I believe that what takes time to understand when you start affiliate marketing is how good content is something that should be the core of your marketing strategy. I don't know what you guys think but I see a lot of newbies who ask the community to review their first squidoo lens and it's often overly promotional.

     Good free content is what makes people buy. It sounds odd but it has been proven several times by very good marketers. I'm sometimes amazed to find excellent free ebooks that are given away and what they bring or teach me makes me trust the author and I'm therefore more willing to buy something he or she recommends. That's pretty logic. We experiment this in real life actually but on the internet, giving good stuff for free is not the first thing we want to do...

     Actually, the fact that internet is so full of poor content, scams and overly promotional articles makes good content even more valuable and beneficial in the end. People are grateful to "finally" find your website, your article, and you become a "real" person with "real" knowledge and therefore "really good" recommendations that are worth the price for sure.

     I'm making this post just to save some time to the newbies here, to tell them that "selling" something is mostly about being involved, credible, looking for valuable things to give away and valuable things to promote. I could not sell something I don't believe in and I think people deserve good quality content.

That's about it. :)

 Louise