6 "FREE" Steps to Creating a Profitable Affiliate Marketing Business

My friends, Anthony Jonas & Kayla Prather recently penned this article and agreed to let me post it on this site.  So, without further ado:

As an affiliate marketer, your choices of products to promote are endless. Depending on your interests, you can team up with merchants or product developers in almost any field imaginable.

Interior decorators can affiliate with window and drapery companies, furniture manufacturers, carpet companies, and custom builders.  Dog breeders can affiliate with groomers or trainers.  And Internet marketers can affiliate with eBook authors, traffic resource owners, software resellers, or promotional products. The list of products to promote is limited only by one's imagination and creativity.

Here are the steps to creating your affiliate marketing business:

1. DECIDE WHAT NICHE YOU WANT TO PROMOTE

The first step in deciding what to promote would be to decide if there is a particular niche or interest about which you are passionate. It always runs true that it is much easier to promote something
you love. Are you a dog lover, a quilter, a do-it-yourselfer, an Internet "junkie" or a parent who has found a fabulous product that you want every other parent to know about? Choose where you want
to go with your affiliate marketing business.

2. DECIDE HOW YOU WILL PROMOTE

Next, decide how you want to promote your business.  Are you going to build your own website? Are you going to use a template site? Will you be promoting offline and online or promoting one or the other way exclusively?  What different types of products can you add to your line? As a dog breeder, you could connect with groomers, pet food manufacturers, trainers, pet toy manufacturers, poop scoopers, veterinarians, boarding kennels or pet sitters. As you can see, the list can be quite extensive.

3. DETERMINE HOW YOU WILL BE COMPENSATED (DEPENDING ON YOUR NICHE)

Many of the people and companies that you connect with will have a specific compensation plan in place.  In fact, this is the norm. You should be prepared to suggest a compensation plan to any vendors who do not have one in place, or an alternate plan for those vendors to whom you can really provide quality traffic or that you have some special talent or skill.

4. SETUP YOUR WORKSPACE

Remember also, that a home office can consist of whatever space you can carve out of your current living space. If you have a spare room to set up in, that's ideal. You can decorate it with the excess furniture you have at hand, or pick up some type of second-hand office furniture. It's not necessary to purchase a lot of expensive items. Make do with what you have or what you can acquire inexpensively. If you don't have a spare room, a dining room table to work on, a corner of your bedroom or whatever
space you can create will work just fine. After all, many exceedingly wealthy entrepreneurs started out in their garages.

5. PROMOTE, PROMOTE, PROMOTE!

While it is pretty easy to set up an affiliate marketing business, understand that it also requires work in order to be profitable. Whether you are working online or offline, you will need to actively promote whatever product or company with whom you've chosen to affiliate. No work means no income.
Even though the old saying "it takes money to make money" is true, you will want to operate out of profit, not out of pocket. Therefore, be cautious of what you are spending in promotions until you are able to start earning an income.

6. REAP YOUR REWARDS!!!

All work and no play makes for a 'JOB' without the benefits, so be sure that you enjoy your newly generated income. Take time to smell the roses, spend time with your loved ones. Use that extra income to relieve your financial stress, take a vacation or buy someone a gift and most importantly, don't forget to get something special for yourself.

With these steps in mind, you can easily create a profitable business from the comfort of your home. Whether you work your home business full-time or part-time to start, you will have an affiliate marketing business you can look at with pride.

Sincerely,

Anthony Jonas & Kayla Prather

Kayla Prather | 1531 Country Club Rd | Lake Charles, Louisiana 70605

Finding A Product And A Niche

If you have signed up for an affiliate account at Clickbank and have been overwhelmed by the shear magnitude of products and services available to promote, there is a shortcut you might consider in narrowing down your search.

First, a little background on niches.  Some "gurus" believe you should pick a niche that is very large, allowing you to expand your marketing of different products within the large niche.  Others believe you should focus on very narrow niches where competition is low.  Whatever tack you take, you should look for products that convert well. That will be reflected in the gravity ranking of the product.  The higher the gravity, the more people are making sales of the product.

I believe that if you pick a product with a very large gravity, you will encounter unusually large amounts of competition.  Perhaps selecting products with gravity over 50 and under 300 would be a good range.

There is a free tool available which will shortcut the process for you to choose a highly converting product.  It is called CBEngine located here.  (There is also a Pro edition but you pay a price for it).  Locate the "Top Gravity" section on the right center of the page and click "Complete List". This will list from highest to lowest top products based on gravity. There, you will be able to get product information, website and affiliate links.  It also lists the average affiliate earnings for each product.

This is a good first stop and will illustrate the current "hot seller" niches.   An alternative approach is actually within the Clickbank Marketplace.  When you click on Marketplace, you will have a search window called "Find Products".  If you select "Advanced Search", you will be able to: specify keywords, categories (niches) and the ability to specify different "Stats".  Once you perform the search, you can then refine the search, by selecting gravity from the drop down menu, and sorting from high to low.

This concludes the "how-to".  More to come....
Thanks for reading.