Starting\Working as an marketing affiliate?

[IC3]

Hi, this is going to be, a bit of a stupid question. But how many here started or were interested in earning a bit more money without doing any overtime at work and heard about websites like CB? I'm a college IT student (They don't teach you anything new, on the course...), I don't have any knowledge in programming. The real question is, without the knowledge of how to program, would I'll still be able to start in marketing as an affiliate? If not, then was sort of languages would you recommend? E.g. HTML, Java?

If you could share you experience and how you've started, it would be great.

 

[dan958]

There are plenty of template websites that you can download for things such as this. I've known a few people that are die hard affiliate fans that have all tried to start their own website for it but it didn't pick up as they expected.
As long as you can find a niche in the market, or offer something different. I would really recommend not starting an affiliate program. If you were looking at programming one yourself, but have no knowledge, I'd recommend starting on basics. You will need HTML, CSS, PHP and an understanding of SQL (or a database equivalent) diving into something complicated will be very hard. My first PHP project was a social media site (not one that was ever going live, just something I wanted to work on) and although it was damn difficult, I did learn a lot.

 

[blade007]

Well you're going to need HTML even with a Wordpress site. CSS too. You'd probably get away with those things.

I would start by, what am I going to promote via affiliate? What's the commission level? How many competitors? How am I going to find buyers? I heard Amazon is OK but has only a short cookie - so that's one thing to be careful of.

The HTML/CSS is essential but you could be very busy building a website that makes nothing.

 

[englishpremier]

You can make money. I made a little from a test site a threw together years ago and forgot about. Some people do it as a living, and have one or even 10s of sites. To make any decent money requires a lot of hard work.

Fist you need to find your niche. It's not good creating a site or blog about something like running shoes, you need to pick an niche that is currently underserved, has little competition, or at least competition that you can beat.

Once you have a few ideas then you need to spend a few days/weeks doing some detailed keyword research, and so on.

Check out Pat Flynn's smartpassiveincome site for some hyped up American inspiration.

IIRC there is a guy on these forums that owns about 30 niche sites. I believe his wife runs them full time.