One of the easiest ways to get started as an affiliate is Clickbank. The reason this is so easy is that anybody can sign up without having to have an existing website. All you need is a physical address and an email address. Clickbank will help you generate the affiliate link that you can use in any number of different websites or webpages. The other main benefit to Clickbank is that the payouts are relatively high. So, instead of a small percent of a physical product, you’re usually making 50 percent or more on a product typically priced $50 to $99.

Affiliate networks are another source of finding products to promote. These types of sites coordinate the relationship between the advertisers and the publishers. This may be a great way to get additional products and services to sell, but should be used after you’ve already gotten your feet wet elsewhere. Some more popular affiliate networks are Commission Junction, Link Share, and Share a Sale.

If you’re not anxious to sell anything, you can still make money as an affiliate through CPA networks. These are typically companies that will pay you to get your visitors to take some action. This may be as simple as filling out a form, or a survey for which the company whose services or products you’re promoting will pay you a bounty for a lead.

You can promote affiliate programs through classified ad websites. Some easy ones to use for affiliate programs are backpage.com, usfreeads.com, adoos.ca, and check out as many local classified ad sites sponsored by either local newspapers, tv or radio. The benefit to these types of sites are that they have built-in promotion. The radio, tv and newspaper will typically promote through advertising their own classified sites which means they will get traffic. Craigslist is also a good option but must be used with care simply because Craiglist will “ghost” your ads which basically means they won’t make it to the category listings on Cragislist which will severely limit their visibility.

Article marketing is one of the best ways to promote affiliate products. Depending on which article directories you use, the idea is to write the article on a topic that is related to the product you’ll be trying to promote and submit that article to article directories. The idea is to submit unique articles so that the search engines rank those articles which gets traffic to the articles and clicks to the links in your “resource box” or “author profile”. I’ve found from personal experience that the click through rate for people who click on the links in your resource box is anywhere from 5 to 15% depending on the article and the specific call to action in the resource box.

Social networking is very popular and often times a relationship through some of these social media sites can generate some good sales. People will buy things based on the recommendation of a friend or acquaintance. If you’re participating in social networks where the interactions and relationships are based on a specific topic, find a product that you can promote that adds value to people within that category. If you’re part of a network where the members of that network are all dog owners, promote a dog training video series or ebook about dog training.

Another way to promote affiliate products is through blogging. Some people use the blog to specifically sell their products, other people will use a blog as a means to get traffic usually for some controversial topics or instructional topics then promote products as advertisements on their sites. Blogging can be a great strategy to help you get traffic to your affiliate promotions.

A more “traditional” or “old school” website can work as well. I wouldn’t recommend this method for most people as the automation and upkeep is typically not very easy and your ability to leverage other people’s work is diminished significantly. If you want to run your own website, I’d still recommend that you consider a blog platform, such as wordpress that will help you manage your content, but not have to rely on knowing any html and the look and the feel of the site is very customizable.

Pay per click advertising can support driving traffic through to a page that you control the content, such as a landing or squeeze page or can also redirect traffic directly from the advertisement itself through to the affiliate site with your affiliate ID in the link itself. This method is called direct linking. Another scenario is to send the traffic from pay per click to an information site or a theme based site where you’re going to rely on the fact that a certain percentage of people that visit that site are going to take action.

These are only a few of the methods of promoting affiliate products. My advice is to pick one, spend a little time learning more about it and then start doing. There are things about affiliate marketing that you’ll never know until you try. Plus, you can’t make any money by just learning about this stuff. Come up with a solid plan and start promoting. Start with the options that don’t have a high cost and go from there. Good luck!