Many people make the mistake of going into affiliate marketing without first learning the basics, this is why many of them find it hard to succeed. They simply set up a website with some links and hope that the money would come in. But after some time and poorer, they are still puzzled why they can't make a cent. So they give up and go away. The secrets to affiliate marketing isn't difficult, all you need is just some basic knowledge. In order to succeed in affiliate marketing, here are some things that you must learn. Perform Market Research The first step towards successful affiliate marketing is niche research. This is information gathering on the affiliate product and the specific markets which the product are targeted for. Once you collected the data, you can start evaluating if the product is suitable for affiliate marketing. Affiliate networks often provide useful information about their products and how they fare on the network. This can save you plenty of research time. But you must not stop there. There are many affiliates willing to show you how to do a research, so don't pay others to do this for you. You can also make use of Google Search Engine. Just type the phrases from your market and analyze the search engine's result. Research On Keywords Researching on keywords or phrases that your target audience typically use is called keyword research. The main objective is to create a great keyword list. Most of your web pages' content and marketing campaign will be based on these keywords. Keyword research is critical to your website success or failure, it plays an important role, so do it well. This is also why keyword research tools are so popular and expensive. When you are new to internet marketing and don't want to spend too much money now, you can start with the free keyword tools, like Google AdWords Keyword Tool or Free Wordtracker Keyword Tool. These sites may be a bit limited than the paying sites, but they are just as effective. Monetizing Your Website Website monetization is the foundation of online marketing, but a lot of online marketers continue to make mistakes here. In short, monetization is properly laying out the web pages so that you get the most money from the website. For affiliate marketing, You need to develop your site to concentrate on the product you are promoting. What you want are your visitors to focus on the product and nothing else. There are various methods to monetize your website. Hyperlinks, standard square ads and banners are some of the popular tools for monetization. Never use AdSense for affiliate website because they often create distraction to your visitor. I don't suggest you use them here. Get Traffic For Your Website Traffic generation is a crucial aspect in affiliate marketing and must be learned by all marketers. Traffic generation is the method of drawing people to your web pages. If more people visit your website, you have higher chances of making money. There are various methods to generate traffic. Here are the 3 most common ones: Website Search Engine Optimization - Make use of various non-paying strategies to put your website right on no 1. page of the search engines. However, SEO need massive effort and time before you get to see any result. You can use Pay Per Click (PPC) - PPC gets traffic fast, but you need upfront cash. Since you are paying for the traffic, you must watch what you spend or you can end up with high expenses and no result. Web 2.0 (Social Networking Sites) - Social networking is very common these days and you can use networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook or forums to get website traffic. This is a fast and cost effective method, but you have to do this with care because most social networking sites don't like people promoting affiliate products on their sites. Being new to affiliate marketing, you may find these basic things confusing. Just use them often and keep practicing, eventually, they will become easy to you. Once these things become clearer, affiliate marketing will become simple and you can easily succeed on the internet.
Thanks for the article, that's really well pointed. The first two paragraphs fit perfectly for any website not only affiliate websites. I think you forgot a crucial aspect for traffic generation especially for affiliate websites, it's article marketing, i think that's the best way for getting traffic, it helps a lot for SEO either.
I have read this type of articles a lot. Good information though but waiting for someone to show us the way with help of an example, a particular product only.
Great information - thanks for taking the time to share! Getting traffic is usually my biggest problem - even with article marketing I often don't seem to get the traffic flow that I would like to see. But, I have to admit, I usually have so many things going on that it is difficult to give each the attention it deserves. Lately I have tried to focus more on just a few of my projects, attempting to get them on the road to success before moving on to another project. This has resulted in more success for the individual projects, and over time - long term, I hope it will mean that I have several successful streams of income that require little effort.
Yes, some people do but only people who are willing to put a great deal of time into it and genuine effort. There are a lot of scams out there but there are also some legitimate ones.
I agree with this post 100%, affiliate marketing really is not as hard as people make it out to be. In fact (and this is solely my opinion) it is one of the easiest places for new IMers to start out as it allows them to focus on the marketing aspect and learning how to do that without worrying about the product end of the equation.
Excellent article...I am in the middle of this journey myself so it is always great to get advice on how to become successful in affiliate marketing
Thanks for the info. Its a quality one. But i will like you to throw more light on picking of products. This will really help most of us that are interested. Thank you kindly