The first post on affiliate marketing explained how affiliate programs work and that all are free affiliate programs.Then we discussed finding a niche and there were heaps of ideas from James Schramko’s video about what kinds of products you can promote on the internet. Lastly we talked about how to find a niche market product that will be profitable.

So now that you have chosen your market and you know that people are looking for solutions to their problems in your market, you need to find a specific product. After you have found the exact product that you want to promote, make sure you save your affiliate link somewhere you can find it again!

Places to Find Free Affiliate Programs

1. Clickbank

Go to the clickbank marketplace and see what comes up when you type in your chosen keyword.
There are a few things to understand about clickbank. It is a place where you can find products to promote on many, many different topics and keywords but there have to be able to be delivered digitally. This means you can’t sell physical products through clickbank.

When you are trying to decide which product to promote through clickbank there is lots of information that can be gained from the small description of the product. Look at the sales page for the product by clicking on the “view pitch page” hyperlink.

The statistics below the product are also important to understand.

$/sale is the average amount that an affiliate earns for each sale.

Future $ is only relevant if the product is a recurring product.

%/sale is the commission rate for the product.

%refd is the percentage of sales that were referred by affiliates.

Grav stands for gravity and is a calculation made by clickbank. The higher the gravity the more recent sales that product has had. Products with a high gravity are hot but may also have a lot of affiliates promoting it and therefore be more competitive.

Once you have decided on the clickbank product that you want to promote then click on create hoplink – the hoplink is your affiliate link.

2. Commission Junction

The first thing to do once you get to Commission Junction is to decide if you are an advertiser or a publisher. An advertiser is a product owner, so if you are looking to promote others people’s products you are a publisher. It is a simple thing to sign up as a publisher for commission junction – you just have to fill in a form with your details and wait for a confirmation email with your login details. Once you have your login details you can search for an appropriate product to promote and get your affiliate link.

3. Paydotcom

Here is the link for the sign up page for paydotcom.
At paydotcom you will find both physical and digital products to promote and there is no maximum price limit of the products for sale.
It also a simple procedure to sign up and become an affiliate at paydotcom.

4. Google

Type your product or keyword + affiliate program into the Google search box and see what you get.
If you want to find an affiliate program with recurring commissions then search “your product affiliate recurring” – you might get some helpful results that way as well.

You can also Google “affiliate directory” – there are 38 million results for that search term so you should be able to find an affiliate product to promote somewhere in there.
The search term “affiliate program directory” also has 31 million results in Google.

Some affiliate programs are easy to join and you don’t have to supply much information at all – the basic information that you need is your name, email address and a paypal account. (If you don’t already have a paypal business account now is a good time to get one)

Other affiliate programs require a lot of information to become an affiliate including existing websites and traffic stats etc. This is extremely difficult to do especially if you are just starting out and don’t have anything established in that particular niche as yet. I suggest that if there are too many hoops to jump through on the affiliate signup page then it is time to move on. As was said before there are millions of places to find free affiliate programs!

It is also good to know that sometimes it takes a couple of days for you to actually receive your affiliate link so it is probably best to research and apply to a few different affiliate programs at the same time so that you don’ t lose a few days waiting…

Here is a present for you -  click here for access to a free video by James Schramko on How to Accelerate Your Affiliate Sales

Post from: Internet Marketing Newbie Diary

Affiliate Marketing for Newbies – Finding a Product

Magazines

Look at the magazine covers. Magazines have a huge research budget so any story that has made it onto the fron cover of a magazine has a large potential audience. You can check out what’s hot by heading down to your local newstand or check out www.magazines.com. This website has magazines under any category you can imagine. Just browse through and look at all of the front covers.See which topics are popular and what they are publishing articles about. If a magazine has devoted several pages to an article on a particular topic then you know there are people out there who are interested in that topic.

Dummies books

If someone has taken the time to write a Dummies book about a topic then you can be sure there is a hungry market out there. Either the bookshop or Amazon.com is the place to look for Dummies books.

While you are at Amazon.com you might also want to check out the best-seller lists. The top 10 best-sellers might give you an idea of a profitable niche.

And always remember you can never be too rich, too thin or too beautiful!

Still stuck? – Ask yourself the right questions

What products do I use everyday?

