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, sign up for my list to get 30 Affiliate Marketing Tips in 30 Days. You’ll find great background information as well as some advanced tips. Over the course of a month you will get a lot of my “behind the scenes” tips I don’t share anywhere else.
Second, 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. We can certainly chat about whether I’m the right person for that!
Resources I recommend:
- Affiliate Marketing Plan started by Todd Farmer. Todd started this site years ago but it still has a lot of good basic information. It has both a free component and a paid component.
- 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.
- Affiliates Take Note: New FTC Disclosure Guidelines. This is a post that I keep updated about the latest FTC Disclosure information. If that is your primary area of inquiry, it’s a good place to see a snapshot of everything at once.
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.