Beginners Affiliate Marketing Guide For Bloggers & YouTubers – 2024 Tutorial

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What is Affiliate Marketing
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In making money online, affiliate marketing is a skill-based approach, anyone could learn that. It is one of those segments of the online world, that doesn’t require any degree or formal education.

Want to understand what is Affiliate marketing?

Keep reading to learn everything about this popular passive income method.

My Journey with affiliate marketing started in 2008 when I accidentally read about it on a discussion forum. I was surprised to know how something so simple and powerful is not taught in college, or very few talk about it.

With this guide, I aim to help you understand affiliate marketing, so you can apply this technique to any field you are in to make money.

But why should you listed to what I’m saying?

Because I have been into affiliate marketing since 2008, and have been passionately practicing it, talking about it, and also making life-changing money.

But, don’t trust me blindly.

Here are the proof’s

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1.2 Million Dollars and counting…

Here is a screenshot of other affiliate programs that I promote:

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The above one took about two years to accomplish.

And here is another one:

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This one was an outcome of 2 and a half years.

However, the real question is:

How did I achieve this result, and can you do it too?

The key here is your zeal to learn and how badly you want to live a free life.

I have accomplished all this by working only 10-12 hours daily on things I’m passionate about. Not even a single day of my online career has felt like pressure or something I did not want to do.

The only thing that creates a differentiator is, I did not cheat my way up. Those 6-8 hours of work were complete dedication, and based on my 14 years of experience, I could say:

Anyone with a decent IQ could start making $1000-3000 within 6-8 months by practicing every day for 2-3 hours.

How to do this?

Well, We will dwell on details and more technicalities of affiliate marketing as we move ahead in this free course, but for now, let’s learn the basics.

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This book contains all the secrets of affiliate marketing that no one wants you to know. It could enable you to make up to $1000/month in passive income with the help of affiliate marketing

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“The Handbook To Affiliate Marketing By Harsh Agrawal is the only resource you will ever need to learn about Affiliate marketing” – James Rowett

Before that…

If this is your first time here at ShoutMeLoud, you should know that…

In the last 13 years, ShoutMeLoud has inspired millions of lives around the globe to help them earn passive income via blogging and affiliate marketing. 

It would not have been possible if I took the risk of living my day job to pursue my passion. When I think about this, I find it amazing as for how my life unfolded when I took the courage to start something of my own. I feel this is something you and other individuals should try once to go beyond our limitations.

The only caveat is, that this is not something you will read in academic books or a point of discussion with friends over drinks. This is one of those skills that you learn yourself by reading a guide like this or watching YouTube videos like this.

With this Affiliate marketing guide, I want to provide you with all the details about:

  • Basics of Affiliate marketing
  • How Affiliate marketing works
  • How to get started with Affiliate marketing
  • Affiliate marketing Terminologies

This is your go-to guide, and you should bookmark this one along with all linked articles to master the art of affiliate marketing. 

If you are someone who likes to read everything in the book format, you can purchase our affiliate marketing handbook from our store as well.

Alright, let’s get started.

What is affiliate marketing, and how does it work?

Affiliate marketing is one of the oldest forms of digital marketing wherein you refer someone to any online product and when that person buys the product based on your recommendation, you receive a commission.

Every big company like Amazon, Apple, and Google have an affiliate program, which is free to join by any individual across the globe. If you didn’t know about this, then pay close attention to the rest of this guide, my friend; you are about to discover one of the most exciting aspects of making money from home.

A company that offers an affiliate marketing program might call it by other names, such as “Referral Program” or “Partners program”.

This commission varies from $1 to $10,000 depending on what product you are promoting.

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Here is how affiliate marketing works in 4 simple steps:

  1. You join an affiliate program (Here is a list to get started)
  2. You pick a product to promote (You will get a unique affiliate link)
  3. You share the link via Social media, Blog, YouTube videos, Facebook ads or any other form
  4. When someone makes a purchase, you earn a handsome affiliate commission.

The below infographic will help you understand the lifecycle of affiliate marketing:

What is Affiliate Marketing
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So, in simple words:

Any company that sells products online, offers an affiliate program, which is free to join. It is as simple as creating an online profile.

