Finding the right product to sell is the key to affiliate marketing success.  There are millions of internet-marketing products out there, but only a few can make you money.  Some products are horrible and don’t work right at all.  Another product might be great, but its landing page is bad so nobody is buying it.  To make money with affiliate marketing, you need to find a product that’s proven to make money for its affiliates.  Why promote something that nobody is buying?

To find that right product to promote, we’re going to use the Clickbank affiliate network.  Although there are several excellent affiliate networks out there, Clickbank is one of the best for those starting out.  They have a large selection of affiliate marketing products to sell, they always pay out on time, and it is easy to get accepted into the network.  Unlike other affiliate networks that require you to apply to promote specific offers, Clickbank lets you promote all offers on their network immediately.

The first thing to do when choosing a product to promote, is to think about a niche.  The best way to do this is to brainstorm and write down five or ten niches you think you would enjoy finding more about.  When creating your site around a product, you will be doing a lot of research and writing about it, so make sure the topics you write down aren’t something that will bore you to death.

Once you have your topics, visit the Marketplace section in your Clickbank account.  Clickbank has its products separated into categories, so pick an appropriate category and perform a search for each of the topics you have written down earlier.  In the results, you will see a list of affiliate products that best match your search term.  Below each product description, you will see a list of different metrics.  

The most important thing to look at, is the gravity.  Gravity is a Clickbank formula that tells you how many recent sales affiliates have been making with this product. If a lot of people are making sales with this product then you should have no problems promoting this product as well.  As a rule of thumb, try and pick a product with a gravity score over 35.  The other thing to look at is the dollars per sale.  If you are going to use pay per click marketing to drive traffic to your product, then pick a payout greater than $25 per sale.  This allows you to cover your advertising expenses and still make a decent profit.

Using the two metrics mentioned above, note down a list of products that satisfy these criteria.  Now pick the product that you would be most interested in learning about and selling.  You already know that other affiliates are doing well with these products, so the key here is picking the product that will keep your interest so you can promote it successfully.  This is the first step to becoming a successful affiliate marketer.  The next step is to join a membership site like PPC Kahuna and learn from some affiliate marketing gurus on how to setup your sites and promote them effectively.

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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ClickBank was founded in 1998 as a network that   intermediates the online sales of digital informative materials, affiliate products and services together with membership and subscription packages. Market studies indicate that there are around 100,000 affiliates actively working on ClickBank at the moment with more than 12,000 of publishers promoting digital products. So far, on the entire electronic market, ClickBank has so far been the most visited business in the world. There are around 20,000 orders processed daily with a profit of $1 million.

clickbank affiliate

The success formula at the basis of this business model is the link-relationship between consumers, Internet affiliates and publishers in the system. The system is advantageous for product publishers that sell intellectual property through the network, for advertisers who get to promote their products worldwide for very affordable commissions and for consumers who can benefit of the chance to shop for products that are not available with regular shopping channels. ClickBank acts as the intermediary or the link between these three groups ensuring transparency of transactions, high quality anti-fraud protection and a secure operation platform.

clickbank make money

Each of the above mentioned groups receive specific assistance and support from ClickBank. A great plus for the network here is its rather closed nature, meaning that permanent development is not carried out at the expense of the customer, and most of all, it does not become the responsibility of the client. While with other programs, an affiliate would have to bring other vendors in order to augment the system, ClickBank does not impose any such obligations. The network generates the profit on the basis of the commissions resulting from sales, which once again indicates the extent of the transactions conducted in this model.

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What do consumers have to gain from ClickBank? The benefits for the individual clients comes in the form of specialized products that retail stores cannot include in their offer. The variety of products is incredible, the transactions have all the safety expected level and the entire system incorporates only user and consumer-friendly features in all respects. Last but not least, extra money making opportunities are provided by ClickBank to affiliates that add products and services from the network on their home page. The most advantageous of commissions here are up to 75% of the sales but more money can come out of referring publishers and affiliates to ClickBank.