How to Build a Long-Term Affiliate Business

I know you want to make money now. You want to make millions of dollars yesterday just like everybody else who is looking for that opportunity online.

Unfortunately it is very hard to make money fast. It does not take days. I am not even talking about weeks. I am talking about months and usually years. It took me years to succeed.
It takes most internet marketers years to succeed online. If you want to make a life changing income and run your business full-time to replace your current job with it then you want to build a solid business for the long-term.

Lots of affiliates want this and yet many keep following the hit and run marketing approach. This is when you just set up a presell page and try selling the affiliate product right when the visitors enter your site.
That is not a very good sales funnel. Creating several niche sites that try closing the deal on the first visit is not stable. It is for the short-term. I guess it could be stable if you set up a ton of these sites. But that can quickly become tedious and just plain old boring.

What I recommend you do is instead of trying to run several sites across several niche markets at once you should just focus on one blog. Find a buying keyword term that gets at least 3,000 searches a month. Don't worry about the competition. Just set it up and optimize your site to rank for it. Learn everything you can on that topic. Like if it was playing piano and you were trying to rank in Google for "online piano lessons" you would read articles and watch videos on it. Then each day create quality content for the visitors of your site. Fill it up with posts that are at least 500 words in length.

On that site you should build a list. Sign up to a good email marketing service and create an auto-responder series. Give a way a free gift for those who sign up and recommend your visitors sign up. Start reviewing a few product within the niche. Find the one you like the most and put that at the top of your recommendations. Don't just skim through the sales page and read other shallow reviews of the products. Actually buy them or request the vendor for a review copy.

Go through the products and give your honest review. Include the good parts and the stuff you thought could use improvement. Recommend the product within your auto-responder series and posts on your site. Eventually you can even make a great bonus for the product that makes up for the bad part of it.
Maybe you are promoting piano lessons online and you were disappointed there were no song lessons so you can make a few song lessons with sheet music for your bonus.

Since it is your own product you can kind of hard sell it to your visitors. They will love you for it if it truly is a great product. Heck eventually you could create your own product and go from an affiliate to a product vendor.

How To Become An Affiliate Marketer And Make Money Online

Affiliate marketing also offers simple techniques to make money from home which is a 'passive' income. Affiliate marketing works by directing internet users who are seeking information, products or services, through your individual affiliate link to the product. When a product sells, you make a commission. Commissions are high and can be up to 75% of the selling price of the product. This is because there are no storage fees or postage costs incurred and you are doing all the advertising for the product so they (the creators of the products) can afford to pay high commissions to affiliates.

The 'passive' side of this lucrative business is a very desirable side effect of affiliate marketing. What this means is that once you have created articles, blogs or simple websites and generated enough incoming links to your sites or affiliate links, customers purchase items due to the work you have done previously. It is all 'hands off' and your income is then automated. You continue building these free running income streams as long as you choose and there is no limit to how many you can build.

You can work whenever you choose and you have no boss. You have an automated business which sells products while you sleep. To run such a business 'offline' you would have to invest in buildings, employees, advertising and it would be much less convenient than an online automated business. Also to start your own internet affiliate business is incredibly cheap and it is within the reach of anyone who can afford a trip to the cinema! In comparison, an 'offline' business offering the same perks would cost thousands of pounds just to get started.

Affiliate marketing is also incredibly convenient, much more so than say an online shop where you have to answer emails and deliver products. All you really have to do is generate traffic for an already existing sales page and the work you do continues to make money long after you have moved on to the next project. You can work a few hours a day whenever and wherever you choose and affiliate marketing is completely flexible. Much of your work is already done by the product vendors who create banners, videos and links for you. All you need to do is place them on suitable sites or send them in emails. You can also run an affiliate marketing business completely free if you choose to. It might take a little longer but it is possible and you simply put up free sites, blogs and write articles much like this one. The internet search engines pick up the content in the articles and people link through to your affiliate products after reading your articles. You make commissions when people buy the products.

These products also sell very well through email marketing and you can set up automatic emails which send out your affiliate links on a regular basis. This is done through an opt in page and this form of advertising is also incredibly effective.

How to Find a Niche

If you ever wanted to learn how to find a niche, then this post is for you!

We want to share with you the process that we actually use to find a niche (or profitable micro niche) for affiliate marketing. It is the same process that has helped us to do well as an affiliate marketer over the last eight years. The good news is that it is a simple three step process. It has worked for us, and if you follow it to a tee, it will work for you.

Step 1: Write about a topic you like or are knowledgeable about: If you like a topic you are more likely to want to write about it. If you are very knowledgeable about it then you will have a lot of good things to say to your audience. The good news is, you can also undertake a lot of research on line, so you don't need to know everything straight away.

Step 2: Find out how much competition you have: The best way to start with this is to consider a general topic. Let's say it is Dogs, from there you can look at what niches exist for dogs. Examples could be dog training, dog grooming or diet's for dogs. Dog training, may be something that you know a lot about or are interested in. More specifically, you could find a micro niche on how to train specific types of dogs, or how to train dogs for specific actions or tricks etc.

Once you have found the niche or micro niche do a quick Google search to see how much is written on the topic. If they are only a few pages of good information then you may be onto a winner. Next check out forums (eg. pet forums) to see what questions people are asking. If they are a few questions relating to your particular niche even better. Also check out how many Google Ads there are. More than two and less than nine is a good range. It means there is some competition but not to much.

Step 3: Check out how many potential customers there are: You now need to see how many potential customers there are. Use the Google Keyword Tool to see how many searches there are on the topic. We recommend under 20,000. Simply type in your niche or micro niche keywords and see what comes up. You can then build your site based on these key words. Once you have done the above, see if there is a relevant product. Start in ClickBank as they are one of the biggest resources on the web. Once you find one start your site. The product is the last step. You have to find a niche that works first!

Yes... the above process does involve a fair bit of work, but it is definitely worth it and you will reap the rewards for the hard work you have put in. All in all it will help you find a niche that is profitable.