If you’re new to affiliate marketing there’s a great chance that you’re feeling overwhelmed. There’s so much to do and so much to learn. You need to keep your eyes on the prize: making one sale, and then another and another.

Here’s how to do that: create a plan.

1. It All Starts when You Sell Something

Affiliate marketing is all about sales. It’s not about websites, traffic, or graphics, it’s about making sales.

Everything else is just a distraction. The first thing you have to do is to make one sale. Once you’ve made your first few sales you’ll be amazed at how easy affiliate marketing really is.

2. Create a Blog, Create a Review

I’m assuming that you’ve already chosen your first affiliate product. If you haven’t chosen a product, do that now. Got your affiliate link? Great.

Go to Blogger and set up a blog with the same name as the product you’re selling and “review” tacked onto the end of it. If your product is highly popular, you may need to tinker with the name until you can get an URL which no one else is using.

Now write a review of your product and publish it on the blog.

(Don’t be tempted to fiddle with the blog, changing the template, or adding other extraneous material to it. Your aim is to make a sale, not to have a great looking blog.)

3. Advertise Your Review

Now you’ve got a review page on the blog, you make sales by sending traffic to that review. A small percentage of your site visitors will buy your product. Therefore the more targeted traffic you can send to the review the better.

Beware of promotional tactics which will send you traffic, but which don’t make sales for you.

Social media marketing is notorious for sending traffic which doesn’t convert. In general social media marketing sites like Twitter and Facebook are not great at sending you targeted traffic. You may get lots of site visitors but not make a single sale.

4. Choose Another Product

Now the process starts all over again with another product. Can you see how simple this process is? As long as you keep your eyes on the prize — sales — affiliate marketing is amazingly simple. Only you can make it complicated.

I’ve heard from affiliate marketers who “studied” for three years without selling a single product.

Don’t be like them. Makes sales — it really is simple — here’s a tip: join Wealthy Affiliate if you’re new, it will boost your success fast.

What if you had 1000 websites, each making $3 a day?

Yes, that would be $3000 a day, which is over ONE MILLION dollars a year. That would take care of the mortgage, wouldn’t it? If you think this is just a dream, explore the Mini Site Formula. You could be well on the way to your 1000 sites within a day or two.

New to affiliate marketing? You can make money online with affiliate mini sites. In this article will look at four easy steps so you can create your first site today.

Here’s the affiliate mini site process:

1. Create a Small Web Site With One Primary Page

Affiliate mini sites are small websites. They have one primary page, as well as standard pages such as a privacy policy page, an “about” page, and a contact page.

You can use the primary page to write a review of your chosen affiliate product. Make the review comprehensive and interesting, and make sure that you close with a call to action — the call to action will lead the reader to the affiliate product sales page.

2. Advertise the Site

Your next step is to promote your small site. If you’ve created your affiliate mini site in WordPress, WordPress offers RSS feeds, and you should promote the site’s feed. Add the feed to RSS directories, and you’ll start getting traffic immediately. Since Google loves WordPress, your new site should be indexed quickly, often within hours.

Promote your site in any way you can. If you have some capital to invest, use Pay Per Click marketing. This is a fast way to get traffic and sales.

No money? Use free methods of promotion. You can use online classified sites, article directories, and forum marketing.

3. Got Sales? Do More Advertising

When you’re creating affiliate mini sites, your aim is to create many sites, not just one or two. Some sites will make sales for you immediately, other sites will take time. I’ve had sites which have taken up to six months to make a sale. Since it just took me a couple of hours to create the site, I’m not in the least concerned how long it takes to make sales.

Once you’ve made a sale from a site, do a little more promotion and advertising for this site. Some of your affiliate mini sites will be hot, and some will really take off.

4. Create Your Next Affiliate Mini Site

Creating these small sites is a process. The more sites you create, the more money you will make. So once you’ve completed one site, create another. The only limit on your income is your own enterprise.

What if you had 1000 websites, each making $3 a day?

Yes, that would be $3000 a day, which is over ONE MILLION dollars a year. That would take care of the mortgage, wouldn’t it? If you think this is just a dream, explore the Mini Site Formula. You could be well on the way to your 1000 sites within a day or two.

Getting started with Internet marketing?

There’s a lot to learn: how to create a website, how to FTP, how to write articles, how to do PPC, how to add pictures and graphics, and on and on. You can and will learn all these things, but there are three components you really need to learn about for your internet marketing business to succeed. Without all three of these, you won’t be as successful as you could be. You might make sales, but not near the number you could be making.

1. You have to be trustworthy.

If your website screams “Buy, buy, buy!” and you don’t give them good content and show that you know what you’re talking about, they probably won’t trust you or buy from you. If your site is one big walking, talking ad with the maximum number of AdSense ads, promotion pitch after promotion pitch, and banners stuck all over the place, potential customers are going to run the other way. They need to trust you before they offer you their credit card info. Take a look at your site through the customer’s eyes and see what they see. Pull back on the AdSense, banner ads, etc. and make it a classy website.

2. You have to offer value.

Start with giving away something free, like a report, in exchange for their opting in to your list. That’s your first chance to show off what you know and offer incredible value. You might argue that “free” doesn’t mean you have to give something valuable, but I disagree. How would it make you feel if a carpet cleaning company who wants your business came out and cleaned one of your rooms for free, and did a lousy job? Do you want to purchase from them?

After they’re on your list, continue to send them free valuable info. Perhaps a well-researched article or short PDF will make them open their eyes to just how much information you know. The next product you produce and promote and over-deliver on will entice your “free” customers to become paying customers again and again.

3. You need traffic.

This can be tough obstacle for any new marketer to overcome. You can put together the most valuable, crazy, insane offer ever, but if no one knows about it, you won’t make those sales you’re dreaming of. Make a point of studying how to get traffic a priority. Research all the avenues of increasing your traffic and take action. Invest in a course if need be – it’s that important to get traffic. Of course it should be targeted traffic, not just any old traffic. You want people who are looking for what you’ve got; they’re more likely to turn into buyers.

There are no guarantees that you will be wildly successful with internet marketing, but if you spending time on these three components, you stand a good chance of getting results you can be happy with.

Selling Online? Increase your profits

Web copywriting skills are an essential tool for your online business success.

Whatever you’re selling: whether it’s your own products and service, or whether you’re acting as an affiliate for others, you must know how to sell online.

I’ve been coaching business owners in do-it-yourself copywriting skills for several years, simply because I believe that the person who knows the most about a product is the best copywriter for it.

Now I’ve turned that material into an ebook packed with tips – Angela Booth’s “Web Copywriting Profits: DIY Copywriting”. Discover how you can increase your profits today.