Making money online doesn’t have to cost you a single penny out of your pocket, however many choose to purchase guides, tools and other resources to better their Internet business. As a beginner, you’re going to come across tons of resources you’re going to want to buy, but you don’t want to spend any of your money. Or perhaps you’re just want a way to pay for website hosting or a membership of some sort until you get your Internet business making money.

Whatever the case is, a great way to make some extra money is to write articles and submit them to article directories like AssociatedContent. AssociatedContent will pay for each article you submit to. They pay by the quality of the article (an upfront payment), then they pay you for each view your article receives.

Pretty cool, eh?

That’s not the coolest part though. The coolest part is that the articles you write and submit to AssociatedContent can help drive traffic to your landing page! Writing articles is a completely free way to drive traffic to your pages, however instead of submit your article to EzineArticles, get paid for your article by submitting it to AssociatedContent.

EzineArticles is still my preferred choice to submit my articles to, but if you want to make some extra money to help cover your Internet expenses. Just submit your unique articles to AssociatedContent.

Earn Money, Build Traffic and Backlinks, all for free. Why wouldn’t you?

Writing several articles you are going to write anyway and submitting them to AssociatedContent is a great way to not risk any of your own money.

ClickBank is one of the most popular affiliate networks out there, mainly because they offer the highest commission rates. They have a long list of products (digital) that you may choose to promote. Sign up is free, automatically promote any product on the network, receive high commissions on your sales. Many of the commissions are as high as 75% the sale price of the product. This is because they are digital products and do not cost any money to produce or distribute, therefore they vendors are able to offer high commissions.

If you haven’t all ready, I’m sure it won’t be long until you come across those ClickBank screenshots. ClickBank has a rather cool way to show your earnings. Instead of just a dollar amount, they have bars representing each days earnings. You’ll see them everywhere, especially on the sales pages of products that help you in some sort of way with affiliate marketing. They put them on there as proof that their guide or software works.

Here is an example of a ClickBank screenshot:

Of course, this is just one example of a Clickbank screenshot, but I think you get the picture.

I’m sure the screenshots that you come across on the sales pages will be similar to the one above. Some may only have a few sales, others may have thousands of dollars a day in sales.

The reasons I’m want to address ClickBank screenshots and the ones you see on sales pages is that these can be easily faked! That’s right, people know a ClickBank cheat or know how to cheat ClickBank screenshots!

I’m not saying that every screenshot is fake, of course not. However, I just wanted to let you know that it is very easy to do so.

I’ve seen my fair share of ClickBank screenshots and every since learning the cheat to making it seem like you make a lot of money, I no longer pay attention to them. Actually, I take that back, I pay more attention to them now. I like to look for the mistakes. It’s very easy to mess it up.

It truly bothers me when I see the fake ones claiming to be real and that the specific guide teaching you how to make money is the reason for it.

So what’s the secret to cheating ClickBank screenshots?

Well it’s a javacript that actually allows you to alternate any web page. No, it doesn’t save and won’t change the web page at all. It just allows you to alternate the current web page you’re currently on. Think of it as just changing the what’s on the screen.

All those ClickBank cheaters do is paste the script into the address bar when they are on the page they wish to change. The hit “Enter” and it then allows them to change up the page. They take a quick screenshot of their work and save it to there computer. Then go to another page or click on the “Refresh” button and it’s as if nothing happened.

Now they have a nice screenshot to show all their potential customers how much the guide has helped them.

Here is the javascript (just copy and paste it into your address bar and hit the “enter” key):

javascript:document.body.contentEditable=’true’; document.designMode=’on’; void 0

This was just more of a warning that you shouldn’t always believe those ClickBank screenshots as proof of their earnings. However, not every Internet Marketing is unethical and therefore some of those screenshots are quite real! Even the thousand dollar a day ones! It is possible to make that much on the Internet.

If you think that creating a website, blog, or web page takes money and knowledge, then you’re completely wrong. With all the platforms and social sites out there, it has become increasingly easier for not so tech-savy people to create them, even without paying a single cent to do so.

Places like:

Blogger, WordPress and Weebly are great for creating blogs and wesbites for absolutely free.

Squidoo and Hubpages are great for creating web pages for no cost also.

Blogger, WordPress, Weebly, Squidoo, and Hubpages are very easy for anything to create good-looking website and pages.

Blogger is a free blog publishing tool from Google for easily sharing your thoughts with the world.

WordPress is a place to create free blogs managed by the developers of the WordPress software.

Weebly is a place to create a free website or blog in minutes by using a simple drag and drop interface.

Squidoo is the popular publishing platform and community that makes it easy for you to create ‘lenses’ online. Lenses are pages.