You can simply sign up for the program and get your unique tracking link. Now, whenever you are writing about their product, you can simply use this unique tracking affiliate link to recommend the company’s site.  You will get a commission if your readers/traffic buy anything by clicking your affiliate link.

Is it as easy as it sounds?

Yes, and no!

Yes, because of 2 reasons:

  1. Joining an affiliate program
  2. Getting paid

Is super easy. Thanks to advancements in digital marketing, and services like PayPal and Payoneer, this all is automated.

The tough part is, how badly you want this.

To become successful in affiliate marketing, you need to train regularly (Daily). Think of this as learning to play cricket, and the only way you get better is by showing up every day on the ground.

And then there is another part, as we gain more responsibilities in life like (job, kids, parents, spouse, weekend parties), we find it hard to dedicate time for acquiring learning new skills.

This is where the question comes:

How badly do you need this?

If your want or need falls in the “unsure” segment, take a 360 view of life, and ask what is that you have to lose and what are the possible gains.

If dedicating 1-2 hours a day for few months could give you financial freedom for life, it doesnot sound like a bad deal.

Moreover, it is a proven method that works!

Moving on…

Also, see:

How to Start Affiliate marketing for beginners:

You can get started with Affiliate marketing in many ways.

Here are a few that you can pick from:

  • Start a blog in a targeted niche and use it to promote a product. This is the cheapest and easiest way to start an affiliate marketing business. For example: Start a blog about Women’s shoes, Work from home products, and so on.
  • Buy traffic from PPC sites like Google, Facebook, and Quora and drive traffic to affiliate products or services. This is called PPC marketing, and those who have taken a basic course of digital marketing could understand it better. For rest, give it a little time, and you will understand this.
  • Create a YouTube channel and promote products.
  • Create an email list by creating a mini-website. An example if Finshots
  • Start a Podcast and recommend products.

Here are steps to get started with affiliate marketing via your blog:

This is just a rough highlight, as we move ahead in this free course, you will understand everything in greater depth and length to create your own affiliate marketing system.

  1. Start a blog
  2. Select a profitable industry and then pick a niche for your blog
  3. Choose the affiliate products that you can promote
  4. Create content around those products
  5. Drive traffic to your website/affiliate post
  6. Use email-marketing services to capture email of visitors
  7. Create email-sequence to automate the funnel (We will discuss this in details soon)
  8. Focus on driving more traffic and repeating the process.

Blogging is one of the most effective ways to get started with affiliate marketing because it requires minimum investment and you can learn everything around it in no time. From here on, what matters it how much dedication, time, and smart work you put in to grow your affiliate business.

Affiliate marketing terminologies:

Here are some of the common terms associated with affiliate marketing:

  • Affiliates: Publishers like you and me who are using affiliate program links to promote and make sales.
  • Affiliate marketplace: There are many marketplaces like Shareasale, CJ, and Clickbank. These work as central databases for affiliate programs in different niches.
  • Affiliate software: Software used by companies to create an affiliate program for their product.
  • Affiliate link: Special tracking link offered by your affiliate program to track the progress of your affiliate promotion.
  • Affiliate ID: Similar to the affiliate link, but many affiliate programs offer a unique ID which you can add to any page of the product site.
  • Payment mode: Different affiliate programs offer different methods of payment.
    • Example: Cheque, wire transfer, PayPal, and others.
  • Affiliate Manager/OPM: Many companies have dedicated affiliate managers to help publishers earn more by giving them optimization tips.
  • Commission percentage/amount: The amount or percentage you will be receiving in affiliate income from every sale.
  • 2-tier affiliate marketing: This is a great way of making money from an affiliate program. With this method, you recommend that others join affiliate programs, and you receive a commission when a sub-affiliate makes a sale (similar to MLM or multi-level marketing). This income is also known as a sub-affiliate commission.
  • Landing pages: A unique product sales or demo page used for the purpose of increasing sales. Most of the programs that you will be promoting have many landing pages, and you can run A/B testing to see which pages convert best for you.
  • Custom affiliate income/account: Unlike a generic affiliate account, many companies offer custom affiliate income to people making the most affiliate sales for them.
  • Link clocking: Most of the affiliate tracking links are ugly. Using a link clocking technique like URL shorteners, Thirsty Affiliates, etc., you can turn ugly links into links that can be read and understood by your readers.
  • Custom coupons: Many programs allow affiliates to create custom coupons which are also used to track sales. Custom discount coupons help you to increase affiliate sales as well.

