I’ve been meaning to do this post for a very long time. I’ve now written so many “Ask Kirsty” and various “Affiliate How To” guides that when read together they’d make a damned fine overview of how to find your way through the maze that is affiliate marketing.

So get your looking gear around this guys and gals, it’s Kirsty’s handy dandy one-stop affiliate marketing learning shop!!

So Where Do You Start In Affiliate Marketing?

• First things first, you’ll need something to sell! Easier said than done however. So you’d best dash off right now and find out how to Find That First Affiliate Niche. Once you’ve focussed in on a niche, you’d best think a little bit more about how to identify product areas you will do well in and Get Some Information on What Works From Merchants.

See? That was easy wasn’t it?! OK, so now that you have your product area in mind

You’d Best Research Some Keywords

• Now, some people might be surprised that my next recommended step is finding your keywords as opposed to sorting out a site. But if you feed your keyword data into your site structure plan you will have a much stronger offering for the search engines. So first off, Have A Sit Down And Brainstorm Your Keywords.

Now You Can Start Thinking About Your Super-Duper Affiliate Site!

• You don’t have to be a technical genius to put together a really nice affiliate site these days, so don’t panic. My personal recommendation is to use a Wordpress Blog. It’s dead set easy. Panic ye not if you have never heard of it, for Auntie Kirsty put together a Basic Guide To Everything You Need To Create A Wordpress Site. Even better, she has also provided another Wordpress guide featuring Everything You Need To Create A More Advanced Site.
• Finally, you will need to create some compelling site content that will be good for SEO. Check out the following content guides which are available FREE from your local friendly affiliate guru: -
• Writing Content For SEO - It’s Not Rocket Science
• My Suggestion If You’re Rubbish At Writing
• How To Write SEO Friendly Posts At The Product Level

Gosh Darn It, You’re Racing Along Now!

• You’d best perform some basic SEO on your site. Building Links Effectively and carefully is very important - so give some of that a go.
• To gain an overview of how Search Engines look at websites and the basic bones of how they rank them check out my basic guide to SEO - Definitions and On Site Factors.

Confident Enough To Enhance Your SEO With Some PPC?

• Then you’ll need my Google Adwords Beginners Guide!
• …and here’s a handy wee overview should you find that you Can’t Make Your First PPC Attempt Pay.

So there it is. There’s a fair amount of reading there for you, but when you’ve finished I hope you’ll drop me a comment and tell me what you think. Are you further forward? Where are the gaps in your knowledge now? Feedback will help give me more ideas about what everyone wants me to talk about.

Oh, and if you like this article… please share it with others. Stumble it, Digg it, Sphinn It, darn it…. even just do it the old fashioned way. Tell people about it verbally!