Affiliate marketing is alive and well – despite the economic times. While many of the large retail conglomerates are reporting a downswing in their physical stores – they are also reporting GAINS in their online ventures! This is excellent news for affiliate marketers and those who are thinking of starting an affiliate marketing business.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate Marketing is really a catch-all term for many different aspects of internet marketing, but essentially it's helping other people sell their product and receiving a commission when someone purchases a product or service through your link.

How Do I Get Started in Affiliate Marketing?

First – affiliate marketing is free. It can be done, and done successfully, with absolutely no investment on your part whatsoever. It might take a bit longer – but if you still have your day job, then start out with the free methods and as your income grows you will want to invest a bit in your business – to make more commissions!

Most people start their business by promoting products that can be found at ClickBank.com, where you can find thousands of informational products from dog training to Trading stocks. Sign up with ClickBank (it's free), get your special affiliate link for the product that you've chosen and then simply promote the product in a variety of ways.

How Do You Promote Someone Else's Product?

The easiest, and cheapest (Free) way to promote a Clickbank product is through article marketing. Write a short article about the benefits of your chosen product and submit it to several article sites, making sure to include your affiliate link in the resource box of the article. Rewrite, rinse and repeat. Article writing is free, and you can submit as many as you like.

Make a free web page at Squidoo or Hub Pages (both are free) and then direct your articles to these sites where you can give more specific benefit details. Doing this gives you the added bonus of being picked up by Google sooner as both Squidoo and Hub Pages rank quite high with Google. These makes the possibility that your page will be listed when people search your subject much more likely.

PPC can also be used to direct people directly to your products sales page. You will, however, be charged by Google every time someone clicks on your ad. PPC is not recommended for newbies to affiliate marketing.