If you are part of an affiliate marketing or an Internet marketing forum, be sure to make a post telling everyone about your first sale if it is allowed.  Your first affiliate marketing sale really is a big deal and it should be celebrated.

Why is your first sale such a big deal? Because affiliate marketing is so unlike off-line business and it really does take a special understanding of the way people buy online in order to be able to make it work.

All of this is such new technology and it changes all the time so anyone who figures it out really is special. Affiliate marketing is not for the lazy, weak, or for people who can’t focus.

Now that you have made your first sale, now what? Do you just sit back and wait for another one? No! Absolutely not – now is the time to step up your efforts.  Now is the time to look very closely at the sale you made and where it came from or where you think it came from if you’re not sure and figure out how to do more of that.

Obviously something that you did worked and if you can do it again and again and in more places or on more websites you will be in a better position tomorrow to make even more sales.

Some affiliate programs let you track your links so that you can figure out exactly where your sales came from. This may be a good time to get into your affiliate program’s documentation and figure out if you can track your links if you aren’t already.

Hopefully the excitement from your first sale will motivate you to double your efforts. It takes a wide net and a lot of work to make sales online. But the 80/20 principle does apply here. 80% of your results will calm from 20% of your efforts – so always be watching your sales to see what you believe that 20% is.

If your first sale came from a specific page on your website, then perhaps you can put up another page like that that just takes a slightly different angle. Or perhaps you should start trying to get more links to that page or send more traffic to that page. Where exactly is that page ranking in Google? Is there any way for you to get it to rank higher?  These are the kinds of questions you want to ask yourself once you have gotten that first sale and hence proven to yourself that what you are doing is working.

The more you can do things that work over and over, the more sales you are going to get. Here’s to many more sales – and soon!

In fact, your free webpages can bring in money that will help you grow your business and then can serve as assets by providing places for you to put links to your own websites, once you create them.

So let’s talk about all the places to get started for free. Actually, there is no way we could talk about every place there is to get started for free because the list is huge and growing every day. But we can talk about some of the better places to get started for free.

Starting a free blog would be a great idea. Blogger.com really is a great place to do this: 1) Google owns blogger and Google really does like blogger blogs. 2) when you start a blog at blogger.com there aren’t any restrictions on you – for example if you started a blog at WordPress.org there would be a reception that you could not place commercial links on it. Blogger doesn’t do that to you. You can do anything that is legal on your blogger blogs.

The other great thing about starting a free blog is you are building your knowledge base. The more blogging platforms you use, the easier you will be able to figure out all the buttons on any new ones you try. Plus you will begin to understand blogs and the purpose of them better with every blog post you create.

Another wonderful place to get started is that meduim. Medium is a revenue share website that makes it very easy to create single webpages about a single topic. Medium also makes it very easy to link to Amazon and link to eBay and even if you happen to be in a state where you cannot be an Amazon associate you can use medium’s website in order to make commissions from Amazon sales.

One more thing that is really fantastic about medium is their community. Medium has a forum and some Facebook groups dedicated to them where other people who are creating pages on medium hang out. They will come to your lenses and check them out and give them social likes and shares if you go to their lenses and check them out and give them social likes and shares. This is very valuable.

Hubpages used to be a great place to create webpages like medium but these days Google doesn’t send them that much traffic so unless that changes I would stay away from them.

Xomba.com  is another revenue share website.  If you sign up with Google AdSense, and you give xomba your Google AdSense code they will automatically rotate AdSense views between your AdSense code and they are AdSense code. This is how they share revenue. There are many sites that do it this way.

Many people have gotten their affiliate marketing start on epinions.com.  Write reviews and epinions pays you.  Easy!

So far all we’ve talked about are content sites – let’s throw a few video revenue share websites in here. The most popular one is YouTube of course but in order for you to be able to put ads on your videos they have to get tens of thousands of views before YouTube will invite you into the program. Let’s go for something easier.

http://www.expotv.com/ expotv.com is a new and interesting concepts where you can get paid for making video reviews of products.

Honestly there are many revenue share websites out there. You could type revenue share website into Google and be busy for hours. Longtime affiliate marketers will tell you that revenue share websites are not worth it because they can take down your pages at any time for any reason and honestly this is true, but it happens a lot less often than people warning you it about this would think.

