tamura Writes about Accredited Online Colleges for Zen College Life. She most recently wrote about the best online psychology schools.

Dear Making Money Online,
I’ve tried the blogging thing. Affiliate marketing was fun until Big G axed my money pages. Contributing posts to revenue sharing websites works OK, as long as I don’t want to earn any more than a Starbucks coffee (not even a Latte) each month. In short, I need some help: What other legitimate ways are there to make money online?
–Whiskey Pete

Well Whiskey Pete, you’re in luck, because this week I stumbled upon a site that’s intended for people just like you. My friend Brock Hamilton has put together what just may be the web’s most comprehensive list of legitimate ways to make money online. His website 101 Ways to Make Money is just the thing for anyone who feels like their online cash generating skills are in a rut.

Need to get a little more creative than the usual money making tricks?

Sure, you’ll find the usuals there, like making money with online surveys or blogging, but Brock has gone much further to help you find your own personal cash machine with such unusual tactics as scrap metal, animal ID tags, or even poetry.

Hi everyone. This is be a quick post asking for a HUGE (but easy to accomplish) favor. This site Making Money Online is in a contest to win the “Rookie Blogger of the Year” award over at TycoonBlogger.com and we would love your vote if possible. We are actually up against several great blogs, so if you think one of them deserves it more, we totally understand if you vote for one of them. But if you really like what we are doing here, and you think we deserve to win… we would really appreciate your vote.

To vote, simply go to http://tycoonblogger.com/featured-articles/vote-now-for-the-rookie-blogger-of-the-year and make your selection. We are listed in the sidebar on the right side. Just check the circle just above our thumbnail and select “Vote” and you are done.

We would like to thank Dan, (the owner of TycoonBlogger) for all the hard work in putting this contest together and honoring us with a chance to win Rookie Blogger of the Year!

Also, we would like to send out a BIG THANKS to all of YOU! We really appreciate all the support you have given us so far and we hope you like what we are doing with this site so far. If you ever have any suggestions, we would love to hear them!

We have been receiving a lot of emails here at Making Money Online lately asking us why we don’t explain the basics of how to get started online. For some reason when we started this site, we kinda started in the middle, instead of the beginning… as we assumed most of our visitors were somewhat experienced internet marketers and/or bloggers. From reading the emails, it appears many of our visitors are brand new to the Internet (who are known as newbies or noobs), so we are going to shift gears a little to let everyone catch up.

So for the next couple of weeks (at least), we are going to go over a lot of the basics when it comes to starting an online business. Topics like how to choose your niche, registering a domain name, getting your domain hosted, what type of website you should start with, some simple techniques to start making money online, etc… We are going to call this our “Getting Started” series!

Once the “Getting Started” series is completed… we will organize them on the site in some way so everyone will have easy access to them.

After that series is done we will start focusing on some more advanced techniques of making money online, as well as show you some other projects we are starting to work on to generate a nice monthly cash flow. Hopefully, not only will these projects help you with some ideas on how you can make some money… but we are hoping that in sharing what we are doing, you guys can help us in making these sites better and more profitable too.

Also… we eventually plan on making a video collection to go along with “Getting Started” series, but that probably won’t be happening until the end of this year or the beginning of next… so you will have to wait for those.

So stay tuned for Making Money Online Dot Com’s “Getting Started” series…

We now have our 3rd winner in our Making Money Online Subscriber Contest. The winner will receive a custom Character Mascot… courtesy of LogoNerds.com.

This week we even have a new girl pulling out the winner’s name to add a little spice to these videos

As always… PLEASE watch the video below before scrolling to the bottom to see who wins this week. It makes it much more fun to see your name pulled out of a fish bowl vs. seeing it just written down. The video is just over 1 minute long… so watch it first.

• Dan – TycoonBlogger.com – Blogging Tips to Promote Your Blog and Make Money Blogging.
• Benjamin – BenjaminCip.com – Start Your Making Money Online Venture.

Congratulations Guys!

You can see me pulling out their names from my hat in the video below. I added a little fun music to this one

On top of the two prizes, we would like to send a little love out to some of the other Top Commentors for the month of September, along with a special thanks for being active members on Making Money Online Dot Com.

• Sire – WassUpBlog.com – Tells you wassup in the blogging world in relation to blogging for money avenues, blog tips and tricks, etc…
• Samjien – HomeAffiliate.Typepad.com– Providing information about making money online, Health and Fitness and Urgent Job Hiring.
• Lee – MyBlog2Day.com – Making Money Online with Blog
• Asswass – Asswass.com – Ramblings of a rich donkey and his website.
• John – ExtremeJohn.com – Posts on Blogging, Business, Twitter, Rants, MMA, and his life.
• Typhoon – SmartBloggerz.com – Learn Blogging Tips and Make Money Online
• Earning – EarningStep.com – A Blog where Beginners can Learn to Make Money like a Pro.
• Jared – TheMoneyCult.com – A No B.S. Blog about money, the tools, and people trying to make it.
• Brian – BlogEngage.com/blogger – Blog Engage Social Blog.
• Compute – ComputeLive.com - Daily Tips for Your Digital Life
• Christie – MiscBytes.com – Life on the Internet With a Splash of Science
• Een Rockstar – Fazreen.com – Awesome Rockstar Blogger
• George – Serradinho.com – Blogging news, tips, tricks and free downloads.
• Ricky -TechGenuine.com – SEO, Blogging Tips & Tutorials, etc…
• Harsh – ShoutMeLoud.com – Social media, Internet, Computer tips and tricks, torrents, wordpress, SEO, blogspot.

