If you have never worked with affiliate schemes before, you are probably feeling pretty daunted! But… don’t worry. Everyone, even the so-called affiliate gurus, were all beginners at some point. The key is to not be afraid, and to get started so you can begin the learning process. To help you earn money easily in your new venture, here are five key principles to help you lay the foundations.

1. Pay per Click or PPC: PPC is one of our most important strategies in affiliate marketing, so you should at least get familiar with it right away.

You know those ads you see lined up on the right hand of every Google search results page? Those are paid ads where the advertiser has to pay Google a fee– anywhere from a few cents to US$50.00– each time someone clicks on one of those ads.

To effectively use PPC, you have to learn keyword research. When you sign up for a Google Adwords account, start exploring their keyword tool, and learn the layout.

For your PPC campaigns, you will need a lot of low volume search terms. So, note the “Global Monthly Search Volume” column in your keyword tool. This is where you will find those magic low search, low cost keywords.

2. As a beginner, I think you should stick to using the affiliate website the vendor provides for you. At a later stage you can build your own sales site.

The people who first developed the affiliate scheme want to earn money easily and with minimum trouble, so they will have put effort into setting up a good affiliate sales page. Take advantage of that!

Minimize the number of new tasks you have to learn. As a newbie, you need to avoid “information overwhelm”.

3. Advertise widely, advertise cheaply. There are loads of places to put up small ads with links to your affiliate sales page— try Craigslist or US Small Ads. There can produce good, targeted traffic— the lifeblood of your business.

4. Get subscribers. With some experience, you should think about building your own site, or outsourcing this job. The idea here is to continue selling through your affiliate links, but, crucially, having a sign up box where people can leave you their name and email. This will the basis of a subscribers’ list for a newsletter. (You can outsource a lot of that, as well.)

Your subscriber list is a very important and valuable piece of internet property. Conventional affiliate marketing allows you one sale per person; email marketing allows you multiple sales per person, month after month.

4. Go viral with free reports. Giving away a free report, and allowing your own subscribers to give it to their list in turn, is a great way to expand your list. Be sure to have a sign up link on each page!

5. Publish terrific articles. I’ll say it again: publish terrific articles! There’s a ton of rubbish on the net. Take advantage— if you are a decent writer, you can stand out here.

I do not claim to be Tolstoy, but I do like to think that I bring a bit of myself to articles I write, and that’s what makes for good connections with readers.

It goes without saying… have a link to your site after every piece you publish.

(Caution: Article directories are fussy about links. Learn the rules each one has, and stick to them. Don’t let a great article be rejected because you didn’t follow their rules on acceptable and unacceptable links.)

To summarize: Success comes to those who are prepared to make mistakes! Affiliate schemes are new to you, so be ready for a learning process. You will not make money easily overnight, but you will eventually, and perhaps quite quickly, if you are prepared to give yourself a break and take things step by step. Affiliate marketing is a very forgiving business; our errors usually don’t cost us too much, except a little time and some hurt pride!

Looking to earn money easily? Then visit www.affiliatemarketerinfo.com to find the best advice on affiliate schemes and how they can change your life.