Affiliate marketing is the fastest way to make money online, period. This article is an essential blueprint you can use to quickstart your affiliate profits. You must read every word of this article to ensure you get on the path to affiliate success.

1 – Which Affiliate Network To Choose

There are 2 major types of affiliate networks. There are ones that pay on acquisitions (leads) and ones that pay on sales.

Without doubt the best affiliate network which pays commission based on a sale is the Clickbank Network. You can sign up for free in 5 minutes, and are provided with the most detailed analysis and performance of the products themselves. There is a huge variety of niches, so you will have little difficulty finding products to promote.

Commission Junction pays for both sales and acquisitions. Once more there is a great variety of products – just limited performance information on each product. Clickbooth is without doubt the leading CPA network. It does take longer to sign up, but the rewards are well worth it.

2 – Selecting Affiliate Products To Promote

Keyword research is critical for finding profitable affiliate products to promote. First off you want to find some products based on a niche you have knowledge on.

Next you need to inf keywords in relation to people searching for your affiliate product. What you are looking for are keywords terms which have high search volume and low competition.

3 – Creation Of Your Affiliate Review Site

Once you know the keywords its time to start building your affiliate review site. This is a 1 page site or blog which reviews your product. Make sure you include a compelling headline to grab visitor’s attention, and show the visitors reasons for why they need the product you are promoting. Make sure your affiliate links are included. At the minimum you should also set up an autoresponder on the site which offers a free report on the niche. This allows you to get more leads, and have another opportunity to sell the product to readers of your follow up emails.

4 – Create A PPC Campaign Based Solely On Product Related Keywords

PPC certainly plays a big role in affiliate marketing. There is however a steep learning curve – and you really want to know what you are doing before you get involved. I advise if you are new to affiliate marketing and PPC to avoid bidding on any terms other than those related to the product to start with. I recommend you focus your efforts on the Google network.

5 – Creating Content Based On Keyword Research

Now its time for you to start creating content. Again the first thing is to focus your content solely on the product name – you could write a review article or press release and submit it to the best sites. There are some really useful content sharing sites such as hubpages and squidoo which allow for submission of your review articles. After distributing your content you should also bookmark it with bookmarking sites such as digg, delicious and furl.

6 – Tracking, Testing & Refining

You should definitely set up Google Analytics on your affiliate marketing review sites. This will allow you to clearly see which keyword search terms are driving traffic-  and which terms are causing people to leave your site (bounce). This is crucial info and allows you to refine your landing pages. Further to this Clickbank allows you to insert what is called a tracking id – you can input this into various tracking programs and give yourself the ability to track which keywords lead to sales. This is the holy grail of affiliate marketing – and ultimately ensuring you optimise your campaigns for maximum profits.

Conclusion

Affiliate marketing is highly profitable and requires little maintenance or support on your behalf. There is no need to provide support or chase payments or refunds. I am hoping this article has given you the inspiration to get started with affiliate marketing.

Michael Mathieson is an affiliate marketing guru with over 5 years experience. He can show you genuine methods to make money online including: adsense, affiliate marketing, seo, ppc, driving free web traffic and more.

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