“Seriously, all you have to do is put yourself in a customer’s shoes. First of all, what’s their problem? What do they want to solve? What’s the best way to do that?” Rosalind Gardner 2009

You have decided to get involved in affiliate marketing.  You may have been brought to the internet with the lure of “big riches” in what ever form that may have taken.  I got sucked in by a stupid Craigslist ad to fill out surveys.  I can hear the chuckles in the background; those “work at home”  stories just weren’t true. 

After two weeks of sitting in front of my computer endlessly filling out different forms, signing up for different survey taking sites, and chasing different rabbit trails, I surveyed my accomplishments to discover… zilch.  I now had a thoroughly corrupted email address.  I was on every spam email list in the universe.  I had ignorantly pursued one “free” offer by signing up for 12 months worth of printer ink cartridges, a book of the month subscription,  a learn about eBay course (That instantly sucked $75 out of my credit card which I did not approve) and one or two other bogus offers as well.

I had carpal tunnel syndrome from answering multiple choice questionnaires, and exactly no compensation from telling them that I didn’t own a big screen TV or the latest version of a mobile telephone.  I sucked at soap opera critiques, (not owning a television) I had not shopped for a car in years so I really could not comment on my experiences in a showroom.  Needless to say my “free lunch” career,went by rather quickly.  There are a lot of scams lurking just below the surface of the internet and unfortunately many of us have to swim through them to find safer waters.

Every website or niche you decide to become involved with needs thorough research.  You need to know several important things about your niche. 

• Is there a demand for the product that continues regardless of the economy? (Evergreen Market?)
• Do the buyers in this market trust and use the internet to do their buying?
• Are there good and reputable sources that you can represent as an affiliate, and is there more than one?
• Is it a product that I know enough about to write credible reviews and testimonials or demonstrate proof that it works?
• Can you get into this market and become a player without spending an arm and a leg to do it? (too much competition?)

There are two ways you can go to get into a niche.  You may come across a fantastic product or trend that has become popular and shows good potential.  On the other hand you might start by finding the market or niche market first and then decide on the product you will market.  Either way is fine provided you do your due diligence first.

You already know that there are basically two kinds of products; physical products that will be delivered by the manufacturer or representative or informational product that in most cases can be instantly downloaded.  People are looking for physical products to satisfy a need or solve a problem.  Remember, out of the untold thousands of drills sold last year, not one of them was sold because the buyer wanted a new drill… what the customer wanted was the hole that the drill would make.  Remember that when you start your campaigns, you are always trying to fill or satisfy a need that the client has.

The same can be said for informational products.  People come onto the internet looking for information, when you are able to offer it to them in the form of an e-book that fills their need, you are saving them the time and effort of looking into every nook and cranny of the internet to find it for free.  They are willing to pay for the information service that you are providing, but you must make sure that the information product you are providing is the one that actually fills their need by not overstating your claims.

Researching your market means to insure that there is a demand for the product but also that the demand is being satisfied on the internet.  Some products sell much better when they are seen and held, so you need to know if they are being purchased on line.

In the process of marketing your product you will be writing about the subject many times over as you advertise it on many different platforms.  This can vary from writing articles to making Twitter tweets. Is the product something that you are familiar with enough to be able to talk about it in many forms?  This why many marketers who are just starting out are counseled to start with something that they are familiar or comfortable.

Finally, don’t bite off more than you can chew.  You may find a fantastic product and decide to build a site and set up a marketing website only to find that there are 100,000 other people who all had the same thought.  There is an over abundance of those kinds of  sites on the internet.  If you decide to enter this kind of market you need to bring a unique perspective with you so that you can clearly demonstrate to your clients why you have a better solution to their problems than the other 999,999 websites out there.  Don’t be an also-ran.

We will be exploring niche research much more in depth in future posts, if you do not wish to wait you can sign up for my free report which will explain not only how to research a niche, but also how to develop your own product.  Owning your own internet product will give you much more control of your economic future than selling someone else’s.

An affiliate marketer is essentially a person who has agreed to provide advertising services for a product that is not of his own making. In return for providing the recommendations, by way of a web-site or other means the owner of the product pays a commission to the affiliate for developing a client who bought his product.

As you send paying clients to the product owner’s site you are paid a commission which is based on the amount of the sale. For physical products the average commission will usually vary from 4 to 10 percent of the sale. In the case of informational products the commission can be as high as 100 percent, though the average is usually between 50 and 75.

This may seem like an easy task, you apply for an affiliate position with a merchant, put up or have an advertising web-site, develop some traffic and send prospective clients to the merchants web-site. Many new affiliates tend to make a mistake when they start their affiliate career. The goal of course is to make a sale for the merchant with the prize of the commission as the reward. The challenge is to do so in a way that sends a convinced customer who is ready to make a purchase.

Sending a client to a merchant’s web-site requires a lot more work than simply saying “go there and buy.” There is an educational process that the affiliate must accomplish in order to help the client make an informed decision. Education is the key, knowing the product thoroughly, demonstrating why the client needs it and in some cases adding extra value will create satisfied customers. Unfortunately, too many new affiliates tend to skip this step and wind up wondering why they never make any sales.

