last updated 3/7/08
Welcome to the epiphany in your affiliate marketing career. What I’m going to present here is a constantly updating mega affiliate marketing guide. It will be article links from blogs and forum posts. You will find everything you need to get you started with affiliate marketing, which means never again will you PAY FOR ANY AFFILIATE MARKETING INFORMATION. There’s too much quality free stuff out there for you to waste time and money buying something else. I’ve sifted through blogs to find the top informational posts that covers most topics of affiliate marketing. If you read every article in this guide and still go out and buy an affiliate marketing eBook without putting what you just learned to good use, you’re stupid. These articles will give you a very solid background into affiliate marketing and all the different techniques you can use. All you have to do is go out there and test what you learned. Keep what’s converting, and drop what isn’t. As I’m completely positive I haven’t covered every good article out there, make sure to contact me and hit me up with some links to add.
My CPA Networks and Tools
I’m just going to list out the affiliate networks I use, as well as the tools (paid and unpaid) I use when starting up a campaign. I recommend signing up for every affiliate network out there (even the ones I don’t mention), as each network has different offers with different payouts. You can be doing sweet on a niche, sign up with another network, and find out that they have a higher converting offer that pays out more. None of the paid tools are necessary, but each of them has their own special use to me and that’s why I use them.
My Networks
CX Digital
CPA Empire
Neverblue Ads
HydraMedia
Commission Junction
Keyword Research Tools
KeyCompete
Keyword Discovery
WordTracker
WordTracker’s Free Tool
Google Adwords Keyword Suggestion
SEO Book Keyword Tool
Other Tools
Keyword Companion (this tool is awesome)
Complete N00bies
If you just heard from the grapevine that affiliate marketing is cool, but have no idea what it is, here are some background articles for you to gobble up.
Affiliate Marketing - Wikipedia
8 Beginner Questions and Answers
General Guides
Some general all around guides on affiliate marketing, and getting an affiliate campaign up and profiting as fast as possible. Good overall reads.
Make Money in 24 Hours
Launching a Campaign From 0 to Profitibility
Launching a Campaign From 0 to Profitibility - Part II
Make Money with PPC Advertising
The Super Affiliate’s Guide to PPC Marketing
Choosing a Niche
Thoughts on ways to select a niche that will be profitable for you.
How & What To Promote
Using Brute Force to Find Profits
Picking a Niche is Everything in Affiliate Marketing
Strategy
Different affiliate marketing strategies and things to think about.
Landing Page or Redirect?
Diversification or Domination?
What PPC Engine to Start With
Affiliate Marketing On A Low Budget
Picking a Domain Name
Picking the right domain name for your web/product site.
9 Tips For Choosing A Great Domain Name
Tips for Selection a Domain Name
Choosing a Good Domain Name
Landing Pages
What the user sees after they click on your ad. The landing page game is changing now, read up and get ahead of the crowd.
Creating an Adwords-Ready Landing Page
Landing Page Quality Score
Cloaking Affiliate Links
Landing Page Keys to Success
Keyword Research
Researching keywords is something most people complain about, hopefully you’ll get some good tips and shut your yap.
Uber Keyword Research
Keyword Research Secrets
Tracking
Any good affiliate will tell you: track, track, and track. Testing and tracking are so important if you want to really take your campaigns to the next level.
PHP Keyword Tracking How-To
Keyword Tracking with Encryption
Split Testing Affiliate URLs
Advanced Tracking with DirectTrack
Writing Ads
How to write compelling ads that users want to click on.
18 Tips For Writing Better Pay-Per Click Ads
Creating PPC Ads That Stand Out From the Crowd
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
Getting that CTR up in your ads.
18 Tips For Writing High CTR PPC Ads
Synthetic Ways to Juice CTR
Conversion Rates
Getting the user to convert once they make it to the landing page.
11 Ways to Improve Landing Pages
How To Build Landing Pages That Convert
PPC Search Advertising
How to advertise smart in search engines.
Top 10 PPC Tips Improve Advertising Campaigns & Budgets!
How Super Affiliate Set Their Bids
Google Adwords
So annoying that it gets it’s own category.
10 Adwords Mistakes
14 Adwords Tips for Beginners
49 Tips on Adwords
Tricks
Misc. tricks that may give a small boost to some of your campaigns.
Increase Landing Page Relevance with Domain Aliasing
Advanced Tactics
Once you’re a beast at your niche, some super affiliate tactics.
Experiments
My favorite way to learn is by reading other people’s experiences and experiments that they post to the public.
$10k PPC Experiment
$10k PPC Experiment Part II
Facebook Experiment
Case Study : Diet Pills - How I Ran It
Pay Per Click Network Challenge
Click Bank Experiment (this is from a web archive, the site isn’t up anymore. just scroll to the middle of the page and you can find links to parts 1-8)
Information-Packed Forum Threads
Threads that are packed with good conversation about affiliate marketing. You may find one or two gems.
Good content here, for both newbies and intermediate affiliates. A must read if you ask me. I preach a lot about learning things for yourself, but it’s also nice to learn things from people that have already been through it. Saves some time, money, and aggravations.
thanks for you links
Wow, hell of a list you have here…bookmarked.
