In my last article I touched on a few different ways to make money online. One of the simplest ways to do this is to use Google AdWords to market products for which you are an affiliate.

One of the best affiliate programs available is ClickBank. They have hundreds of items available for affiliate marketing. They don't allow any products that aren't digital, available for immediate download. It takes only a few minutes to get signed up as an affiliate, and it costs nothing. The signup form is here.

Once you have an affiliate account with ClickBank, you need to log in, and find a product you want to market. This can be done at the ClickBank Marketplace. The products are ranked using a proprietary system designed by ClickBank. This system attempts to place the products most likely to make you money at the top of the list. It takes into consideration several factors, including previous sales trends, and conversion rates. (A conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who are referred to a site that actually purchase the product described).

Go to the marketplace, and pick a product you'd like to market. Look at the product's home page, and decide whether it's something you think people will be interested in. Look at the cost of the product, and the percentage commission you will earn for sales. Obviously the higher the commission the better, but picking a product that sells well is more important than picking a product with a high commission. Once you've found your product, click the link that says "Earn X%". This will pop up a window telling you what your affiliate link should be for this seller. Copy the link down, and save it for the time being.

Next you need to find a way to get people to click this link. As you may have guessed by now, Google's AdWords program is the easiest way to get started. The other option is to start your own web site, but this takes some time and quite a bit more effort. I'll cover some of these topics in coming articles. For now we'll focus on AdWords.

First, you'll need to sign up for an AdWords account. Go to the main AdWords site and click the button labeled "Click to begin". You'll need to tell Google a few things about your target market, and then you can create an ad. I'll go into more detail about how to create the perfect ad a bit later, but for now I'll focus on a few important things. First, make sure you read the Editorial Guidelines for AdWords. There's a link on the page where you're setting up your ad. One thing to note is that Google requires you to put the word "Affiliate" or "Aff." in your ad so people know you're an affiliate. You also can't do things like use a bunch of exclamation marks or type your ad all in caps. There's an automated review process which will catch most of these errors, and a human review process which will catch most things not caught by the automated review.

Enough of what not to do. Try to make your ad eye-catching, without violating the guidelines. Use active verbs, and make sure you use relevant keywords you think potential customers might be searching for. Google will highlight keywords in your ad when they're part of the user's search phrase.

Once you've created your ad text and gotten past the automated review, you're ready to choose keywords. Choose the keywords you think are most relevant to your product. Even if you can create an ad with a fantastic click through rating that drives hordes of people to your affiliate link, you won't make any money unless those people actually buy the product. Type in some keywords, and use the "Keyword Tool" on the right hand side of the page to get suggestions from Google. Also think about common misspellings for keywords. This can be a good way to get some cheap clicks that are still relevant.

You'll next have to determine how much you are willing to pay. The best strategy is to start out small. Spending even $10 per day can give you an idea of what might work and what might not. Once you have an ad that's working, and you've made a couple of sales, you can increase your max cost per day. Keep in mind that if you have high demand keywords, and a low maximum Cost Per Click, your ad may never get shown, or it may be shown on page 99 of the Google results. You need to find a balance between paying $5 for a single click, and not having your ad shown at all. Usually the "recommendations" made by Google are way too high, and will cause you to go broke in a hurry.

Almost done now. You'll now need to finish signing up for your account. You'll need a credit card so Google can charge you when your ads are clicked. They'll add everything up and charge you once per month or so for all of your clicks. Do be careful about spending your entire budget on the first day. You'll need a couple weeks at least to try to evaluate what works and what doesn't. Don't be afraid to start small, and work your way up slowly to making more sales.