Hupages is an online space to share your advice, reviews, useful tips, opinions and insights with hundreds of other authors.

All of these are known as Web 2.0 properties, which Google and other search engines favor. Posting your content on these platforms will give you a nice boost in the rankings for your keywords.

There are many guides on the Internet that share with you how to get the most out of them. I recommend reading PotPirGirls’  “Squidoo Lens Creation for Newbies” to learn how to use Squidoo to it’s fullest potential. Just click on the Image on the right to receive it for free.

If you haven’t notices yet, this blog, AffiliateGrounds.info, was created with WordPress, although it’s the self hosted version which just allows to to customize it more.

These are fantastic to use when creating your landing pages. They can easily be set up within minutes and rank very well. I recommend getting to know at least two of these, mainly Squidoo and WordPress.

A very effective and a “kill two birds with one stone” kinda method to drive traffic to your affiliate link or landing page is by writing articles. No only do you build traffic to your landing page, but you also build Backlinks to your page as well. Now, I know I haven’t gone over backlinks yet (that’s a post for another time), but in short, backlinks are links that are on other websites that link to your site. When other websites link to your page, search engines look at that as a “thumbs up” to your page. This helps with it’s ranking in the search engines. Backlinks are just another part of SEO.

Anyway, back to the real topic of this post. Writing Articles to drive traffic to your affiliate link or landing page.

One of the coolest things about writing articles to drive traffic is that it’s all free. One of the members at WA a year or so ago if I remember correctly, started out with PPC (Pay Per Click), however he had to stop because he couldn’t afford it. Well the next day after he stopped all is ads, wrote a handful of articles around the same keywords he was using in his PPC campaigns.

Over the next several days and through several articles received over 100 clicks to his affiliate link or landing page (which ever he was driving traffic to). He then posted how “cool” writing articles is because he didn’t cost a penny for those 100 visits. Whereas, with PPC it could cost around $100 give or take, possibly even $300! Of course, that all depends on how much he was paying for those keywords a click on his PPC campaigns, but $100 is about average. I don’t think he ever went back to PPC from that moment on. Why spend money on clicks, when you can get them for free?

So what do you need to do to drive traffic with articles. Well, it’s quite simple, but there are tons of different methods people use. As for the basics, here it goes:

Write a 350-500 word article on your topic that is optimized for a keyword.

Let’s take an article about about making money on the Internet, as an example. Let’s say my keyword is “Is making money on the Internet possible”. I would then write a 350 – 500 word article around this keyword. The article can include any number of things, such as tips and suggestions, experiences, etc.

An simple method to writing articles is to follow this structure:

The intro paragraph: Tell them the reader what you’re going to talk about throughout the article.Includes,

The body: Tell them the information, tips, opinion, etc.

The closing: This is usually the “resource box”. Some people use it tell tell more about themselves (the author), which is fine, but it can also be used for your promoting. Write a strong call-to-action. Something that makes people have to click on the link you’ve provided (your landing page or affiliate link). Then place your link in there.

Optimizing your articles for the keyword:

Include the keyword at the very beginning of the article. Preferable try opening with the keyword if you can. Then, include the keyword with ever 100 words. Make the article flow. Don’t just place the keyword in there, make it part of the article itself.

Keyword selection:

There are various tools you can use to find keywords, one being Google’s Keyword tool. When search for keywords look for ones that are search at least 500 times a month, but when search with quotes around them, the results are around 10,000. This will help you rank well very quickly for the keyword.

Where to post your articles:

Submitting or posting your articles on the right websites is very crucial if you want to rank well. The #1 place to submit articles in as EzineArticles. These articles rank VERY well within the search engines. Others include AssociatedContent and ArticleBase.

EzineArticles is the #1 article directory, however it is for a reason. Google loves Ezine the most because it only accept unique articles, so post your articles to EzineArticles first and then you can post to other places. Another thing to keep in mind, Ezine does not allow affiliate links. You have to link to your own landing page or purchase a domain and forward the domain to your affiliate link. Godaddy has .info domains for only $0.89 for the first year, so they are very cheap.

Writing articles is a great way to drive traffic to your landing page/affiliate link. Not only does it drive traffic, but it also builds backlinks to your landing page which will help your landing pages’ ranking the in search engines.

One of the most popular methods to driving traffic to websites is to use the Pay Per Click (PPC) method. Although this will cost you to spend your money, unlike the free methods of SEO and article marketing, PPC is a very quick way to drive traffic, unlike the free methods which take time and work to do.

I’m sure you’ve notice text ads on websites and on the top and side of search engines. These are ads that people pay to have there. It costs them a certain amount of money each time someone clicks on the ad. This can range from $0.05 to several dollars a click!

