For those just starting out on the whole adventure (?) of making money online, affiliate marketing seems like the quickest and easiest way to get some quick cash rolling in. No need to create a product, no need to mess with creating a website, learning HTML, and all that other gobbledygook stuff.
But affiliate marketing still involves more than just heading over to Clickbank, picking up a product and dropping your affiliate link all over the place. At least it does, if you want to actually earn any money from it.
Finding An Affiliate Product
Ideally, you want to concentrate your efforts on a product that you own. I know this goes against the grain for a lot of affiliate marketers out there, but if you don’t know anything about the product other than what the sales page tells you, you’re really going to have a hard time ‘selling’ it to anyone else.
Once you’re more experienced, and know all the tricks of the trade, or you can afford to outsource the work, then you’ll be able to move on and effectively ‘sell’ just about anything. Not a business model I recommend, but that’s just personal. And I admit it’s one I’ve followed in the past. Or should I say ‘tried’ to follow. Sometimes, whether we like it or not, we have to accept that personality wise, there are some things you’re not going to be cut out to do. And for me, going against my conscience is one of those things I can’t do.
Note, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with promoting a product you haven’t used or purchased or tried. It’s just that after a long, hard road, I’ve come to the conclusion it’s not for me.
Too many folks focus on affiliate marketing as needing to be digitalised. Instant gratification however, isn’t always what sells the best. Besides, there are just waaaaayyyyy too many physical products for you to sell as an affiliate to even consider leaving such huge amounts of money on the table.
For that reason, try to broaden your search when looking for affiliate products. Forget about Clickbank and head on over to Amazon instead. Sure the commissions are much lower, but you can more than make up for it by pure volume or just be concentrating on higher priced items. And the beauty of Amazon is there’s a very good chance your friends and family buy from there anyway so making a few sales doesn’t require much at all.
Base whatever affiliate products you try to sell on whether they are actually any good. Don’t opt for the products which offer the highest commissions just because you think you’ll make more money. You’ll sell more if it’s good quality even if the price tag / commission percentage is lower. I know it’s old fashioned but put the customer first. Don’t sell them shit and they’ll refrain from throwing it back at you.
Promoting Affiliate Products
Once again, when you’re just starting out, then figuring out how to actually promote a product is pretty tough. But these days, you don’t have to try very hard. Most product owners provide banners, emails, ads, keywords, videos, etc that you can use. If you have your own site, it’s a breeze. If you don’t, then get a free site set up at least. Head over to Weebly or Blogger or any of the other zillion free sites out there.
If that sounds like too much work, join some relevant forums and put a link in your signature. Note that if you go into any forum and just start spamming the place about XYZ product, you’ll most likely get banned and even if you don’t, you wont’ make many sales. But as long as you actually participate, ask questions, answer questions, make friends, etc you’ll get plenty of folks who’ll click through to see if the product you’re promoting is of any use to them. Which of course, it will be or you wouldn’t be promoting it at that particular forum would ya?
Thow up a few videos on Youtube. These days just about anyone can put together a decent video. Even yours truly here can manage it so I defy anyone to say they can’t do it! Just show how to get the most out of the product and you’re good to go. Hell, you could even make a spoof video related to the product. Have you seen some of the TV ads these days? But they’re entertaining and I’m willing to bet the company have tested the hell out of their marketing methods so don’t rule out laughter as a terrific way to get folks to click on your link. Do remember to put your affiliate link as the first line of the description!
Finally, get out of the IM mindset. Believe it or not, there are a helluva lot of folks who don’t know IM exists and yet they still buy stuff online. I’m still amazed at the number of people trying to make a living online who think the only way to do it is to sell stuff related to making money online. 
surfer.
