By Brad Hodges

Did you know that Affiliate Marketing is one of the best and fastest ways to make money on the Internet?

You would be surprised and perhaps shocked to learn that some of the biggest names in the business world use affiliate marketing and affiliates to promote their products and services. Household names like Sears, Dell, QVC, Allstate, Verizon, Yahoo, HP, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Amazon.com, The Home Depot, American Express, Delta Airlines, the Sierra Club and thousands more ALL use affiliate marketing and ALL are willing to pay approved affiliates money in the way of commissions per sale or per lead and for bringing them business.

Affiliate marketing has been going on for decades, long before the Internet, by companies like The Fuller Brush Company, Avon, Amway and Kitchen Craft “Waterless Cooker.”

As you can see from the major companies that have affiliate programs it is here to stay and a lot of money can be made selling other peoples goods and services.

At the beginning of this article notice I said that; “Affiliate Marketing is one of the best and fastest ways to make money on the Internet?” “Best and fastest” however does not equate to “Easy”. Affiliate marketing is by no means a “get rich quick scheme”.

Affiliate Marketing is an art and just like anything worth having or becoming an expert about, you have to work for it as well as learn as much as you possibly can about it in order to be successful.

Make no mistake however, that their are thousands of individuals who have become millionaires by selling affiliate products and using affiliate business websites to accomplish this.

Think about it for a moment. One of the most difficult tasks in becoming self-employed and making a full time living is coming up with a product or service to sell. Unless you have a PhD in computer science or engineering or are a gifted inventor, how many people have the ability to envision, create, manufacture and market a new product from scratch…Exactly…

With affiliate marketing you don’t have to worry about all this because you have thousands and thousands of products to choose from and sell that people want to buy! In addition you can market these products with simple affiliate business websites that are easy to set up and maintain.

The trick, the art and the key however to being successful at affiliate marketing is to learn how to pick the right products to sell that people are able and willing to fork out their hard earned cash for and more importantly how to market the products to these people.

There are hundreds of online “courses” created exactly for learning how to do affiliate marketing efficiently and lucratively. Some are excellent and some are a waste of your hard earned money. A key is to look for courses that help you learn how to set up affiliate business websites, as well as how to market them in order to drive targeted buyers of your affiliate products or services or “traffic” to the websites.

Educating yourself is the first step and I hope to provide an ongoing resource to point you in the right directions to become successful at affiliate marketing.

A good place to start, especially if you are a “newbie” at affiliate marketing is at a web site called Affiliate Business Website at http://AffiliateBusinessWebsite.com

I have found this site to be an excellent place to get an overview of affiliate marketing and to help you determine if it is right for you. The site has dozens of pages and links to help you get started. Even if you have done some affiliate marketing but feel you could learn some more it is a good resource.

All in all affiliate marketing is a great way to earn some part time or supplemental income and once you get your feet wet and learn about the “art” you can progress to making a full time income as a self employed Internet Marketer. Who knows maybe you will become the next affiliate marketing millionaire.

If you follow us on Twitter you will notice that a large number of our posts are related to health and wellness. There is a good reason for this and it is that health and wellness are a major focus of our overall company strategy and products.

We are especially fond of natural health and women’s health. Personally health has always taken center stage for our family but unfortunately this is not always the case with the average person. Often health is the last rung on the ladder when it should be the first. The reasoning behind this is simple; without good health nothing else matters because without it you cannot possibly enjoy life and live life to the fullest. Poor health will hold you back from everything else you want to accomplish or dream of.

It is important you make health the center of the hub and this includes eating healthy, exercising at a pace that is both comfortable and fits into your lifestyle just as long as you exercise in some form, investigating alternative health products when applicable as opposed to making drugs and other pharmaceuticals the first choice you seek out, and adopting an overall “healthy attitude” that will help you make it a habit rather than an after thought.

Starting a healthy lifestyle can take place no matter how old you are or what stage in life you are at. Make it a decision to start today. As always before you set out to moderately or drastically change your eating and exercising habits consult with your health care provider to be sure you take the right steps and to pace yourself appropriately so as not to make sudden changes that could impact you in a negative manner.