For companies offering an affiliate program, this is one of the best ways to receive free promotion, thus saving substantially on advertising.

For example, whenever you see coupons or discount links, most of the time these are affiliate links, and when you make a purchase, webmasters make money.

Every affiliate program has a set TOS.

For example, payout condition, cookie policy and so on.

Let me explain cookie policy as it’s an intermediate-level topic but will give you an idea about the possibilities of affiliate marketing.

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Many of the affiliate products offer a 30-150 days cookie period, which means that if a visitor clicks your affiliate link to land on an affiliate product, now even if they don’t buy anything immediately but re-visit the site in the next 30-150 days, you will earn an affiliate commission.

How to find a new Affiliate Program to join?

Finding a new affiliate program is challenging, and if you do it right, you will increase your chances of earning huge.

Here are a few ways to find new affiliate programs:

  • Affiliate Network and marketing platform: There are affiliate networks and marketplaces that would help you find new affiliate programs.
  • Affiliatizer: This is a chrome addon that would help you find the new affiliate program.
  • Competitor analysis: Analyze the top websites in the niche you are targeting, and make a list of affiliate products they promote. This will help you find high-value and profitable affiliate products.

I have also published a long list of affiliate programs that is worth looking at:

Moving on…

Affiliate Marketing: FAQ

At this point, you should understand what affiliate marketing is and how it works.

Now, let me answer some of the common questions asked by webmasters and marketers about affiliate marketing:

How much money you can make as an affiliate marketer?

“Limitless”.
There are affiliate marketers who are making millions of dollars a month via affiliate marketing. I personally make more than $30000/month from Affiliate marketing. Below you could see a screenshot of my earnings from one such affiliate program:

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The key here is how you are approaching the whole process. Are you using a blog or using PPC to market affiliate products. The one that I have been using from the past 10 years, is via blogging. This has been the most effective one so far.

Is it important to have a blog for affiliate promotion?

Not necessarily, but a blog is really the best promotional tool. With that said, you can always use methods such as PPC or advertising to promote a product.
This is another popular method to grow in affiliate marketing. For me, the best way to make the most out of affiliate marketing opportunities is to have a blog. Learn how to start a blog here.

How much does it cost to join an affiliate program?

There is no charge for joining an affiliate program, however, your total cost depends on what promotion technique you are using. For example, a blog post doesn’t cost a dime, but PPC marketing, email marketing, and advertising come with various price tags.

What qualifications do I need to become an affiliate marketer?

There is literally no qualification required to become an affiliate marketer, though having good copywriting skills and marketing skills will be an added advantage.

Is affiliate marketing harmful or illegal?

No, it is neither harmful nor illegal, as you will simply be using the affiliate link provided to you rather than a direct link to any site.
However, in a certain jurisdictions, you are supposed to disclose that you may be compensated for endorsing the product. Read our guide on Affiliate disclosure to learn more about it.

What are some of the profitable niches for affiliate marketing?
Anything related to money: such as making money online, how to save, how to invest, and making money from home.
Relationships: Business relationships, finding romantic partners, getting along better with spouse
Health: Relieving pain, weight loss, sexual health, fitness, nutrition
Learning new skills: Online courses, coaching, teaching
Cryptocurrencies
Wearables gadgets
Personal Finance
Dog care
Travel
Web-hosting (too high competition)

Not all companies offer an affiliate program, of course, but for those that do offer affiliate programs, you can check their website for related information. When searching, be sure to check the company’s FAQ page if they have one.

Another way to find this information is to do a simple Google search. For example, one could place the following phrase into Google Search:  “(product name) + affiliate program”. (Replace “product name” with the name of the product you are promoting.) There is an interesting chrome addon called Affilitizer is available which makes this process easy.