What videos are popular right now?
You can check out the top 10 videos on YouTube.

What are my friends and family talking about?

What are the issues being discussed on current affair shows and morning TV?

If you are still having trouble finding ideas then check out this video that James Schramko put on his blog. James is a very savvy and successful internet marketer and this video gives you some great ideas for niche markets. He is just sitting in his garden reading the Sunday papers. It is also hugely instructive to watch a fantastic marketing mind at work.

Online Places to Research Niches

The following is a list of websites that you can visit to check out the latest trends. Look for what is popular and what is increasing in popularity. Hopefully after all this you will know what you want to promote and what market you want to concentrate on.

clickbank.com

lycos.com

googletrends.com

froogle.com

technorati.com

ebaypulse.com

Now I just wanted to add that if you liked James Schramko’s style – I certainly do and you want to learn more from him then check out his Superfastresults forum – it has a ton of information for the newbie internet marketer and the not so new internet marketer as well!

Post from: Internet Marketing Newbie Diary

Affiliate Marketing for Newbies – Niche Product Ideas

Before you choose the product that you want to sell make sure that there are people out there who want to buy it.

There is no point in spending time and money trying to sell something that seems like a good idea to you but that no-one else can see the need for. This seems extremely obvious but many internet marketing newbies and even those that are moderately successful will tell you at one time or another that they too have fallen into the trap of trying to sell or promote something that nobody wants. It’s even worse when you spend a lot of time creating and developing a product without first checking that there is a market out there.

Niche Marketing

The next thing that you want to consider when choosing the product that you want to promote is how much competition there is. Some of the most profitable markets on the internet are related to health, wealth and happiness but these are the most competitive as well. If you choose a market with a large amount of competition it will take much longer for you to get a result. Whilst you are learning I suggest that you pick a less competitive market so that you have small successes before you get discouraged. The major reason that people don’t succeed in internet marketing is that they give up way too early.If you pick a smaller goal to begin with you will have small successes and this will encourage you to keep going. If your target is too large to begin with then you may not have enough determination and persistence to keep going. Set yourself up for success rather than failure by using effective strategies.

Narrowing your target market down is called finding your niche. Niche marketing is when you target a product or service to a small part of a market that is not being catered to by the main suppliers to that market. For example, in the skiing market if you type the general term “skiing” into Google there are more than 40 million results but if you get more specific and want to market a product directed towards people who enjoy skiing in out of the way places then the competition for “heli skiing in Alaska” is way less. When I typed this keyphrase into Google there were only 1.7 million results. This is probably still a little too competitive to begin with. When I typed “heli-skiing Alaska” in quotation marks into the Google search box there were only 2,000 results. This tells me that I have gone a little too specific and probably there are not enough people on this topic to make it viable.(Check it out for yourself)

One of the most important things about a niche is that it is very specific and you are able to clearly define your target market eg women between 40 and 50 who are interested in …. Once you understand your target market you will be able to provide them with what they want and need.(If you are not exactly sure – then ask them)

Validate Your Niche

To make sure that your are choosing a profitable niche ask yourself these 3 questions about your target market:

Do they have a need?

Do they have money to spend?

Do they need or desire to spend money?

This is an important distinction to make. Make sure that your target market has money to spend. A cookbook with fast, easy meals for the time-poor single mother may not be a good bet because single mothers are usually doing it tough and don’t have much extra money to spend. They would probably appreciate your wholesome  quick dinner ideas but they would probably be looking for the free recipes. Contrast this with the wealthy, retired car enthusiast, a person with plenty of time and cash to splash. This would probably be a profitable niche if you took it down to something more specific like a particular make or model of a car. (I’m not a car enthusiast so I don’t even know which car brands would evoke passion and desire but I know there are a heap of car enthusiasts out there!)

How To Choose A Niche

Sometimes it is easy to promote something that you are passionate about so think about your own passions or hobbies. Is there something that you like doing that other people are interested in as well?

If this doesn’t work for you then walk around your house and list every product or service that you have purchased and utilize that cost you more than $100. the BBQ, your camera, TV, computer etc – you get the picture. All of these things can and are sold on the internet every day.

So start thinking about the products that you want to promote and find your niche market…

Post from: Internet Marketing Newbie Diary

How to Find an Affiliate Product to Promote