Affiliate marketing is one of the hardest and easiest ways to make money online these days. If that sounds like a dichotomy, it really is. The people that find it hard either haven’t perfected a system or have given up on the one that they have been working on before it made money. The ones who think this process is easy have found one single way to make some cash and then have either outsourced their efforts to expand on their success or have simply duplicated the same thing over and over again.

People who have figured out at least part of the equation know that the most important element of any money making campaign is to find a good keyword. This doesn’t have to be something that people are searching for one million times, but it has to be something that people will buy. Most everybody online these days is either looking for some information or trying to solve a problem. So most keywords will fit into one of these two categories, and it is important to know the distinction between the two of them.

Anything that typically starts with “how do…” can be classified as a buying keyword. People are actively searching for a solution to their problem and are looking on the Internet to a fast way to solve this. It is up to the marketer to find a good keyword, match it with a solution and then get buyers to find this either through free (organic) search traffic methods, or using pay per click (ppc) ads on many of the giant search engines. Each of these has its advantages and can be exploited by smart marketing principles.

There are many ways that the so-called gurus offer their products. Although many people are scared off by this prospect, building a website is the best way to not only market a product, but capture emails as well. This will build a list of prospects interested in a specific topic and can be sold to time and again. Researching a good keyword, buying a domain name and hosting can take less than one day to accomplish. Installing an open source program such as WordPress is really all that is needed to set up the site for commerce. It can even be sold for quick profit once it starts to make some money.

There is also article marketing for those people that are scared off by website building. Many of these directories are beloved by the search engines and will offer a higher ranking at least initially, garnering some free traffic. It is definitely a possibility to go this route.

Affiliate marketing can be done by almost anybody willing to roll up their sleeves and give it a go.

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