Here are some guidelines to apply:

Step #1: Get a good education. This is critical to developing a successful affiliate business. Find out who the successful affiliate marketers are and learn the language of affiliate marketing. Learn the terms that are used and how to be informed by them so you will know if a product is worth the investment it will take to promote it. Do a thorough investigation of the merchant and the product you intend to promote. You must know how and why the product is useful so you can communicate that knowledge to your prospective customers.

Step #2: Design and build a site and a business plan or set of goals for your affiliate business. You would not get on an airplane with a pilot who did not have a flight plan; so do not launch an affiliate site without having a plan of action that you intend to implement.

Step #3: Now that the plan is down on paper, follow the necessary steps to get it into motion. Start moving, and remember that when you open for business you need to show up to run the store on a daily basis. At least in the beginning you need to babysit the business daily with more information, more great content. Treat your affiliate marketing business like a serious business and you will be rewarded down the road for your efforts.

Step #4: Along the way as you are designing your site you will be making many decisions that can affect the outcome of your success. You need to learn methods of testing and be willing to change your design and copy around to get maximum results. Sometimes very small changes in design make for huge changes in results. Test Test Test!

Using these guidelines will go a long way toward aiding your success as an affiliate marketer.

The concept of affiliate marketing itself is relatively simple.  You agree to use ethical practices to put together some form of advertising or convincing writing that results in a customer being motivated enough to use your coded link to purchase a product or service.  The owner of the product agrees to pay you a commission based on the purchases that are made.  That is it in a nutshell, so go out and start advertising.  But you say whoa, whoa there must be more to it than that, and you are right there is much much more.

Affiliates are often called “publishers”—they publish articles or other forms of advertising that motivate their clients/readers to take an action.  In most cases that is a purchase of a product.  There are also affiliate programs that are based on actions; these will pay a commission based on the collection of information.

Have you ever tried to get a quote on car insurance?  Have you noticed that you are never able to get any kind of information until you submit your name, email, and phone number?  This is the favored method of advertising for the insurance, loans, real estate, and even legal services industry.  This type of affiliate marketing is called CPA or cost per action.

Companies are willing to pay affiliates for the leads that they generate which will enable the company to follow up on that lead with a letter, email or phone call.  CPA affiliation is generally harder to get started than simple product services.  The companies which offer CPA affiliation will want to know what you as an affiliate intend to do to drive traffic to their offer.  Since their income is based on a valid lead, you will have to demonstrate that you are capable of collecting that information.

The largest affiliate marketing company on the internet today is Amazon-dot-com.  Amazon offers affiliates the ability to sign up and setup advertising systems for just about any product you can imagine.  From books to merchandise you can sell it all.  Their widgets and “A” store system enables you to select merchandise across the whole catalog of products and assemble your own collection of goods/books  that you may wish to promote.

Many of the other larger retail outlets from Wal-Mart to Target to Best Buy also have affiliate programs.  Of course there are all sorts of smaller companies and individual stores that offer affiliate relationships.  Depending on the “niche” that you select, there are affiliate networks that can provide a way for you to promote all kinds of specialized products. In all of these cases your job as an affiliate is to figure out how to fill a need for your prospective customer that will cause him/her to visit the seller and make a purchase.

In some cases this can be a simple review of the product; in other cases it can be an elaborate store front type of website.  As an affiliate your task is to present a unique perspective for why the customer should use your link to visit the merchandiser.  In the advertising world this is called a unique selling proposition or perspective (USP).  In other words, “what is your hook?”

The next area of affiliate products is the information product.  This is the “how to” type of product or software that is typically available for instant download.  For just about any kind of information that you may be seeking there is probably a book or video solution that is available.  These kinds of products tend to pay much greater commissions. Which can be as much a 100% in the case of a short report that the product owner is offering as an inducement for the affiliate to send him more customers.

This includes such companies as Clickbank or Nanacast or PayDotCom and numbers of software and service providers.  There are also web services like hosting, domain name purchasing, auto-responders, shopping cart providers and search engine optimization which will pay a commission for new customers.  Finally, there are a number of independent internet marketing experts that offer products in marketing and internet systems productivity who pay their joint venture (JV’s) partners/affiliates handsomely.

You can see that the choices for affiliate marketing are huge, so avoid the temptation to jump in with both feet and try to represent them all.  Your task is to get very clear about what or whom you wish to to represent.  Before you make a selection there are several points to consider.

• Does it sell well on the internet- some products do not.
• Is it possible to compete with the other players/affiliates in this market?
• Can I bring a unique perspective (UPS) to the marketing effort here?
• What can I add to the product that will make the client want to purchase through my link?

You will also need a strategy for your marketing efforts.  For each site that you set up you should have a marketing plan that you can follow to enable you to evaluate your progress as you go along.  Don’t fall into the trap of chasing shiny objects that look pretty with out insuring that your efforts will be rewarded.  Be aware that the general internet statistics suggest that a conversion rate of visitors into buyers is one to two percent of visitors to a site, which means that you will need to learn you will need to learn to drive traffic in more than one fashion.

Many of the above topics will be explored thoroughly in the coming weeks.  Stay Tuned