Here is a list of some of our websites and blogs to help you learn more and to educate yourself on the product options you may have:

Alternative Medicine

Anxiety, Stress and Panic Attacks

First Aid

Menstrual Cramps Relief

Natural Breast Enhancement

Skin Care

To your health!

Those of you who follow me on Twitter for Brad Hodges Enterprises will notice a lot of “tweets” that have to do with health topics. Health and Wellness are a major focus for our company with a particular slant on Women’s health.

We have various blogs on health related topics that range from Alternative Medicine to Skin Care and I have set up the blogs to update with tweets whenever a new post is made. This allows those who follow us to see the mini headline topics of the blog post and they can then in turn, choose to click the links and view the entire post.

For our Article Directory Twitter account it is much more focused. Each day a new tweet is posted directly in Twitter providing a tip or product recommendation that only pertains to Article Marketing, Writing and Publishing. In addition we have a blog that is solely dedicated to providing updates, tips and articles that can help our authors or anyone else interested in article writing and any new posts on the blog are sent in a mini post directly to Twitter.

By structuring our communication in the above manner we feel we can best serve our customers and keep them well informed about our products and services.

Twitter has become a quite a “gadget” phenomenon on the Internet but if used properly and not abused,  it is an effective way for an individual to “enhance” their communication channels rather than be a sole means of communication, which it would not be effective for, in my opinion.

It is no secret, or maybe it is, that in the world of Internet Marketing one of THE best ways to get traffic for your website and business is to write quality articles on topics that relate to your niche, business or passion and then submit them to article submission sites which can get you massive exposure. This exposure comes in the way of your article being published and indexed in the search engines, so if someone is searching for say; “the best place to go wine tasting in the Livermore Valley wine country, California,” and you just happened to have written an article for that very topic because you own a winery in the Livermore Valley Wine Country, and you also have a fancy Flash website for your winery, your article will show up in the search engines and your happy future customer just found you because of it!

In addition if Leslie Wine Reviewer has a blog on quality wine and wineries and is searching for a quality article on wineries in The Livermore Valley Wine Country for her weekly blog post, and she goes to her favorite article publishing website and does a search for this topic, up pops your article, which she promptly publishes on her blog giving you and your wonderful winery more massive exposure when her blog post goes out to the thousands of wine lovers that subscribe to it and they see all the information on your winery; including the physical address, your website address, phone number, etc. in the credit section of the article and immediately plan to visit you this very weekend! Get the picture?

Article writing is king when it comes to getting your word out and the search engines love quality content.  In addition if you are searching for quality content for your own blog or website you will find that content for virtually any subject or topic you can think of on the article sites and the only cavaet is that you give credit to the author of the article by including an “Author Resource Box” which is usually provided by the author.

We know how important this is at Brad Hodges Enterprises, trust me. We are also aware of how important it is that you find a top quality article publishing and distribution website that provides carefully screened prime article content because anyone can throw up a website and a few well circulated articles and call it an article publishing site.

With all this in mind we have just launched our own such quality article site at: http://ArticleStorehouse.com. If you are a writer we are looking to publish your quality articles on hundreds of topics from Arts to Writing and everything in between. If you are seeking quality content for your blog or website on a vast array of topics we have that!  Please visit our site and check it out!

Okay we have built a lot of web sites for Brad Hodges Enterprises but I don’t think I have been this excited about building a web site as I am about our new travel web site at http://YourGlobalGateway.com!

Who couldn’t use or want to take a tropical vacation? Even with our economy still in shambles we all need a break and last time I looked vacations remain a major part of life.

This new web site puts it all together. The site includes an online store catered to everything travel to a page solely dedicated to travel destination videos. The HIGHLIGHT however is our travel comparison page where you can view firsthand (complete with beautiful photographs) the unbelievable luxury travel discounts available through our travel membership. You can also view a free video detailing everything you would want to know about this incredible membership. Just complete the short (very) form on the Travel Comparison page for protected access.

Now go work on your tan!