As we speak there are literally thousands of people all around the world doing affiliate marketing either full or part time and making money from it - whether it is a few dollars a week to help fund those little extras or tens of thousands of dollars every month, and there really is no big secret to it,but what I would like to do is to help you on your way and give you a 5 step success plan to make money affiliate marketing.

Step 1 - Decide on your Niche - This is the most important step on your journey - what are you going to promote. Perhaps you already have an idea in mind but the important thing is to focus on something. A niche is a subset of a wider subject - for example weight loss is not a niche - but losing weight for your wedding is a niche - still part of weight loss but a much more targeted area. Once you have your niche you need to do some keyword research using one of the many free tools that are available online today and pick 4-5 key terms within your niche that you are going to focus on. In addition your choice of niche will determine what affiliate products you are going to focus on.

Step 2 - Building your website - So you have your niche and now you should focus on building your website - if you are completely new to affiliate marketing then I suggest you use a free website from the likes of Google or Wordpress, but if not then go ahead and purchase a new domain (try and use your keywords in your domain choice) and get your website built.

Step 3 - Join an affiliate program - If you really want to make money affiliate marketing then you need to promote or sell some products on your website. Depending what niche you have chosen to promote you will find a wealth of affiliate programs out there, there are literally hundreds to choose from. But one alternative could be to join Clickbank as they have thousands of different products available to promote in hundreds of different niches.

Step 4 - Write Some Content - Having completed the first 3 steps you are well on your way to your goal to make money affiliate marketing. Now you have to write some unique content for your website and also to use in your promotions. it is imperative that this content is unique as otherwise you will get penalised by the search engines. My suggestion would be to start writing articles and content around the keywords and phrases you selected in step 1 and also to do some reviews of products that you want to promote - by all means look online and get some inspiration from other people and how they have gone about things - but remember to write things in your own way.

Step 5 - Promote your website - If you mant to make money affiliate marketing you need traffic to your website and this means you have to do some promotion - the first step should be writing some articles based on the keywords you selected in step 1 and then keep writing articles relevant to your niche. On top of this you should do some SEO and link building.

So you can see there really is no magic formula to how you can make money affiliate marketing. I suggest you also look at doing some some affiliate marketing training - there are many resources out there which are completely free and in time you will see success.