How Does Affiliate Marketing Work

Creating your own product is another option, and I will be covering this too at some point in the future, however we have to start somewhere, so let’s commence with how the prospective internet marketer who doesn’t have a product or website begins his or her business. Firstly, if you do not have a product, then the best way to make money is to become an affiliate of other people’s creations and earn commissions via sales. By affiliate, I mean you simply agree to market, or sell someone else’s product in return for a commission on sales. Now this sounds fairly straightforward in theory doesn’t it? But to actually earn money and be a success, you MUST follow a set of tried and tested rules – and that is what this article,  and others in the series, is going to show you. So what comes first – the website or affiliate product? The answer is the product – in other words what you want to sell, be this your own creation or someone else’s. Think of your website as your shop, if you don’t yet have anything to sell – what’s the point of diverting your efforts at this stage? Are you with me? So what do you need to do next? Well the first thing is to find a large niche, a niche being a group of people who have an interest in a specialist subject. What do I mean by that?

Well ‘dog training’ for instance is a very large niche, think of all the types of dogs you could train, they all have different temperaments, there’s not a one size fits all training schedule for every breed of dog, so if you looked deeper, how about ‘training your Labrador,’ even deeper still, how about ‘house training your Labrador,’ and deeper, ‘how to stop your Labrador puppy from chewing furniture,’ do you see where I’m coming from? Find a specific larger niche and then dig deeper until you find a small one that appeals, and has sufficient interest from members of the public. Fine, I can see where you are coming from “But how do I do that”? Good question, here’s what you do: Open ‘Notepad’ on your computer desktop ready to jot down the results of your searches.

Firstly visit Amazon, and in the drop down menu select ‘Books’  – in the long bar next to it, type in the words “How To” without the inverted commas, and up will pop a lot of publications within that category, you will also notice there are a lot of sub-categories on the same page, delve within those to find a lot more titles, and let your imagination run riot. You are looking for a list of large niches, One I found, as an example, was ‘How to Lower Your cholesterol’.

Next, go to ClickBank.com and click on the ‘Marketplace’ tab on the top of the page. When you get there, find a main category and then click on a sub-category to the right, search for large niches on the first page. By focusing on the top 10 sellers on the first page there MUST again be a demand. Remember you aren’t looking for the identical niche that appears on this page, you will be looking to dig deeper, to find a smaller niche within the larger one as described earlier. As if the above two sites wouldn’t give you more than enough potential for years, there is another good site you can try if you wish, visit: Magazine.com and when you arrive there, do the same as for ClickBank.com and Amazon; select categories, you’ll see them running down the side of the site, search these and keep digging until you see a subject that interests you.