This should bring you to a landing page. Many companies use an affiliate marketplace like ShareASale, CJ, or Clickbank. These are free to use and you can create a free account.

How do I find new products to promote?

Affiliate marketplaces such as those mentioned above are the best places to start your affiliate marketing research. You can browse your niche and see the top performing affiliate programs.

Alternatively, you can keep an eye on blogs in your niche and see which products they are promoting and what methods they are using.

Affiliate marketing and AdSense: Can we use both?

You can use both as affiliate marketing does not violate any AdSense TOS. In fact, for me, affiliate marketing works better than Adsense, and that is one reason you see fewer AdSense ads here at ShoutMeLoud.

How do I get started with Affiliate marketing?

Here at ShoutMeLoud, I and many guest authors have covered some of the best guides to help you to understand in depth about getting started, and some of the pros and cons.

Read: How to start an Affiliate marketing business

Here is a list from our affiliate marketing archive which will help you to get started:

I would also highly recommend you purchase ShoutMeLoud’s The Affiliate Marketing eBook. This a comprehensive guide on getting started with affiliate marketing.

Update: ShoutUniversity Affiliate video course is live (New). Available at an introductory price of $149 (Regular price $199)

I hope this beginner’s guide to affiliate marketing will help you get started. If you have any additional questions, feel free to ask me in the comments section below.

Be sure to join ShoutMeLoud email newsletter to get more similar tips and updates.

If you find this article informative, do share it with your friends!

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Authored By
A Blogger, Author and a speaker! Harsh Agrawal is recognized as a leader in digital marketing and FinTech space. Fountainhead of ShoutMeLoud, and a Speaker at ASW, Hero Mindmine, Inorbit, IBM, India blockchain summit. Also, an award-winning blogger.

113 thoughts on “Beginners Affiliate Marketing Guide For Bloggers & YouTubers – 2024 Tutorial”

  1. Hiren

    sir, your article on affiliate marketing is very goods. it clear most of my doubts. i went to know about amazon and flipkart. if i am displaying in my website x product that link is clink by my viewer but after clinking it purchases other product say y product in this case can i get commission or not. if i went get most of product than i have to make general link to product link electronic or mobile get more product from get commission.
    thank you in advance

  2. Manoj Mali

    Hi Harsh,

    I wanted to know if I can track the list of items sold with my affiliate id? and if is possible the way by which we can achieve it?

    Thanks
    Manoj Mali

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      @Manooj
      All the affiliate program you are signed up with, provide details of plan/items sold via your affiliate links.

  3. Piyush Golani

    Hello Harsh,
    Happy you hear that we can use affiliate marketing and Google Adsense at the same time.

    But I have one question, What if somebody is already having 3 Google ads unit and what if he/she adds one or 2 more affiliate links ? Will it now violate Google adsense terms ?

  4. Sanjay Sajeev

    Hi Harsh. I don’t want to praise your blog post about affiliate marketing. because it has already done by the above commentators. So Harsh, How many affiliate links a post is suitable? I’m already an affiliate partner of Aweber, but i have just started my blog and getting only 10-20 traffics per day. So that I’m going to write a review post about Aweber for including my affiliate link. I know that it will be very difficult to make sales from my blog with this traffic. So I’ll promote my Review post via facebook promotion. In future, my blog will have a decent amount of traffic, that time i will join more affiliate programs. That why i asked the above question. How many affiliate links a post?

  5. Vibhuti

    Very well written article about affiliate marketing. You have described everything about it. I really needed to know about basics of it so that i can continue your article ” how to start with affiliate marketing ” 🙂

    1. phani

      Hello sir Harsh agarwal sir ,

      It is not easy to get traffic , sales and leads with a website sir .

      It takes some days / months / years .

      I assume that the following are necessary to work the cj with a website .

      1) Domain name / web hosting / designing

      2) SEO / PPC / Adwords / adsense

      3) free traffic sources and paid traffic sources like adwords etc

      4) Email marketing like Aweber / getresponse etc

      5) Content writing / youtube videos creation / creation of landing / squeeze pages etc

      6) Hiring freelancer

      I think the cost of above 6 points is including more than 1 lakh per month .

