That may sound crazy, but I have good reason for saying that. Most affiliate marketers wind up doing the following and failing miserably.



1. They look at a sales page and think it looks pretty good.

2. They decide to go for it and sign up.

3. They find pre-made ads, direct them to the web page of the affiliate website, they next do submissions to safelists, then send promotions to their own lists, then they use some hit exchanges or other forms of free advertisement.

4. This results in zero sales, they decide to ditch the program, and go find another one, saying to themselves “well, that was a waste of time, that product stinks”

5. They start all over again doing the same thing, with the next affiliate program claiming to be the next best sure winner according to the sales copy.

Does any of this sound familiar? If it does, you are not the only one. The sad fact is that not more than 5% of affiliates manage to make more than $25.00 from any of their efforts.

So, what is the answer?

1. Start by going to Commission Junction, Linkshare, Clickbank, etc. and try doing some in depth research in a niche market that you know something about or have an interest in. You don't have to be in love with the product, but if you believe in it, it is easier to convince someone that it is a good product.

2. Take a good look at the product conversion rate, make sure it is high. Commission Junction can supply you with a report for the last three months and last seven days of earnings per click. This is a big help in choosing the best paying product.

3. Make use of a software known as the Product Idea Profitability Evaluator. This is a great tool to figure out profitability of a product. You can eliminate many niches that you think would be profitable with this software. It will assess keywords, and profitability potential. It will also give you important information to determine profitability based on pay per click. You can use it for free for 10 days.

4. You next need to determine and buy a domain name (Go Daddy) and get a reliable hosting company (I use Hostgator). You can get free hosting but it is not recommended. If you want to come across as being professional, a free hosting company will destroy that image. The ads they will place on your site will make your website look like an advertising billboard. For any web business, building trust and confidence are of great importance.

5. If you don't know how to build a website, there are many tutorials online, many in video format. Or if you have the money, hire a web designer to do the work for you. Do a Google search for website tutorials or html tutorials. Make sure you build a site with lots of good content, not something that is just full of product hype.

6. Next, you will need to promote your website. There are many ways to promote websites. Do a Google search on site promotion and you will see millions of results. Look at the first 5-10 for a good idea of the direction you want to go with your promotion.

7. If you really want to get a lot of traffic, build yourself a good link directory. That way, the search engines will pick up your site if your content is really good. Make sure you use a lot of your targeted keywords in the website so that they are picked up by the web spiders and you get a lot of free promotion on the search engines. This is known as Search Engine Optimization

8. Remember these steps and repeat them for every new affiliate product you want to promote.