Just so you know, we're going to be challenging conventional wisdom in this article. Conventional wisdom says when deciding on a business strategy you should pick something you know, a hobby perhaps. And that's fine if your hobby is popular. By popular I mean there are a lot of people with the same interest and they spend a lot of money on the hobby. Take fishing for example. It's extremely popular and people spend billions of dollars on fishing every year.
Now take bottle cap collecting. Not so popular, right? Not many people into it, right? Not many people spending money on bottle cap collecting, right? See where this is going?
Affiliate marketing is the same. There are literally thousands of products out there you can promote. I recently came upon a Website promoting a 'Learn Swahili' language course. You can be sure that marketer isn't getting rich.
So what's the point? If you want to make it big with affiliate marketing you're going to have to cast your line where the multitudes swim. People want easy answers to hard questions and they want them now. The smart affiliate program promoter will recognize this and use it to build a successful affiliate business.
There Are Only Three Things People Want
This might seem weird but it's true. People want three things from life. Those are:
· Love
· Money
· Health
Now I'll admit those are fairly broad categories so let's break them down a bit. Take health for example. Diet and exercise products fall under this category. Hair restoration, acne cures, and stop smoking programs all fall under the health heading, to name just a few.
Ever notice how frantic some people are to solve such problems? When you've found that niche, you've found a winner. And the same goes for love and money. In today's society people want what they want and they want it now! Find the products they desperately want and deliver the information.
Lots of affiliate marketing experts warn us to stay out of crowded, competitive niches because it's hard to get a foothold where the competition is so stiff. And to that I have only one word: baloney!
The more competition you find in your chosen field, the more money there will be to be made there. But how do you compete when so many others are battling for their own piece of the action? It's simple. Create or co-opt a plan and stick to it.
What does it take to compete in a hot niche? Once again, it takes a plan that includes these three items:
· A smart looking Website or Blog designed to deliver prospects to your affiliate partner's sales page.
· Excellent content for that site or blog
· Targeted traffic
The first item, a Website or blog is easy to acquire. You don't have to spend a fortune to put up an attractive mini site or blog. If you're the resourceful type you can have this work done for very small money. I can direct you to a fellow that can design a very nice mini site for under $50.
The second and third items are very closely related because if you can generate excellent content for your site, targeted traffic is virtually guaranteed. Let's talk a little about great content because I know so many people are missing the point on this one.
Lots of Internet marketers believe that excellent content is copy loaded with the hot keywords and phrases. And to a certain degree, that's true. So they write articles and other copy loaded with the just the right keywords and keyword density and post this material to the Web. And sure enough, in time they end up with great page positions on the top search engines. I know this is true because I see their copy all the time.
So why aren't they successful? Because they're writing for crawlers and bots rather than for people. Every time I do a search I run across articles and other material with great page rank. The only problem is, it's mostly junk. So much of this stuff is so awkward it's impossible to even read it. And if no one is reading it, it's not going to generate any traffic regardless of its position. And the solution to this is simple, write first for people and then for software.
We've looked at a method for choosing extremely profitable affiliate products. We've also briefly touched upon the key elements for promoting these products no matter how competitive the niche might be. Here's a bold statement: If you can follow simple instructions, you can be successful with affiliate marketing. All it takes is a workable plan and the drive to take action. Good luck!