Basically what you do is sign up for a Google adwords account or an other of the search engines ad programs. This also works with Facebook and Myspace.

Once you sign up, you can begin creating ads to drive traffic to your website. You create an ad with a attracting headline and details. Then you pick keywords that you want your ad to show up with. When someone searches the keyword, your ad will appear on the side.

Although this is a very quick and easy way to drive TARGET traffic to your website becuase you’re able to bid on the keywords. It’s a very easy way from those who do not know what they are doing to lose a lot of money.

You need to be sure your ads are relevant to the keyword, along with your website. You also need to target keywords that people who search them will be willing to purchase the product you’re promoting.

If you’re promoting a fat loss product, you’re going to want to find keywords relating to losing fat, inside of let’s say exercise workouts.

You need to keep your keywords and the product very similar to each other in order to have a good conversion rate, along with click through rate.

I tool I highly recommend for this is Keyword Spy. This tool allows you to look at other ads and their keywords to find the most profitable ones. Essentially you’re spying on other marketers ads that are making them money. This will allow you to create similar ads and take over your competition!

For beginners, PPC can be very risky, I recommend reading Beating Adwords, an eBook written by my friends Kyle and Carson from Wealthy Affiliate that is all about PPC advertising with Google. You can get Beating Adwords completely free when you join as at Wealthy Affiliate. If you don’t know Wealthy Affiliate, check out my full Wealthy Affiliate University review and to get the Beating Adwords bonus here.

One of the best free ways to generate traffic to your web pages/blogs/website etc. is through SEO (Search Engine Optimization). SEO is when you create a page on the Internet so that it will rank well in the search engines for specific keywords.

Let’s say you are promoting a dog training ebook that you found at ClickBank.com and let’s use Squidoo as our web page platform. You’re going to want to optimize your Squidoo lens so that your lens will be found in search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing’s listings. However, you want to optimize it well, so that you’re page is listed in the top results. Your goal should be, of course, listing #1 for the specific keyword.

Keyword phrases are what you want to optimize your Squidoo lens for. An example keyword phrase to promote a dog training ebook could be “How to Train a Dog” or something like that. Your keyword phrase is “How to Train a Dog” and you want to optimize your web page or in this case you Squidoo lens to rank well for “How to Train a Dog”.

Why you ask?

It’s quite simple really. When someone wants to learn how to train their dog, they’ll most likely use a search engine like Google and type in “How to Train a Dog”. When your page is the #1 result, those how search for “How to Train a Dog” will see your listing first and for the most part, click on your listing. It will then bring them to your, in this case, Squidoo lens where you have your affiliate link to a dog training ebook.

In a nutshell, SEO is just creating a web page to rank high in the search engines, so you can generate absolutely free AND targeted traffic. Don’t worry, this is definitely not the end to SEO posts, in fact, it has it’s own category.

If you haven’t heard of Squidoo and you want to make money online, especially as an affiliate marketer, then you need to read this post in it’s entirety. Squidoo is a community website that allows it’s users to create pages (called lenses) for subjects of interest. In other words, you can create good-looking landing pages with your affiliate link in it with Squidoo. It’s completely free to use, no upgrades or anything like that.

One of the great things about Squidoo is that it’s a web 2.0 property, which in the short sense means it’s an interactive site also meaning Google and other search engines love them.  Other examples are wordpress, blogger, facebook, etc.

What sets Squidoo apart from all the others is that it allows you to just create a single page. You don’t need a blog for it. Just a single page.

They are extremely easy to create and use, rank high in the search engines, very cool looking pages to keep interest in the viewers of your lens (page) and the best part is that you can make money with Squidoo!

Now, of course, you can put your affiliate links throughout your Squidoo lenses, but Squidoo also allows you to make money from them.

One really cool feature about Squidoo is that they have a bunch of really nice modules you can add to your lens. Whether it’s a poll, picture, Big arrow (make your affiliate link stand out from the rest of the page), amazon modules, itunes modules, etc.

You can place Amazon modules on your lens that creates a feed of different products that will be listed on your lens. When someone clicks on the amazon product and purchases it, you earn money.

I could go on and on about Squidoo and trust me, you’ll hear much more from me in the future, but for right now, you need to download this free ebook:

When first starting out as an affiliate marketing, you’re very eager to get earning as fast as possible. Let’s be honest here, who isn’t? However, affiliate marketing is surely not a get rich quick thing, instead affiliate marketing is a business like any other and it takes time to build a successful affiliate marketing business.

