This is the first in a series of articles I will publish in the next couple of weeks, explaining a step-by-step plan to successful affiliate marketing. This first article is aimed to introduce absolute newbies to the concept of affiliate marketing and to the different ways in which to find a product to promote.

This first article is not for experienced marketers neither is it for those who know and understand affiliate marketing and know how to find good products, as it covers only the essential basics. My following articles will hopefully discuss more complex steps and thus may be of interest even to experienced marketers.

Let me begin by answering the question “What is affiliate marketing anyway? I like to compare Affiliate Marketing to the California Gold Rush. The treasures are there and they only need to be discovered. However, to get to the point: if you are an affiliate marketer of a certain product, the merchant or the product publisher will pay you a commission each and every time he or she makes a sale as a result of traffic you have sent to their sale page.

The “product” may be physical – from a bar of soap to a private plane; it may be digital – anything one can instantly download from the Internet: ebooks, software, video courses etc.; and it may be a subscription or a registration to a newsletter or a list. Tens of thousands of companies pay their affiliates a commission for a sale, a registration or a lead.

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. Have you ever purchased a product online which you really liked? Why not try to become an affiliate? Go to the product’s site or sales letter, click on the “affiliate program” link. You’ll find there all the information you need.

2. Do you have any hobbies? Things you know a lot about like a sport, music, cooking, whatever. You may also participate in forums in which your interests are discussed. This will be very helpful in the future when you promote products associated with your hobbies. Let’s assume you like sewing; you have a lot of information about cloth, patterns, and sewing machines. Look for any kind of product in the field of sewing which you can easily promote.

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. Try to follow the hot items that your children and/or other young people spend money on. Teenagers are a vast group of consumers.

5. Subscribe to or buy regularly some popular publications. Follow the reports on the newest fads and fashions.

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.

Post from: Guerilla Marketing

Affiliate Marketing News : What Is It and How Do I Find It?

Have you ever wondered if there is an effortless way to make money online? A way to make money that does not require hard work or lots of time and money and even does not require a website?

I know you wish there was such a system, where you could spend just a little time and almost no money, to snatch a piece of the Internet gold pie. You need to know that when I say “easy way”, I mean even with no knowledge of websites, no HTML, no shopping cart and credit cards, no email lists – in two words: no annoyance !

I can guess you’re already exhausted and irritated by all the promises of “opportunities” that you have met on your search for the sensible road to affiliate marketing, and you can’t imagine that there truly is a method that will do it for you. But, the truth is, there are a few such methods. All you need is a little help in finding the one that will best serve you.

Let me tell you about the two main difficulties you will have to overcome on your path to lucrative affiliate marketing, if you do it on your own without any help.

The first problem is finding a good product to sell. You know about affiliate programs, where you send traffic to someone’s site and they pay you a handsome commission when your traffic buys their product.

There are a zillion affiliate programs out there and a gazillion websites with products to sell. But – how can you tell which products are both good and in demand by consumers? You must find and promote products that will make money for you, that is, websites which sell products that are very profitable. Finding them on your own requires some knowledge and is obviously time and effort (and funds) consuming.

Obstacle number two is more complex. Even if you found a good product, which is in-demand, you still need to promote it and bring shoppers to the merchant’s website or to your site, and from there to the merchant’s shopping cart. Without shoppers you will not sell and if you don’t sell you will not make money. So, how do you overcome these obstacles?

You need a method which can remove these two major obstacles out of your way before you can effortlessly make money online. This unique method is out there and could easily be found.

There are super-automated solutions that will find the products for you, handle all the transactions, take care of the emails and the customer service issues. All you have to do is let them give you the resources and teach you how to drive free traffic to the website that they’ll build for you. Now, your job is to find them and start your Internet gold digging!

Post from: Guerilla Marketing

You Need to Discover the Easy Way to Affiliate Marketing