OK. So now you know what Affiliate Marketing is. The next question you probably have is how can you start?

Well, the first thing you need to do, before anything else, is to join some affiliate programs.

There are tons of them out there, and what can make it a lot easier is that many of them are under the same Affiliate Networks, making it a lot easier to find and join them.

What you need to do first is figure out what types of products you’d like to promote. For example, if you’re an avid book reader, and are always talking about the books you read, you might be interested in promoting stores that sell books, such as Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Buy.com, Wal-Mart, or other stores like that.

If on the other hand, you’re passionate about clothing, you might be more interested in signing up to be an affiliate of clothing companies, such as Guess, Calvin Klein, Aeropostale, Gap, and so many others.

Once you find some stores you’re interested in, you need to find out if they have an affiliate program, and if they do, where it’s located.

The easiest way to find out? First, go to the company’s website. Go to the bottom of the page, and see if they have a link that says something like “Affiliates”, or “Join our Affiliate Program”, or something to that effect.

If not? The next easiest way is to go to Google (or your favorite search engine), and type in the name of the company, followed by the words affiliate program.

Most of the time, one of these two ways will let you know if the company has an affiliate program. Unfortunately, not every company has one, but there are plenty that do!

Once you find a company that you’d like to promote, you can sign up for it.

When you’re accepted, you’ll be able to get links, called affiliate links, that will be able to be traced back to you, so when someone purchases something through that link, the company will know to give you a percentage of the money.

In the next post, I’ll talk more about how to sign up for affiliate programs.