I like the articles about how to choose a domain name. People really need to use the Thesaurus more often. That’s always been my most effective tool when choosing my domains. In my opinion, choosing your domain name is one of the most important parts of starting your own site. The worst feeling is regretting your domain name after your site is already established.
WTW
Awesome resource, I’m bookmarking this but it’s another one of those information overload things for me. Let’s hope I can keep track of everything :)
WTW
Thank You for this great post. This guide helped me to find best ways to create good keywords list for my campaigns.
WTW
Wow this definitely is the grand-daddy of em all, when it comes to affiliate marketing information. I’ve bookmarked the page and will definitely be coming back when I have more time to delve deep.
WTW
Paul,
I’ve been following your blog for the past couple of months and I must say this is the best guide I’ve seen so far. Great work.
WTW
Information overload. I’m going to try out those tools you recommended and sign up with some of the affiliate networks. Thanks for the guide. It’s bookmarked.
I came here from WTW.
Using the PHP Tracking code from CPA-Affiliates I have been able to significantly reduce my costs … which I guess is as good as money earned.
WTW
I like the keyword tools you chose but what about Googles and Microsofts keyword tools? They are surely good assets that could be included.
WTW is the SHIT!!!
lol. Paul, I’ve been a regular reader on your blog forever but have never taken the time to check out this guide. It’s way more advanced than I imagined it would be and I’m really impressed (though I should be used to it with the quality of your post). Only minor “request” I would personally have would have is it would be really cool to see a good handful of actual case studies from the inception of the campaign all the way though to the end with stats and earnings/losses and such (though profitable would be better of course). Might not be the best thing to do with active campaigns but maybe if you kept notes on current campaigns and then when they get old or you move on then you could post them, in complete detail, so you don’t get screwed with too much direct competition or give away your current niches. Regardless, great guide!
And thanks of course to gyutae of WTW for bribing me into finally checking it out!
Excellent write up paul
http://www.rajuthan.com/
Damn man! You definitely outdid yourself with this one! I’ve been trying to read every single one of these and it’s taking forever! But patience is part of the key, right? Well… I guess I’m a little impatient! LOL!
Jay
awesome, this what all i need to get start, thanks
I agree with the overall idea of the post. The problem is that the devil is in the details. Put up a landing page that people don’t like and you’ll lose your shirt. My take on this is try writing a few articles and test different landing pages. At least you’ll get some useful data before you go on a spending binge with adwords. Also, the pharmacy thing is also correct. I think you can click on the request exception and actually get around that because you are not promoting prescription meds.
Weight Loss Guy
Wow, everything in this post is amazing. I am still learning about affiliate marketing before I jump into it and this has exactly what I need all in one post! Great job. I love this blog. Top of the line stuff.
This information is invaluable. I am basking myself in affiliate marketing. I can not thank you enough
Awesome, its posts like these that really help newbies.
this is sure a sweet list and i havent even noticed it yet but all the same it is very cool…good write up paul!
This post is really helpful when starting out like i am right now :)
Thanks,
Roger
great article!
This is a great resource..every now and then I will return to this page and read the post over again. Keep it up!
Thanks a Lot…
It’s very very fantastics resources.
Thanks for the list
Thanks a lot.
Great information.
I just start my online business. Your article is usefull
Really wonder, It is very useful for ever one
keep it up
wonderful nice to read
Hi Paul,
I just watched the Top Affiliate Challenge and heard your name mentioned quite a few times as a great resource to check out. You’ve got a lot of great tips and helpful articles on your site. Thanks for putting together your Affiliate Marketing Guide. I’m sure it will help many people make money online.
Nice list :)
truly useful resources for affiliate marketers. thanks.
Just subscirbed to your news lettter. Gonna start reading this right now and hopefully make some money =).
This page has a million dollar worth resources.
Thank you for leading us to worthy resources.
its awsome….
thank you so much….
Wow, great article. I’ll need some time to check all of these but I’m sure that I’ll find mose of them quite usefull.
Anyhow, thanks for sharing this with us and keep up the good work.
Regards,
apchaser
these are reassuring words that many of us are on the right path. This really sheds more light on how to,,which is what is needed in the internet marketing circle.
WOW :D Thats really a great article.. I have bookmarked it so that I can read it again :D
Hi,
I just joined the 5 Star Affiliate Marketing Forum (see trackback, two comments above this one) and this link was one of the first things I came across.
Glad I clicked the link! This page has been bookmarked!
Thanks,
David Hurley
Great list, thanks for it! Hope you’ll write more useful and inspiring stuff in future.
you always give such massive value
Very nice list to read carrefuly and follow. Thanks for sharing, I’m sure it would help most of us!
Hi,
This is Great Post! Hope every Link will be very useful. Now I have not much time to click every link but will try when I have some time.
Uberaffiliate > John Chow.
I’m no longer visiting his website. Yours is much better content and relevance wise. He recently posted a post about an affiliate program with russian brides. It was pretty much softcore pornography.
Great post and listing of links. It has been very, very useful for me. Thank you and will look forward to more posts like this in the future.
I found your blog on google and read a few of your other posts. I just added you to my Google News Reader. Keep up the good work. Look forward to reading more from you in the future. Thank you
I am SO happy I found this page!! I am excited to dive into all your information. Thanks for putting all this together.
Hi, good post. I have been wondering about this issue,so thanks for posting. I’ll definitely be coming back to your site.
cheears.