All the gurus say affiliate marketing is so easy.

If that’s true, why are there literally millions of affiliate marketers earning $0 month after month?

The thing is, affiliate marketing is NOT as easy as most gurus make it out to be.

You can’t just pick a product or service at JVZoo, Clickbank, Amazon, ShareASale or Commission Junction and start advertising your affiliate link. I don’t care where you advertise — Google Adwords, Facebook, blogs or ad networks.

Do that and you will almost always burn through more cash than you earn in commissions every month. Unless you have very deep pockets you need to be a lot smarter about your affiliate marketing.

Over the years I’ve tried just about every affiliate marketing strategy known to mankind. I now make a full-time income — mostly from affiliate marketing. I mix in a few other online income strategies as well, such as product creation and advertising income, but my favorite way to earn online is from affiliate marketing.

Today I’ll share some of my secrets with you.

 

Secret #1: Stick to ONE niche

I see far too many affiliate marketers build a site around “ebooks” and then try to sell ebooks via Amazon or wherever, on all topics.

That’s a big mistake in my opinion. You need to stick to ONE niche that you know and like.

If your thing is woodworking then build a site around woodworking. Share your best projects. Share your worst screw-ups. Show them you’re human just like them. You can write all about it, make videos about it – however you are most comfortable sharing information.

Just don’t stray off the topic of woodworking and try to sell affiliate products in the Internet marketing niche. Your audience will lose interest and see right through your sales pitch. But if you’re showing them how to build a chair then you tell them you downloaded the plans from x site, well, that’s different.

That’s how you make lots of sales over and over.

Secret #2: Know what you are promoting – I mean REALLY know it.

The easiest products to sell are the ones you use yourself. When I go back through all my affiliate promotions I can easily see that the top performers were the ones I really liked and used myself. Not always, but usually.

That’s why it is so important to promote stuff you would buy or have bought yourself. That way you can literally show potential buyers all the good and the bad of the product. That makes your promotions REAL and GENUINE.

Secret #3: Promote as you would to your mom or your best friend.

As I mentioned, when you are doing affiliate marketing you are going to need to create some content around the products you promote. I’m talking about emails, blog posts, videos and well… ways to help potential buyers make a decision.

This is where many affiliate marketers go wrong. They go into sales pitches like a badly used car salesman.

Instead of doing that, you need to keep it real. Talk to them like you respect them, want to help them and can relate to them.

Talk about real-world things. Inject a little humor. Keep it light and don’t pressure them. They’ll appreciate it and want more.

And yes, they might even but from your link. If not this time, maybe next time.

I then went on to tell them about a great program I had been testing and shared the affiliate link.

This type of affiliate marketing is not only more fun, but it is also more effective. More people will pay attention to you when you are not in their face screaming louder than the next guy about why they should buy.

Try this technique and I guarantee you’ll start getting better results with your affiliate marketing.

OK, let me wrap this up…

As you can see from today’s issue, if you want to earn serious commissions with affiliate marketing, you need to put in some time and effort.

You need to be creative. And you need to take as many lessons from experience marketers as you can.

Follow the stuff they do that works. Copy them when you can.

In fact, copy JIM if you want to.

He just uploaded all His “soft-sell” conversational affiliate promotions from the last year and a half to this web page.

You can get all of them (hundreds!) along with a list of all the top programs He used them on. You can use them on the programs he promoted, or use them on your own stuff.

You can use them as email solos, follow-ups, blog posts and in your articles. Just use them! They generated a lot of great feedback and a ton of sales, and they can do that for you too.

If you want to start generating full-time affiliate commissions in your spare time, this is probably the easiest way to do it without doing all the work yourself.

 

Today I’ll show you a simple two-step process you can use to cash in with affiliate marketing.

Who knows, maybe you can eventually quit your day job like I did.

 

If you’re a retiree, stay at home mom, unemployed or just want to make money online part time, you really need to try affiliate marketing.

With affiliate marketing, there is no product creation, no support, no direct selling, and no hassles.

Here’s how to get started…

Step 1: Find Your Niche

When most start out in affiliate marketing, they put the cart before the horse and start looking for products to promote. That’s a mistake.

Rather than focusing on the product, step back and focus on a niche audience to promote to instead.