      But there is no gurantee to get traffic / sales and leads .

      Then , What is the use sir ?

      Why should i do these sir ?

      I unable to do from 1 st to 6th points sir

      What should i do ?

      Is it possible to get traffic with out a website sir ?

      What is ur best suggestion sir ?

      PHANI
      HYD
      INDIA

      1. Durgalakshmi

        The right method to avoid such huge expenditure is to bootstrap step by step with a small free blog and build a small cash flow of $25 a month. Then get a hosting and aweber. By this time you would have learnt about how to get free traffic for any program

        1. Harsh Agrawal

          @Durgalakshmi
          That’s one solid advice.

        2. Sanjeet Veen

          @Durga Lakshmi, Very wonderful advice. Blogging should be started small, build your reputation and audience, make small amounts initially re-invest half of what you earned from blogs in further improving it. Then, finally you’re there.

  6. Yogita Aggarwal

    Thanks Harsh for mentioning all the basics of Affiliate marketing. Though I am totally new to affiliate marketing this one is the great read for me.

  7. keyur savaliya

    Harsh,i am new to all this as i am mechanical engg. student.
    could you answer me following questions?
    is it possible to make money by become affiliate of any top e-commerce site and promote their products via facebook ads or any other way?
    is it against of e-comm. site affiliates?

    1. Kishor Mhaskar

      Hey Keyur,

      If you become affiliate for any product/ services. You can promote it by various means as you want ( as long as ethical ). For example Blogging , Email marketing, PPC and lot more. You should check with affiliate program what is allowed and what is not. There may be some restrictions ad you must follow them.

      Yes Facebook Ads are one of the good way. I am doing lot more stuff with facebook.

      Thanks
      Kishor Mhaskar

  8. kapil

    hi harsh i understand affiliate program can you tell me any affiliate program of online shopping mall actually i started with a company (online shopping mall) but now they are not sending products to customers so please tell me i want to start online store again if you know any company than pls tell me with their website link
    thanks & regards
    Kapill

  9. Ankur Khanna

    Hi,

    Great article on Affiliate Marketing for newbies. I am an affiliate marketer myself and have been using OMG India’s affiliate network to sell products. I’ve tried different networks like tyroo, vcommission but if I were to rate them, OMG India would definitely come first.

    I’ve been getting constant payouts (60days) and I do call them up whenever I have any tracking problem. If you guys haven’t tried any indian affiliate network, then I really urge you to try Omg India! You can google more about it if you want 🙂

  10. Kishor

    Thanks Harsh for such a detail info. This would be like a quick reference guide for beginner Affiliate Marketer.

    I am very much an of your writing and truly speaking you and Amit Agarawal ( from labnol.org ) are the marketers who inspired me a lot to start in IM 2 years back.

    It would be very nice if you can write ( and I know you will) more about this like , different networks, different methods and mainly legal and taxation procedures for Affiliate / Internet marketers in India.

    -Kishor Mhaskar

  11. aditya

    Hey there,
    I am a blogger already however need to deep dive into affiliate programs. Thanks for the wonderful and informative post on affiliate!
    I want to know how do you keep track of the affiliate links? For example, if you want to check total sales at one place for all the different brands and different products you were running affiliates for. Like if i have affiliate links for Hostgator and Bluehost and lets say Godaddy, I want to avoid going to their individual dashboards to check the total sales and see all the sales at one place in some common place/dashboard. Any suggestions?
    Cheers
    aditya

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      @Aditya
      There is a software call Nifty stats which works with many affiliate marketplace including AdSense.. But as you mentioned (For HG, BH, Godaddy), it won’t work with it..And I have not come across any such software which works with them…!!
      If I will come across any such software, I would let you know. Thanks for your comment. 🙂

  12. Umm-E-Abdullah

    You have very nice & informative blodg. One thing I would like to ask that Can I use affiliate programs on blogger hosted blog?

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      @Umm
      Yes, you can use affiliate program on BlogSpot blogs…

      1. sohail

        Hey Harsh,

        A simple and quick question, can we use both OMGPM affiliate program and Adsense monitzation on a single website, will it impact the income or adsense account?