Thanks again everyone for all your great comments… we really do appreciate them and you!

As you know we changed up the rules last month from the month before to give more people an opportunity to win. Well this worked out well, but there was quite a bit of a drop in commenting from the month before, which is okay, but we would like to see if we can get it back up a little this month.

So we have decided to make just one small adjustment to last month’s rules. To qualify to get your name put in the raffle it will still only take 5 comments for the entire month to get you an entry. But now you can earn additional enteries to increase your odds of winning. For every 5 comments you leave, you will get one entry into the raffle. So if you leave 5 comments you would get one entry… but if you leave 25 comments for the month you would receive 5 entries. Makes sense to everyone? Here are the official rules below…

*RULES: The rules are very simple. On the last day of each month we will pull 2 names out of a hat and the winners will each win 1 FREE month of banner space in our designated area. We reserve the right to refuse anyone and any banners that we do not feel are appropriate for this site. To qualify to get your name in the drawing all you have to do is submit at least 5 comments throughout the entire month. You can earn additional entries with every 5 comments that you leave. If you leave 10 comments you would receive 2 entries. If you left 15 comments you would receive 3 entries, and so on… So you will need to comment at least once on 5 different posts to qualify. For a comment to count, it does not have to be long, but it does have to be useful to us and/or our readers. Just writing, “Great Post! Keep up the good work” will not count as a comment towards winning the contest. We need to know that you actually read the post. Mark and I will have the final say on what we feel is a comment.

If you have any questions, please let us know. Again, congratulations to September’s two winners, Dan from TycoonBlogger.com and Benjamin from BenjaminCip.com.

As most of you know the last couple of weeks we have been giving away custom logos (courtesy of LogoNerds.com) as prizes in our Making Money Online Subscriber Contest… and this coming Friday we will be giving away a custom character mascot as well.

If you saw the results from the first raffle… you know that Samjien from Home Affiliates won the first custom logo. She was definitely in need of a logo upgrade, as she does not actually have one at this time, so it worked out great for her.

Right after she won I put her in contact with Joseph over at LogoNerds so she could explain to him exactly what she wanted for a logo and here is what she she requested for her logo design.

Can I make my logo design similar to your “LogoNerds” logo design?  I really like your design and I couldn’t think of anything better. I want the design to be the same as your LogoNerds design with the full name: Home Affiliate and then with a subtitle (Make Money Online, Health & Fitness, Urgent Job Hiring) beneath it. Also, I want the “o” in H(o)me affiliate to be replaced with a house icon that is kinda round instead of “o”. As with the colors to be used. It would be black and red. Can you also please add a shiny mirror shadow on my design just like the shadow of your company logo “LogoNerds”?

Here is their LogoNerds Logo Samjien likes

Below are the 6 logo concepts LogoNerds came up with for Samjien, which all fit her specifications.

I have my favorite design and I am sure Samjien has her favorite(s) as well. Now we would like to hear which logo you guys would choose. Please take a look at her website and then at the logo designs below and let us know in the comment section which logo you think would look best on her site. The more opinions the better… so please don’t be shy. Only good things can happen from helping a fellow blogger out

And don’t forget… we are still going to be giving away a custom character mascot (also courtesy of LogoNerds.com) this coming Friday (Oct. 2nd) so make sure you are entered… and if you win we can have our readers help you as well!

UPDATE: Here’s a revision that Samjien asked for. She liked certain aspects of #3 and #5.

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This week I was able to recruit Dana again to do the drawing for us, but for some reason the quality of the video did not come out as well. After you watch the video, please let us know in the comments section if you liked having a girl pull the name out for the raffle or if you liked what I did with the hand in the last video better. I think there was a little more drama with the hand… but I like having cute girls do it too

Please watch the video below before scrolling to the bottom to see who wins this week.

Like before… it is much more fun for those of you entered to watch the video first, as it is a little more exciting. Of course if you want to… you can just scroll down below and see who the winner of this week’s Making Money Online Subscriber’s Contest is…

So did you watch the video first? I hope you did! For those of you that didn’t watch, the winner is…

(DRUM ROLL PLEASE)

THIS WEEK’S WINNER - Typhoon from www.SmartBloggerz.com

Typhoon won a Professional Designed Business Logo (valued at $47) from the LogoNerds.com. We will be contacting Typhoon over the weekend with instructions on how to claim his prize.

We still have a Custom Character Mascot to give away next Friday… so if you have not entered yet, you still have time. The only requirements for entering is to subscribe to our newsletter and let us know you want to be entered in the comments section of the Contest Page. So what are you waiting for? Click here to get all the details!