The secret is to find a niche that you want to work in and a niche that will be profitable.

Why does it make sense to focus on an audience for your niche, instead of a product?

Here are a couple of reasons why:

a. Products will always come and go, but a niche audience is virtually permanent. That’s why a popular product only lasts so long, and then people start to anticipate the next big thing. It’s the audience you should be focusing on, not the product.

b. When you take the time to really understand the deep-seated needs of a certain audience, you’ll make the transition from trying to find ideas for products to immediately knowing what kinds of products you should promote to your audience. That’s a game changer.

Once you understand these basic principles of affiliate marketing, there’s no stopping you. Know your audience and give them what they need. Period.

Niche Brainstorming Tips:

– Pick an audience that you are drawn to; people who you can relate to

– Consider a niche you would categorize yourself in. For example solo entrepreneur, or senior male or female golfer

– Pick an audience by first choosing a niche topic you’re interested in or somewhat passionate about. This could be anything from “cure golf putting yips” to “how to get more dates”

– Recognize the problems of the people in this niche — research their pain, desires, problems, and aspirations. There are endless places you can discover this information online including blogs, niche forums and even at Amazon.com

– Focus on profitable problems. Not every problem is created equally. Your audience will be more than willing to pay to have some of their problems solved, while others not so much. It’s your job to understand the difference. You can use these filters to help you figure it out:

How many monthly searches are there for the problem?
How many searches suggest a desire to solve the problem?
How much quality information is on the Internet relative to the problem? (The more the better!)

– Learn to speak the language of your audience on their terms to effectively communicate with them.

I realize this might sound like a lot of work, but once you choose your niche audience, understand their needs and problems, learn about them intensely, and then offer them a product that will solve that problem, you can be on the road to quitting your day job.

Incidentally, I realize this is a lot of work. If you prefer a shortcut to those steps above and want to jump into an affiliate marketing niche with all the research and promo tools in hand, here’s a shortcut for that.

Right after this quick sponsor message, I’ll show you how to find the best products to sell in virtually any niche.

 

Step 2: Find Your Products and Start (Pre)Selling

OK, now that you know how to pick a profitable topic for your affiliate marketing efforts, you need to find products to promote and a way to promote them.

The two main places where I find products to promote as an affiliate are…

Clickbank.com

JVZoo.com

Signing up at either of these sites to promote products is free.

Both sites offer a search function where you can enter a niche-specific term and find related products.

Clickbank offers a “Marketplace” where you can research products and find top sellers in your niche.

JVZoo offers a search tool at their “Affiliate Dashboard” where you can select your niche category.

The key with both sites is to find stuff that is selling well.

Clickbank shows you a gravity score for each product that indicates the affiliate activity.

JVZoo goes into more detail showing you the number of sales each product has made, along with EPC and more.

Don’t just stop at one product. In order to create a substantial amount of money and really bank some cash, you’ll need to promote a steady stream of products.

Once you have some initial products picked out, the final step is to build an audience…

You can start building an audience via Facebook or with a blog like the one you’re reading right now. I also recommend you add in a dash of email marketing by starting an email list.

I know what you’re thinking, this whole thing is starting to sound like a lot of work!

Well, anything great takes work. It doesn’t happen overnight, but if you stay active and use all the shortcuts at your disposal, the clicks and sales can really start to add up.

Remember, there’s much more to affiliate marketing than simply writing content, inserting a link, and waiting for the profits to roll in. As I mentioned earlier, you must understand who you are marketing to based on their needs and desires. Then offer solutions to their problem.

“Pre-selling” products is the best strategy online. You write about the problems and the solutions. You infuse your audience with enthusiasm and anticipation before they even land on the sales page. This significantly increases your chances of making a sale.

But the most important aspect about affiliate marketing is to successfully build a solid relationship with your audience based on trust and ethics. Once they know they can trust you, your sales will increase exponentially as long as you are solving real problems for them.

That’s why you need to be choosy about which products you pick so you’ll be viewed as a trusted authority in the eyes of your buyers. Test products and use them before recommending them.

Recommended training & software….

Once you learn how to pick money making niche and build an audience in that niche, your money-making opportunities online are endless.

If you would like to skip ahead of the masses and get to the earning part quickly, I suggest you grab this training called  Affiloblueprint by Mike Ling.