        Please let me know, awaiting for your response!

        Thanks,
        Sohail

        1. Harsh Agrawal

          Hi sohail

          Yes, you can!

    2. Vipin

      it’ll be much useful if you use a top-level domain with your blogspot blog rather than .blogspot.com , it looks much professional 🙂

  13. Pradeep Venkatesan

    Hey,Harsh recently i logged on to the CJ website and i was reading the terms and conditions the publisher must know to promote an advertiser’s product .I came across this line that all the relations with an advertiser are “on a contract basis” and the “publisher is obliged to do his job for payouts ” .Does this mean that for suppose any XYZ reason i am not able to dynamically make updates as an affiliate ..would that create kind of a loss to me in terms of money ! ???

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      @Pradeep
      CJ is a marketplace, and when you apply for any particular affiliate product, you need to accept the TOS put by the affiliate company. That means, minimum payout, and usage of ads and similar terms…. You will not lose money, but your payout may delay, if you can’t fulfil the minimum requirement…

  14. Ambika Choudhary Mahajan

    Great post, as usual! 🙂
    While affiliate marketing can earn you much more than adsense can (as you have also pointed out), the most important thing is to get traffic to the blog.
    Nothing will work well- neither adsense nor aff mktg or direct ads as long as you are not getting enough traffic.
    Once you start getting traffic, particularly organic traffic, the sky is the limit!
    I am sure Harsh will agree to this- he has been doing it successfully for a long time now.
    (Y)

  15. Kris

    Thanks for the info. I use sharesale but still not work for me. should i use clickbank for this purpose.

  16. Santanu

    Wow!! Harshe you are a genious man. Just gone through this article. Never read affiliate marketing in such a detail. But my problem is, for a multi niche blog like i run, can you please tell me wheather there is any scope of affiliate programs that I can target….Thanks in Advance.

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      @Santanu
      You can…All you need to do is find out..The programs/Apps/services you write about offers Affiliate program or not..
      MOst of premium online services offer Affiliate programs … A simple Google search “Program Name + Affiliate ” will help…. Ex: “Hostgator Affiliate”

      1. Santanu

        Thanks a lot Harsh for your time. I tried to find out few of them for India, as my blog concentrate on India, Blogging and Personal finance. So far I found Makemytrip, Yatra.com and Flipkart affiliate programs. I will try them.

        If you have any idea regarding them, kindly guide me.

        Thanks

  17. Newton Adera

    I am glad about this post that Harsh has explored in deep .I agree with you,but many newbies like i dont have website.Many sites asks for personal website.Again sites like ezine.com will allow you to write good content articles and then you place aff.link in Resource Box

  18. Shiwangi peswani

    Hey Harsh, you have given a detailed post about affiliate marketing but the only thing which I want to learn about Affiliate Marketing is still missing here and that it ‘How To Promote A Product with your Affiliate Link?’

    1. Amit Shaw

      Shiwangi, There are lots of way to promote your affiliate product, You can do offline as well as online.
      If you have blog with targeted visit then i will suggest you to write review on that product and do some on-page SEO and try to rank on SERP and get ready to boost your sales.
      Here are some other way : Email Marketing, Banner Ads, Signature Etc.
      Thanks for this Post Harsh. 🙂
      Cheers 🙂

  19. Alan Tay

    Probably you might want to start a post on why newbies usually fail in affiliate marketing 😉

    There is no doubt that affiliate marketing is one of the method to earn from internet and I personally prefer this over Google Adsense.

    However, being a starter as an affiliate can be a challenge because there is a lot of doubt whether, “Does this really works?” or ” Why would people buy from me?” and etc.

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      @Alan
      One simply rule: If someone is recommending a good product with all the honestly, it will surely work. Newbies, usually impose product on readers, rather than giving them an option, and unbiased review…. This is one reason, most of newbies struggle to fail…. \

      More over, a good idea is to pick a complete new product, which is useful and not mentioned at lots of places…

  20. akhilendra

    Affiliate marketing is a very good way of learning also. When you do affiliate marketing, you are constantly looking for good products and then you come across something which you cannot only sell to others but also it extend your knowledge base.

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