Basics of Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing in plain English is rewarding you for generating a sale to a certain merchant or product by giving you a percentage of the money they made. This is a very narrow definition. The big picture also includes your rewards for bringing in leads, driving clicks to a text ad, or exposures to a banner.

In short, it is the money you make for facilitating someone elses work. It's like brokering, in which you get commission for facilitating the deal.

Why is affiliate marketing the best way to start making money online is so simple. In affiliate marketing you only need to drive traffic to a certain web page. That's it. You don't need to worry about making the product, collecting money from the customers, serving the customers after the sale, providing any support of any kind, handling refunds .... nothing to worry about. Even the legal liability doesn't exist as long as you don't scam people to buy or take action, and the product itself is legal.

Yes, you can start making money with affiliate marketing using free resources without the need to invest in any thing. It is used to be called "bum marketing" method. There is a newer version of it now called "One Week Marketing", in which Jennifer Ledbetter shows you step by step how to build a new "bum marketing" campaign every week using free web 2.0 sites, blogs, and article directories. The main idea is to drive organic traffic (optimizing your content to show on the first page of search results for your keywords) to your affiliate links. This method is totally free. You can add some tools like a tracking software, a list management program (autoresponder), web hosting, domains of your own ... etc. to the package, but it is not necessary to start earning.

This book, "One Week Marketing", is the best way for beginners to start with affiliate marketing.

Although affiliate marketing is so simple and easy, most of those who try it fail to make significant money, and some times to make a single sale.

And the reason behind failure dominating over success in affiliate marketing is that most of the time people start it from the end rather than the beginning.

That's why I'll redefine affiliate marketing from the perspective of an affiliate marketer. It is bringing the attention of an existing market to a product that they might be interested in buying.

In this definition, there is a market and a product. Which one do you think comes first?

It is not the "chicken or the egg" story ... this one is a clear cut.

The market comes first. Then comes the product.

As a marketer you don't make the market, let others who can afford it worry about making markets. Your job is to find an existing market, then let it know about the product(s).

Therefore, market research should be done first. Then you can search for a product with an affiliate program to promote to the crowd that you found.

Not literally, but this is part of the market research. Talk shows, infomercials, and any paid advertising on the TV all point to markets.

Talk shows have a large audience from all sorts of social and educational levels. Whatever Oprah Winfrey, for example, going to talk about in her show is going to be a hot search key word for that day and for a few days to come. This is how markets are made. Some continue to build over time and some fade quickly before you can make any money from it.

Infomercials and paid advertising point to existing markets. Those are big companies that have already done the market research, found the market, and prepared the product.

After you find some markets on the TV, sit down and think what would someone who just watched that infomercial search google for. Do the same and watch for sponsored ads.

Sponsored Google ads mean that there is a market online. The more ads you find the bigger the competition, and this is a good thing. Competition means that there are people who are making money already in this market.

Getting wet standing in the way of a big wave is easier than getting wet in your backyard waiting for the rain.

One simple and easy method is to find what Google sponsored ads, that you found in the previous step, sell and see if they have an affiliate program.

Please Don't Click On Those Ads as long as you don't have the intention to buy. People pay as high as $30 (some times more) per click on Google adwords. Instead copy the url that shows on the ad (in green) and paste it in a new browser to visit it without charging the advertiser for your experimentation.

Infomercials might also be selling products with an affiliate program, which is another easy way to find products to promote.

Or simply type in a Google search box: your key word + affiliate program.

And here I think is the best fit for my classification of niches (niches are small markets focused on a certain type of common interest). I tend to classify them into two major groups:

1. Buyers niches
2. Information niches

I'll explain them by example, it is easier for both of us.

When someone typs in Google search box: "Samsung ML-1610 Toner" what do you think he is trying to do? Definitey wants to buy toner for his printer. You can imagine this searcher holding the credit card in his hand while surfing his search results. He is more likely to buy the toner once he finds a good deal.

On the other hand, if someone types: "how to prevent colic", she is most probably a new mom who couldn't get more than 2 hours of sleep over the past 40 days because her new baby is crying non stop. She needs to know more. Would she buy a product that promises to help her prevent her baby colic? Probably yes, but you need to convince her that your product will solve her problem forever.

In the first example you don't need to convince the customer to buy the toner, he is already there to buy. In the second example it depends. Free information about colic are allover the internet, she will most probably go for the free ones first. And if those don't work she might come back looking for the product she saw before.

In the first case you don't need to do anything other than putting your ad where he can see it. In the second case, if you can offer her free information and get her email address you can follow up with her so that when she reaches the point that she has to get some sleep she will find your porduct waiting in her inbox.