Although, there are some who have been able to “get it right” their first time. Now, getting it right could mean anything because in this business it’s about doing what works for you. Just because one person is successful following one method, doesn’t mean anybody can do this method and be successful too. So, affiliate marketing takes time to become successful, but it can be done.

Now, getting back onto the topic at hand. Many people starting out are ready to get this whole thing going and start making some money. They quickly find a product and grab their affiliate link and now it’s about driving traffic to it, so they can make some money. However, this is a part many beginners ignore and times are a changing and it just doesn’t work anymore. Many link their traffic directly to the product/sales page, this is known as direct linking.

Many beginners start off doing this and then become discouraged because they send all this traffic, paid or free, directly to the product/sales page and see low conversion rates. Conversion rates are just comparing how many visitors does it take to get a sale.

The beginner has low conversion rates for one of two reasons or perhaps both. They are direct linking, so those who click on the add are only curious and not actually ready to buy or the beginner didn’t target his audience well enough.

The problem with direct linking is you can write up a very intriguing ad, but those clicking on the ad are only intrigued and are not really looking to buy. So they simple visit the sales/product page, check it out and leave. That’s it. Never to return again.

Direct linking is way to fast and the visitor needs to be extremely targeted, perhaps one who is actually looking to buy that specific product right now and that’s how they came across your add.

Now, you can definitely make sales direct linking, don’t get me wrong, however it’s going to be a low conversion rate, so you’ll need many more visitors to make a sale.

Later, we’ll talk about what you can do instead of direct linking to help increase your conversion rates and boost your sales.

In you haven’t yet, be sure to sign up to me free 5-day make money online mini course, I know you’ll find a lot of helpful information over the next 5 days. At least, so I’ve heard from my subscribers.

One of the great things about affiliate marketing is that it’s a business that can be completely free to run. Honestly, you can drive traffic to the product page or your own landing page made on places like Squidoo, Hubpages. Your own blogs on blogger, wordpress. A website on Weebly. You can write articles related to product and it’s purpose ans submit them for free to article directories to drive traffic to your pages.

However, paying for products and services can help improve your affiliate marketing business and if you’re just starting out, it’s always best to get the right training on affiliate marketing. These all cost you money out of your pocket, but some of you may not have too much money, if any, to invest.

So, a great way to fuel your affiliate marketing expenses like training, software tools, etc. is to take surveys and get paid for them. Now, like many seem to think, surveys will not replace your 9-5 job. You do not make much money taking them, however, if you’re properly trained and you work hard, affiliate marketing can definitely allow you to quit your job.

You can earn a buck or two a survey, but when you take enough, they can surely add up and help cover any affiliate marketing expenses you may have.

A great paid survey place that is free to join is CashCrate. I’ve used it many times to help earn a few bucks here and there to help cover my training and software purchases which can really speed up your affiliate marketing business.

Taking a couple surveys each day that will take you only a couple minutes each can very well cover your expenses. Don’t invest the money you earn from your current job, take online surveys and use that money you earn from them.

So in the previous blog most we talked about how affiliate marketing works, in short. People purchase a good or service through your affiliate link and you earn commission. So now it’s about driving traffic or potential customers to your affiliate link, so they can hopefully purchase the good/service and you make money.

There are many ways of driving traffic to your affiliate link, but there are two paths you can take. The Free Path and the Paid Path. Now, of course, you can use both paths to drive traffic. But, depending on how much you have to invest, if at all, it’s best to know each path.

The Free Path – Their are advantages and disadvantages to each path, as for the Free Path, it’s going to require you to work more.

The Paid Path - Although you have to pay for this traffic, it’s much less work for you.

When determining which path is best for you, it really comes down to how much money and how much time you have to invest. The free method, although it costs you no money, it does cost your time. The free path includes methods like Article Marketing and SEO (those are the major ones). SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which is basically ranking your web pages high in the search engine listings, so you get free, organic traffic to your page from the search engines.

Free Path Suggested reading: Who Loves Money <– Get it free when you sign up for WA.

The Paid path is NOT purchasing one of those “10,000 hits to your web page for $20″ thing. No, those are complete rip-offs. Paid traffic is when you pay to post ads, like using Google Adwords. I’m sure you’ve noticed the advertisements on websites and in the search engines. Each time someone clicks on their ad, it costs them money, however it’s sending traffic to their web page, where hopefully they purchase the product.

Paid Path Suggested Reading: Beating Adwords <– Get it free when you sign up for WA through this link only.

Of course, I’ll be getting into much more detail with each of these methods in the future on this blog, so be sure to subscribe to my RSS feed to receive blog post updates and if you haven’t already, sign up for my free 5-Day Make Money Online Mini course to learn more.