Best way to get started with affiliates and marketing

So I'm new to all this and was wondering what all your top tips are for someone like me, sort of like:
what did you wish you knew when you started out?
what do you look for in a vendor?
what commission do you expect?
how many hops will you expect before a sale etc?
how long will you promote a product before giving up?

Any help would be great!!

Thanks!

 

Hi Matt, I am a very experience affiliates myself for over 9 years. And it do require lots of commitment to get to this stage.
I have been working hard, and commission rate is something need to put aside in first place. There is no guarantee income in this field and there is lots of risk to take if you are enroll into paid advertising, PPC, or marketing campaign. Stick to your objective, become professional, helping others, learning while you teach others, and when you are becoming an expert and have lots of experience, the affiliates life will become meaningful and will be paying back slowly. In all these years, I have experienced lots of up and down, and its difficult for majority of people to handle. Its life, and you go to be ready to give up a lots of time in order to become a good affiliates. Wish you all the best, and work you way to success!

 

Thanks! I like the idea of it all to be honest and because I have done a lot of online work before I feel i have a slight advantage to othe people that are completely fresh to the online world of making money! But its all very confusing at points as a lot of terms are new to me etc... but all in all i found these forums a great place to learn!

 

I've learned quite a lot from these forums...although I will say that the quality of information here has really, reeeaally slumped over the past 4 years or so. It's a bummer.

What Charles said is 100% correct...and in more ways than how it is worded. It's more than just learning how to run campaigns. The big affiliates, John Chow, etc., started small, learned how to run campaigns successfully, scaled it up...and then became "super affiliates" by teaching other people how to make money (and, incidentally, referring them to a freaking ton of tools and services that they use...all via affiliate links, of course) through either blog posts or eBooks (with affiliate links), or training courses (with...you guessed it...links...).

But they wouldn't nearly have the success that they have without building a community that respects them as authorities on the topics. Teach, and you will learn.