Again… Congratulations to Typhoon! The great thing about this contest is you can win more that once… so we have created a new entry for Typhoon and put it back in the hat for next week!

Have a great weekend everyone!

When it comes to making money online there are a million different ways to do so, and more being created each day. Now I have been in the internet marketing business for a little over 10 years now and I have tried many different money making endeavors over those years. Some have worked really well, some just ok… while others have totally failed, so I do know a little bit about of what works and what doesn’t when it comes to making money online.

But one thing’s for sure… neither Mark nor I know everything there is to know about making money online, and no one else does either. So what Mark and I have decided to do since there are so many different ways of making money online out there is… we need to look for other people that would like to share their money making ideas with our viewers by allowing “Guest Bloggers”.

So if you have any making money online tips or related ideas you would like to share with our readers, we would love to post them on our site. Now we are not looking for people to just write a great big ad promoting their products or services. We are looking for tips, tricks, ideas, how-to tutorials, etc… on different ways to make money online. This would include (but not limited to) things like; affiliate marketing, network marketing, selling on Ebay, advertising, memberships sites,  SEO, traffic generation, site design, online and offline marketing, networking, copywriting, blogging tips, etc…, the list could go on and on.

So why should you consider writing a guest post for MakingMoneyOnline.com? There are many reasons why you should, but here are a few:

Expose Your Name and Blog to a Whole New Audience – Guest Blogging is one of the best ways to get your name, as well as your blog exposed to a whole new potential group of viewers.

Generate More Traffic to Your Site – Writing a Guest Post for our site will definitely drive more traffic to your site as readers are always interested to learn more about the person writing the post. I know when I read posts from guest bloggers on other sites I almost always visit the author’s site to see what their site is about. I have become a loyal follower to several blogs that I have found through them guest blogging on other sites I frequent.

Build up Your Reputation – It is hard to build your reputation when you are first starting out blogging… and writing a quality guest post can only help quickly build your reputation as an expert in your field.

SEO Benefits – Guest blogging on this site or any other blog for that matter is a great way to help with your search engine optimization. You will be creating a relevant, high quality, keyword-rich one-way link back to your site which search engines love!

Free Advertising – This actually encompasses everything I mentioned above, as this is really a great way to advertise your business for FREE on our site. Yes, it will take a little work writing the post… but it won’t cost you a dime. Also, the click-through rate from a guest post link is far superior than purchasing a banner ad on this site or any other site. So if you don’t have a lot of money to advertise your business, this is a no brainer.

HOW TO SUBMIT A GUEST POST TO MAKING MONEY ONLINE DOT COM

If you would like to write a Guest Post for our website, please contact us first so we can let you know if it is something we think our viewers might be interested in reading. Simply go to the Contact Us page and send us an email with the following information.

• Your name
• Your email address
• What topic you would like to write about
• A sample of your writing (a link to an article is fine)
• The URL(s) you are planning to link to in your post

If we feel your idea for a post is something our readers would be interested in, we will send you an email with instructions on how to submit your post.

Also, before submitting your post… PLEASE FOLLOW THESE RULES:

• Your post must be completely original and not published anywhere else.
• To be accepted the post should be well written with no grammatical errors, so please run your post through a spell checker before submitting it. We also suggest you have a friend or associate read it over to see how it sounds before submitting it.
• We reserve the right to make any corrections and modifications to the post(s) that we feel necessary.
• We may not accept all Guest Posts that are submitted to us for one reason or another. If we decide not to accept your post we will let you know why we didn’t, and we will give you the opportunity to make the necessary changes to get it approved, but we cannot make any guarantees.
• We reserve the right to modify these rules at anytime.

So if you would like build up your reputation, drive more traffic to your site, help with your SEO rankings, or just feel like sharing your knowledge… PLEASE contact us today about writing a Guest Post for Making Money Online Dot Com.

Unfortunately, I ran out of time and was not able to grab any sexy models for the video drawing this week, so I had to do it all myself (as you will see in the video). It was just my hands, my video camera on a tripod, my golf cap, and all your names who entered the contest on folded and stapled pieces of paper.

Please watch the video below to see who wins this week.

If you are entered in the contest, please watch the video first (if you can), as it is more fun to be surprised. If you can’t watch the video, or just don’t want to wait… you can scroll down below and see the winner of this week’s first Making Money Online Subscriber Contest…

Well hopefully you watched the video and you know who won the custom logo, but here’s the name of the winner anyway…

THIS WEEK’S WINNER - Samjien from homeaffiliate.typepad.com

Samjien won a Professional Designed Business Logo (valued at $47) from the LogoNerds.com. We will be contacting Samjien over the weekend with instructions on how to claim her prize.

We still have another Custom Logo and a Custom Character Mascot to give away in the next 2 Fridays… so if you have not entered yet you still have time. The only requirements for entering is to subscribe to our newsletter and let us know you want to be entered in the comments section of the Contest Page. So what are you waiting for? Click here to get all the details!

Again… Congratulations to Samjien! The great thing about this contest is you can win more that once… so we have created a new entry for Samjien and put it back in the hat for next week!

Have a great weekend everyone!