If a revenue share website is shying away from a certain topic or saying your pages are in violation of something, most likely they are doing it to stay in Google’s good graces. And if this is the reason, then you should pay attention, because you want to be in Google’s good graces too.

Regardless of the risks of revenue share websites, they are still a great place to get started and to learn the ropes and basics of affiliate marketing. As soon as you have made some money, nothing would be smarter than going out and starting your own website. But if you don’t have any money to start with then starting a free blog or starting with a revenue share website is a brilliant way to go.

This is an extremely relative thing because not everyone gets started with the same knowledge and using the same types of methods. There is a very steep learning curve to affiliate marketing and many beginners get frustrated and give up long before they ever see a dime.

Many other people spend hundreds of dollars on an information product after information product trying to figure out the secrets to actually making money online. There are secrets but many of them can only be learned through experience. And the rest of them won’t make a lot of sense until you have a little experience anyway.

So honestly the best way to get started is just to do something and do it now. But that doesn’t answer the question how long will it take for me to make money online? Honestly, if any experienced, successful affiliate marketer were to start all over again with the knowledge they have now they could probably be making money online within hours.

But the only way a newbie to affiliate marketing is going to be making money within hours is if they offer a service – if they do something like go to Elance.com and say I will write you 10 articles for X amount of money.  And even then, there is still a learning curve to learn how to use the site and how to convince people to hire you.

My best guess is that the earliest a person who knows absolutely nothing about affiliate marketing will start making money is about six months. Wow! That is disheartening, isn’t it? Honestly, if you could find a mentor – someone to take you under their wing and teach you exactly what they know step by step – then maybe you could be making money earlier. Maybe within one to two months.

But in this case you are actually learning affiliate marketing – you are just copying someone else’s system. And that’s okay, if it works it works and you can learn more when you decide to.  It’s not easy to find a mentor though.   Your best bet might be to add on over to a popular Internet marketing forum like the warriorforum and start reading everything you can.

There are even some forums where you pay a monthly fee and get a more private, focused group atmosphere that is focused on helping beginners.  This is a valid way for someone brand-new to affiliate marketing to get started and try to cut their learning curve down as short as possible. Whatever you are going to do – get started today!

1) Choose a domain name
If you don’t have any idea what you’re product is going to be that you are promoting then maybe this is not your current step.  Your domain name does not have to exactly match your product, but when you’re getting started it may be easier if it does have something to do with it.

When you are ready to choose a domain name then you can go to a domain spinner to see what is available. Do not try to create a domain name out of any word that is possibly trademarked.  The person that holds the trademark can make you give the domain if you do.

Type in domain spinner in Google and go to one. Type in some variations of the domain that you want to see what is available. When you hit on a good one that is available go to the next step.

2) Sign up at HostGator.com
You don’t have to pick HostGator, but it is a beginner-friendly host with good customer service and one click installs that will let you pay monthly. Dreamhost is another good one.

Sign up for an account. The hatchling plan is $7.16 a month. While you are signing up you also be able to register your domain name if it is available. This will cost you something like $11 or $12 a year.

Once you are good to go with a domain name and hosting account and then you will want to create your website. It easy way to get started is to have hostgator install WordPress for you and use it.

An easy way to do this is to go into your control panel – use the link from the welcome e-mail that you were sent – and under software/services choose quickinstall and then wordpress and follow the instructions.  If you run into problems chat with hostgator support. They are very helpful.

3) Once your website is up and running you will want to create some content. Don’t worry if it is not all perfect at the start, you can change things as needed. In the beginning the most important thing is just to get started. You have to make a lot of mistakes online before you start making any serious money. You want to get your mistakes started now!

4) Consider creating a list – $1 for your first month at  aWeber
What is your content about? Is there anything that people who would be interested in buying the things that you are promoting are looking for answers for?  If you have answers that people want then you can create a list and give away these answers.

In your messages to your list you can also recommends products. This is a perfect way to keep your website and your message in front of the people who are interested in buying the types of things that you recommend.

There is a lot to learn in list building so a good way to get started is to sign up for a few lists of websites that sell the same products you will be selling. How do they do it? How often do they mail? What kind of products do they recommend how do they structure their e-mail messages?  Do their messages make you want to buy?

Once you have a domain name, a website, and a list you are doing better than 99% of the rest of the people who want to get started in affiliate marketing. Sure you had to spend a little money to get there but that will only motivate you more.  Keep going and you will see your first profit in no time!