Affiliate Marketing is about setting a mindset. Attitude can be the difference between a happy and successful Affiliate marketer and someone who adds one more example of failure to a long and growing list.

Telling yourself that there is nothing that you can’t learn to do and do well is the first step in creating the right approach. You will find this level of confidence to be tested from the very start of the process, so the sooner you develop this sort of “can-do” attitude, the better off you will be.

If you find yourself down the road thinking … The more I learn, the less I know… then you are well on your way to the beginning of a fruitful journey to the land of digital marketing.

Affiliate Marketing – The Best Place to Start

 
Everyone has to start somewhere. And, for the beginner, the best place to start is with affiliate products. Rather than going through the laborious and expensive process of creating your own product and then trying to market it to the masses, why not get your feet wet by finding a product that is well put-together and comes from someone who already has a high degree of credibility?

You save a lot of time, money, frustration, and will power; and you could make money in the process, too—in fact, really, really good money. Many top Internet marketers today still sell affiliate products, even though they make a killing off of their own. Why? Because it’s still fantastic money and little effort is required.

So, before you jump in and get your feet wet  let’s test the water first. There are a few simple things you will need to be mindfull of when choosing an affiliate product to promote:

 
 #1: Choosing a Bad Product to Promote

First, start by selecting products that are actually good. There are plenty of high-quality products already on the market but there plenty of huge loosers also. A low demand product will make few sales, no matter how hard you try to promote it. If the demand isn’t there, you can’t create it. Don’t try.

PayDotCom is a great place to start when searching for products to promote. It’s Free to join and you can become an an affiliate for any item in their huge marketplace. All serious marketers have a PayDotCom
account, so it’s easy to set up your account start promoting. And the great thing about PayDotCom is that you can promote both digital and physical products. 

If you decide to pick your product off of a list on Clickbank, select carefully. Rather than selecting the product with the highest commission, look for ones that have the highest popularity and gravity ratings. If a lot of people are buying them often, they must be better than other products for sale within that niche.

Look for hot selling niches. Don’t sell bug spray in the winter. No one will buy. Focus on products that people want; and if their popularity just surged, now is the time to get in the market.

 
#2: Choose Your Products Carefully

As an affiliate marketer, your goal is to profit from the hard worker others have done.
Not all product creators hire a proffessional copywriter instead, many try to write their own copy and create their own graphics. The product may be top-notch sensational but the sales page just plain sucks. The end result? The product converts poorly.

Before you start promoting any particular product, read the sales page carefully, look over the graphics and compare it with others. Do you feel compelled to buy? Did the graphics make you stand up and sing? Or, did the copy fail to reel you in for the catch? These can all amount to fatal errors for both the seller and you. You cannot help the seller at this point, but you can avoid his product and find a better one.

 
#3: Following The Crowd – The Next ‘Biggset Thing’

This mistake is especially important to avoid if you have a list. All it takes is one erroneous product promotion and you could end up with a non-responsive list.

Even though you may be tempted to promote the next “biggest thing,” make sure you don’t buy into just anything. Carefully inspect anything before you promote it to your list. Buying and trying the product will do wonders for your conversion rates. You will know first hand if the product is all it claims to be.
Release a comprehensive review (something most affiliate marketers do not provide) of the product. This has a much better chance of getting sales for you; and it will also help you to maintain credibility.

 
#4: Picking Products that Offer Tiny Commissions

If you’re marketing to a list of people, there’s a good chance that many others are marketing to the same people too. Buyers are only going to consider so many product offers in a given period of time, so select the ones you promote wisely. If you promote something that only generates a 25% commission for you, then you’re leaving a lot on the table. You could probably find a similar product that offers a 50% or 75% commission.

In terms of the actual dollar value of the commission – don’t sweat that as much. Many top name Internet marketers now say that they concentrate on promoting high-ticket items only (since only a few sales will generate a lot of money), you can still make a killing selling relatively cheap reports. The $7 report is testament to this fact.

So avoid the cheapo sellers, but don’t worry as much about the price.

 
 #5: Failing to Collect Leads

Always, always, always capture leads. Rather than generating traffic through pay per click, search engine optimization, and other methods and then sending that traffic to your affiliate link, make an effort to convert them into list members first.

Once you start generating traffic for your affiliate marketing campaigns, drive it to an opt-in form – NOT to your affiliate link. If you send the person directly to an affiliate link, you may never hear from that person again, whether or not it results in a sale.  Once they’re on a list, you get the chance to market to them again and again for months or even years.
 
There are a lot of risks involved, but you already know the big ones; avoid these, and you’ll sail through into profit, following the trail of past super affiliates.