After watching hundreds of students build web businesses in a wide range of niche markets, I've concluded that there are really only two critical steps to succeeding as an affiliate marketer. Many people make their journey towards affiliate success a lot harder than it really needs to be and this article aims to help you to shortcut your learning curve towards becoming a super affiliate.

Ok, so what are the two critical steps?

Step 1 - Choose a niche that has thousands of passionate people already spending real money online on HIGH TICKET products and services. Your niche should also have a variety of membership sites or other forms of continuity products you can promote that have ongoing monthly fees.

It doesn't matter if you aren't an expert in this niche, by spending a few days or a week researching, you will know as much as 90% of the other people involved and you will be able to hold your own when writing articles and creating content for your website, newsletters or your blog.

The other critical element in niche selection is to make sure there are TWO TIER affiliate programs available so you can not only get paid for your direct referrals, but you can become a Joint Venture Broker and earn second tier commissions as well for introducing others to the program.

Do some research and find an affiliate program that offers -

* A two-tier structure so you can get leverage on what you do and earn commissions from the work of those you recruit into your team

* A full time affiliate manager who is there to answer your questions and help you to promote the program (and increase your commissions) in every way possible

* A range of pre-written promotional materials and an automated, step by step sequential marketing system that continuously follows up with the prospects you refer

* A range of high ticked products and at least one monthly membership program that automatically earns you commissions month after month for every member who continues their subscription

* Bonuses and incentives for high-earning affiliates to encourage you to become a peak performer

Step 2 - Promote your affiliate program by using Articles submitted to article directories and ezine publishers

The problem with entering niche markets that have high ticket products and lots of competition is it's nearly impossible to generate enough visitor traffic to your website or blog to make any headway. This is where writing and submitting articles and press releases gives you a major advantage over people who are working their tails off trying to get pages ranked well in the organic search results or who are buying traffic using PPC.

However, by finding keywords that aren't as popular as the top 50 words that everyone else is building pages for, or the keywords they are bidding several dollars a click for using PPC, you can run rings around most of your competition and clean up while they all slog it out and get nowhere.

What you want to do is find long-tail, multi keyword phrases that are highly descriptive and related to your niche, and write articles (or have them written for you) specifically focused and well optimized for those words. Then submit your well-optimized articles to the top article directories where they will be indexed by the major search engines.

If you do your job right, your articles in these directories will rank well in the engines, you'll generate lots of visitors to your site and you have the chance of turning these visitors into customers.

When these visitors arrive at your website, offer them something of real value to encourage them to join a list, and you can build your affiliate business quickly and inexpensively while your competitors won't have a clue about what you are doing. There's really no downside to this strategy as long as your articles are well written and informative.

So to summarize, in order to make an Affiliate Marketing fortune in two simple steps, all you need to do if find a niche market that already has lots of people spending money online and plenty of competition; learn all you can about that market so you become an expert (or at least you know more than 90% of the people involved); join a two tier program run by an affiliate manager who will help you succeed, and then promote that program using well written, keyword focused articles.

That's all there is to it. Don't go head to head with the guys with deep pockets. Use 'Marketing Ju Jitsu' and sidestep your competitors by using free articles to attract website visitors and you can quickly become a super affiliate without spending a fortune on marketing.