How To Do Niche Affiliate Marketing Starting From Scratch

Every day hundreds, maybe thousands, of people decide to try to make money online through affiliate marketing. And the sad fact is more than 95% of these people will fall.

And you know why they fail?

Because they believe what all affiliate programs say…

“We’ve done the hard part and created a product, written the sales copy and created a web page.”

Now I’m not saying these things are easy. They’re not.

Creating a quality product, writing sales copy that sells and developing a professional sales page are 3 of the hardest parts of internet marketing. That’s why affiliate programs are so popular.

However there is 1 more part that is just as hard…

Finding customers

Now the owners of affiliate programs knows these 4 tasks are difficult and usually hire professionals to do some or all of the first 3. And then they create an affiliate program so others can find the customers and sell the product.

Now in a totally fair world all affiliates would have an equal chance to sell the product and make money. However we don’t live in a totally fair world.

In the real world there are already many successful affiliates. And no matter what niche market you’ve selected, you should know that some of these successful affiliates will also be in the affiliate program you’ve joined.

So when you’re starting from scratch and join an affiliate program you’ve got a handicap. And that handicap is that you’re competing against some who have already chosen a successful selling model and have the resources in place to implement that model for the affiliate product.

So how does you compete against those affiliates who are already making money selling affiliate products when you’re starting from scratch?

The first 2 things you must do when you’re first starting are:

1. Choose your selling model to promote your affiliate product. Some of the ways include pay-per-click (PAC), ezine advertising, blog and forum comments and emailing your own email list.

2. Understand that you probably aren’t going to be making thousands of dollars as promised by the affiliate program. Unless you are already an established expert at PPC advertising and have the budget to pay for it, or have a name recognized on blogs and forums or have your own mailing list you aren’t going to make many sales.

Now 1 of the secrets successful affiliate marketers continually share is that having your own list is considered to be the most important assets to having a successful online business. However new affiliate marketers and especially new affiliate marketers outside of the internet marketing niche often think this step is either impossible, not necessary or both.

And you know what?

It’s true you do not have to have a list. You can promote your affiliate products many ways and get some sales.

However when you don’t have a list you are limiting your business and making it harder to succeed.

How?

When you promote affiliate products and don’t build a list in your niche market you have to continually find potential customers for every affiliate product you want to sell. And that limits your business in 3 ways:

1. You have no way to contact those who are interested in your niche but not sure they want the particular product you’re promoting.

2. You have no way to contact those who are interested in your niche but don’t want the particular product your promoting.

3. You have no way to contact those who are interested in your niche and bought the product you promoted.

By not being able to contact those 3 groups of people you’ve lost the ability to do follow up emails which is the least expensive and most effective form of online advertising. So when you don’t have a list of those interested in your niche market you can’t send follow-up emails telling them how good a product really is. And even more importantly you’ve lost the ability to contact this group in your targeted niche market to make offers for additional niche related products.

Now if you think building a list in a niche market outside of internet marketing is impossible because you have nothing to offer to entice people to join your list, you’re wrong. There may already be free ebooks and reports that you can give away and you can always create 1 of your own.

To find free give away products for your niche you can do a search for give away products using your favorite search engine. I will warn you that you will have to sign up to find out what products are available and to get access to most of these sites. However there is at least 1 site, SurefireWealth, that offers give away products that allows you to see all the free downloadable products before joining.

I did a quick search for give away products available as free member downloads at SurefireWealth and found there were 35 pages of products. After going through just 6 of these pages I was able to identify the following niche products:

* Choose Your Next MP3 Player
* New Years Resolutions Help
* Freelance From Home – The 7 Things You Must Know Before Freelancing From Home
* How To Choose And Get A College Degree
* Simply Christmas
* 7 Steps to Job Search Success

In addition I found there were several niche plr products that included give away rights.
Knowing you can either find or create a report or ebook to offer people in your niche market here are first 4 things you must do when you’re first starting:

1. Choose your selling model to promote your affiliate product.

2. Get a free report or ebook to offer your potential customers.

3. Put a signup form on your page or blog to capture the names and emails of those interested in your niche before sending them to your affiliate page.

4. Understand that you probably aren’t going to be making thousands of dollars as promised by the affiliate program however you will get some names and email address of those interested in your niche so you can contact them.

Always remember these 3 important facts about online marketing:

1. More than 50% of those who buy affiliate products don’t buy them the first time they see the sales page.

2. Most of the people buying affiliate products aren’t looking to buy anything. They are looking for free information.

3. People don’t like buying things from strangers. They prefer to buy from someone they know and trust.

These 3 statements are true for every niche market and they are even more true for those niches outside of internet marketing. So see if you can find a give away product for your niche at SurefireWealth, make a form to collect names and email addresses for an autoresponder, and put that form on your web page or blog you promote.

To Your Success,
Susan

Tags: niche affiliate mareting from scratch, nitch affiliate marketing

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