The 2 Steps To Successful Affiliate Marketing 

Today I’ll show you a simple two-step process you can use to cash in with affiliate marketing.

Who knows, maybe you can eventually quit your day job like I did more than 20 years ago.

If you’re a retiree, stay at home mom, unemployed or just want to make money online part time, you really need to try affiliate marketing.

With affiliate marketing there is no product creation, no support, no direct selling, and no hassles.

Here’s how to get started…

Step 1: Find Your Niche

When most start out in affiliate marketing, they put the cart before the horse and start looking for products to promote. That’s a mistake.

Rather than focusing on the product, step back and focus on a niche audience to promote to instead.

The secret is to find a niche that you want to work in and a niche that will be profitable.

Why does it make sense to focus on an audience for your niche, instead of a product?

Here are a couple of reasons why:

a. Products will always come and go, but a niche audience is virtually permanent. That’s why a popular product only lasts so long, and then people start to anticipate the next big thing. It’s the audience you should be focusing on, not the product.

b. When you take the time to really understand the deep-seated needs of a certain audience, you’ll make the transition from trying to find ideas for products to immediately knowing what kinds of products you should promote to your audience. That’s a game changer.

Once you understand these basic principles of affiliate marketing, there’s no stopping you. Know your audience and give them what they need. Period.

Niche Brainstorming Tips:

– Pick an audience that you are drawn to; people who you can relate to

– Consider a niche you would categorize yourself in. For example: solo entrepreneur, or senior male or female golfer

– Pick an audience by first choosing a niche topic you’re interested in or somewhat passionate about. This could be anything from “cure golf putting yips” to “how to get more dates”

– Recognize the problems of the people in this niche — research their pain, desires, problems, and aspirations. There are endless places you can discover this information online including blogs, niche forums and even at Amazon.com

– Focus on the profitable problems. Not every problem is created equally. Your audience will be more than willing to pay to have some of their problems solved, while others not so much. It’s your job to understand the difference. You can use these filters to help you figure it out:

How many monthly searches are there for the problem? (Here’s a shortcut for that.)
How many searches suggest a desire to solve the problem?
How much quality information is on the Internet relative to the problem? (The more the better!)

– Learn to speak the language of your audience on their terms to effectively communicate with them.

I realize this might sound like a lot of work, but once you choose your niche audience, understand their needs and problems, learn about them intensely, and then offer them a product that will solve that problem, you can be on the road to quitting your day job.

Incidentally, I realize this is a lot of work. If you prefer a shortcut to those steps above, and want to jump into an affiliate marketing niche with all the research and promo tools in hand, here’s a shortcut for that.

Step 2: Find Your Products and Start (Pre)Selling

OK, now that you know how to pick a profitable topic for your affiliate marketing efforts, you need to find products to promote, and a way to promote them.

The three main places where I find products to promote as an affiliate are…

Clickbank.com

WarriorPlus.com

JVZoo.com

Signing up at any of these sites to promote products is free.

All three sites offer a search function where you can enter a niche-specific term and find related products.

Clickbank offers a “Marketplace” where you can research products and find top sellers in your niche.

JVZoo offers a search tool at their “Affiliate Dashboard” where you can select your niche category.

WarriorPlus lets you search through offers and sort by date or any other parameter.

The key with these sites is to find stuff that is selling well.

Clickbank shows you a gravity score for each product that indicates the affiliate activity.

JVZoo goes into more detail showing you the number of sales each product has made, along with EPC and more.

WarriorPlus lets you search through offers to see what’s converting best.

Don’t just stop at one product. In order to create a substantial amount of money and really bank some cash, you’ll need to promote a steady stream of products.

Once you have some initial products picked out, the final step is to build an audience…

You can start building an audience via Facebook or with a blog like the one you’re reading right now. I also recommend you add in a dash of email marketing by starting an email list.

I know what you’re thinking, this whole thing is starting to sound like a lot of work!

Well, anything great takes work. It doesn’t happen overnight, but if you stay active and use all the shortcuts at your disposal, the clicks and sales can really start to add up.

Remember, there’s much more to affiliate marketing than simply writing content, inserting a link, and waiting for the profits to roll in. As I mentioned earlier, you must understand who you are marketing to based on their needs and desires. Then offer solutions to their problem.

“Pre-selling” products is the best strategy online. You write about the problems and the solutions. You infuse your audience with enthusiasm and anticipation before they even land on the sales page. This significantly increases your chances of making a sale.

But the most important aspect about affiliate marketing is to successfully build a solid relationship with your audience based on trust and ethics. Once they know they can trust you, your sales will increase exponentially as long as you are solving real problems for them.

That’s why you need to be choosy about which products you pick so you’ll be viewed as a trusted authority in the eyes of your buyers. Test products and use them before recommending them.