Internet Marketing With Joe

When deciding what product to promote, you first want to think about what excites you.  What area or field do you have experience or interest in?  It is a lot easier to promote a product that you are comfortable with or are passionate about.  It would be good to brainstorm and come up with five good areas and narrow it down from there by doing research on the viability of the product and the competition.  If there is no market for a product, then move on and don’t wast your time.  As far as competition goes, you want competition because it shows there is demand but you don’t want an excessive amount that you will be competing with.

You will want to check out two of the better affiliate networks – Commission Junction and Clickbank.  Clickbank does not deal with physical products so you don’t have to worry about problems with product delivery or supply.  Most of your information product ebooks will be found here and you can make up to 60% commission on each product.  Commission Junction is a giant that handles all kinds of products and many major brands.  Go to their sites and look for yourself.  There are many more affiliate networks so just google in those two words and you will get a long list. 

Once you have a product you want to promote then you need to go to their website and sign up as an affiliate.  It should be a quick and easy process.  When you are accepted, you can use some of their advertising tools but it is better to do a lot on your own so you don’t look exactly like the other affiliates.   Remember you want to stand out from the crowd of other affiliate marketers.

When I was thinking about what would be the best way to start in internet marketing, affiliate marketing seemed to be one of the quickest and easiest.  With an affiliate program, you will be selling someone else’s product and can be started very quickly.  There are three types of affiliate programs: 

1.    Pay per lead in which you get paid a certain amount when a customer fills out a form or survey                           
2.  Pay  per click  where you are paid when a customer clicks on a link for a certain program
3.   Pay per sale when the affiliate is paid a certain amount or percentage  for each sale from the affiliate’s link

When you sign up to be an affiliate for a product, you will be given an unique link or URL that will have your special ID so you will be given credit for each sale you make. 

Being an affiliate marketer is quick and easy to start up.  You pick the product you want to sell and contact the company and once you are accepted you can start making money.  

There are many advantages to affiliate marketing:

• very little cost to set up
• no inventory
• no employees
• no order processing
• no shipping costs
• no customer service hassles
• no experience needed

So when you start out you need to follow some steps to get the ball rolling and the money flowing:

• decide on a product or program
• do your research on the viability of the product
• get a domain name and web host
• do research for your site so it fits with the product
• sign up for an affiliate program
• get traffic to your site for your sales

I will continue on what you need for affiliate marketing next time.