Affiliate Marketing

To make money online you need to find or discover hungry markets where passionate or desperate people want to buy a product to solve a specific problem. The more pain or urgency the problems generates the more profitable the niche. This is why I generally recommend my clients not to choose a niche they are interested in unless it is a niche many people are very passionate about. Passionate to the point that they are irrational and willing to spend money over and over again on their interest.

One niche marketing strategy that can bring about fast results is affiliate marketing. The start-up costs and risks are minimal. The idea is to find great converting offers in the form of products and services that help solve people’s problems. As an affiliate you educate your target market about these products and services and send them to the offer. You send them from your site/blog to a merchant’s sales page or website. If someone you referred makes a purchase the merchant will pay you a commission. Easy money!

Something very important with regard to promoting affiliate products online is to understand the behavior of people when they search for information or a solution. There are generally three phases someone will go through when searching for a solution to a problem.

The first phase is the browsing phase. At this stage they have no real intention to buy. Instead they looking for information. It is very hard to convert someone into a buyer in the browsing phrase. It is possible, but would involve having to educate the visitor and then convincing them to buy in one hit. This is where most marketers get it wrong. They try to market to people who aren’t interested in buying.

The second phase is the review phase. This is when people are interested in a product and are looking proof that the product works. Testimonials and unbiased reviews are what people in this phase are wanting to find. You have probably come across a few review sites yourself. At this review phase you have a good chance to convert a visitor into a buyer. As an affiliate you could expect about a 5 to 7% conversion rate. So for every hundred people you referred to a merchant you should get about 5 sales.

The third and most profitable phase for an affiliate is the buying phase. This is where the customer has already made the decision to buy. They might be looking for a coupon or discount, but they have their credit card ready and want to purchase. High conversions of up to 15% can be expected in this phase.

Many people new to Internet marketing avoid the most competitive niches believing it will be too difficult and costly to succeed. This is not always the case. In fact, you’ll have a better chance of success if you market in a competitive niche The secret is to find a unique angle in a competitive niche. It is not as hard as you would expect. However, it involves lots of focused research which most people don’t like to do.

Once you have found a market, you try to find an angle and analyse the competition and then review keyword phrases. This process involves finding out the needs and wants of the target niche to find an angle and then look or high converting products. It is really important that you understand the demographics and problems of your niche market.

The product you choose to promote should have a high payout of at least $30. Then you research keywords and competitors with the intention of finding the biggest opportunities to rank easily in the search engines. This is where you can guarantee success.

With the research done you then want to decide on the type of affiliate site you want to build. Ideally you want to create a web asset. Something with lots of unique quality content that you can possibly sell in the future. I have had a lot of success creating hybrid blogs. A hybrid blog is a blog that can attract natural search engine traffic, but that can also be used to send paid traffic to.

For your blog you want to create plenty of good quality content that will help solve the problems of your target customer. People are becoming more and more web savvy and will know when they are being sold to. With affiliate marketing you need to understand that traffic is easy, but conversion are the challenge. That is why you need to focus on people in the review or buying phase. It is more about qualified traffic, than the number of visitors you send to an merchant.