This article is not meant for skilled marketers or for people who are familiar with affiliate marketing and with the process of identifying products to promote, as it will discuss only the very basics. Hopefully some of the future articles will cover advanced steps, which even veteran marketers will find beneficial.

Let’s start by trying to define “affiliate marketing”. I always say that there is a similarity between Affiliate Marketing and the California Gold Rush of the 19th century. The fortune is there and you have to uncover it. Anyway, back to the definition: the affiliate marketer (you) gets a nice commission from the product seller every time a purchase is made by one of the visitors that you have sent to their sale page.

Roughly, you’ll find three types of products: material ones – from shoes to yachts; information products – videos, software, ebooks, that are instantly downloaded to the purchaser’s computer; and subscriptions to newsletters, registrations to a course etc. Thousands and thousands of sellers pay commission to affiliates for purchases and for leads.

You can see that the fortunes are there, hidden under the ground in Internet land. You need to go out there and dig it out. Most new affiliate marketers learn that their first step, i.e. finding the right product, is the most complicated one.

I will show you a few ways to find it:

1. Promote a product that you have bought online and really liked. The way to do it is to go back to the merchant’s website or sales letter, look for a link that says “affiliates” and click on it. There you will find how to become an affiliate and what the terms are. Subscribe for free and start promoting the product.

2. Start thinking about your hobbies, things you are interested in, things you have knowledge about. Perhaps you are a member of some forums in which you discuss your passion. This will help you a lot later, in your promotions. Let’s say you like basketball; you know everything about the game, the teams, and the players. Start searching for products that are associated with basketball, find their affiliate programs and start promoting them.

3. Do a little research on the Internet. Think of products that do very well in the United States but are unknown to Europeans, become an affiliate and promote the product using Google Adwords campaigns in Europe. You can do the same with a product that you’ve discovered in Europe, or any foreign country, and promote it in North America.

4. Talk to your children and/or other teenagers and try to find out what their newest fads are. Teenagers are great customers.

5. Make a habit of looking at the popular magazines. They usually report on the latest trends and fashionable products.

6. And last but not least: join one of the big Affiliate Program Providers, such as Commission Junction, ClickBank, to name just the biggest ones, but there are more out there which will offer you thousands of products to promote.

In Article 2 I will describe the second step on the way to rewarding affiliate marketing.

Popularity: 38% [?]

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing, Make Money Online

 |  Email This Post  |  Print It  |  Subscribe to It!
This entry was posted on Saturday, June 7th, 2008 at 1:26 am and is filed under Make Money Online. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.