A lot of Internet marketers ask this vital question - which should we find first - the market or the product? So lets get this cleared right away. It is not only easy, but also sensible to find your market first. Only then, understand what they want, look for those products and offer it to them. if you find the product first and find that there’s no hungry market for it, then you have just wasted time and effort that you could have effectively spent making a profit.

Here’s how you go about finding well-established products that are profitable:

Focus On Niche Products

A search will reveal the ones that make the largest commissions per sale. But remember, you must also get the products that aren’t so competitive that everyone is trying to make money from it. Did you ask why? Simply because when there is fierce competition you will have to invest in advertising and promotion - which involves time, effort and most of all - cuts into your commission.

Competition is good - but there are plenty of products and markets you can focus soon. So look for hungry markets niche products with high demand and lesser competition. Niche marketing is the way to go, because you can cater to a specific need.

Find Good Quality Products

The advertisements and sales letters must be accurate in their claims of the product. Can you imagine great promotion - the product turns out to be bad - and you end up getting involved in refunds? The market will just dry up. One way to figure out the quality of the product is to check it out for yourself. The easier way is to read reviews online. Marketplaces like Clickbank where you can find hot niche products will also rank affiliate products, which in turn, will tell you about their quality.

Pick Products You Like

Choose it -

• If you loved it and experienced it
• if you see a lot of repeat sales

It means its good, there’s a hot market and the sales material works.

Bottomline - High Margins?

Is the money you will earn worth the effort you put in? Personally I recommend products that offer you a high margin. The more you make per sale, the better your profits. So look for an average commission of at least $35 per sale.

Does The Product Have A Great Sales Page?

The job of a sales page is to convert the visitor into a customer with accurate information. It should grab the visitor’s eyeballs, get them excited, feature testimonials and offer a refund, among other things. Look at the sales page - does it grab you? if it doesn’t, it is likely that it wont pull in customers.

The Affiliate Program For The Product Must Be Reliable

Prompt service, good products, regular payouts and good reviews are the hallmarks of good affiliate programs. Look for them. One of the best sources is Clickbank, an affiliate network.

Popularity: 41% [?]

There are product launches happening all the time on the internet. But how would this benefit you when you don’t have a product or a website? Let me show you how.

People are looking for digital products all the time in the form of ebooks and software every single day. Naturally, marketers are smart enough to see their opportunity to earn a huge income making these products available and developing new ones on an ongoing basis. Added to this, the product is launched in a big way. Marketers don’t wait for the product to win on its own merit. They promote a new product even before it launches.

If the marketer is well established, and enjoys a good reputation in the market, it is possible to have the product sold out even before its launch. People associated with the marketer like joint venture partners, affiliates, etc. go all out to promote it, getting richer in the process. Here’s how you too can profit from someone else’s product launch.

Each time a product is launched, which is about 5-6 times a month you can promote it in a few easy ways and enjoy the results. You need to move quickly when you spot the opportunity. This brings us to the first step - finding the product launch. You can find this through popular JV networks and other sites where marketers announce their launch. You can use Google to find them. Where necessary you can sign up for a membership without paying anything.

Internet marketing product launches are usually announced at least a month before the actual launch so you must act soon. The moment you spot an announcement for a launch, sign up as an affiliate. Hopefully you have a ClickBank account - if not sign up for one right now. An account with PayPal, Paydotcom etc. also helps so that it enables you to take part in as many launches as possible.

Keep a track of the launches. After you sign up as an affiliate, you’ll be ready to grab your share of the profits through your commission.

Here’s a tip - you can cash in on the high amounts of traffic that the website launching the product will receive on launch day. Lots of people type the domain name of the website directly into their browser and go to the site. Now that you know this, how do you use the information? Here’s the trick. The fact is, a lot of people tend to type in variations of the website URL. What you need to do is register these domain names with the most obvious variations and direct them to your affiliate link for the product being launched. This converts to easy commissions on the day of the launch.

Popularity: 29% [?]

Internet marketing lets you make thousands of dollars in as little as thirty minutes without any training at all. You don’t even have to worry about high initial investments. In fact, you can set up multiple streams of income with no cost or low cost methods. To get started it takes a mindset that believes this can be done. After that, it is smooth sailing.

You know what keywords are. Google search is based on keywords typed by people looking for information. Keywords have multiple crucial roles to play in the success of an internet business. But for someone who wants to make money online without a website, keywords have an even more important role to play.

Search engines experience hundreds of millions of searches each day and these can be repetitive for the same keyword. Some keywords have a consistent demand over a period of time. But there are others that become high-demand from time to time. This can happen for various reasons. During these times, there’s a spike in the keyword’s demand. If you are smart enough to identify it, then you have found your unlimited internet goldmine.

The idea is to make the most of those keywords that see a sudden spurt in demand. Did you ask why? Here are the answers:

There’s a high buzz factor with these keywords. When you catch them at their peak, you can enjoy no cost viral traffic. traffic in internet marketing is sales, which in turn leads to profits.

You can expect a spike in some keywords when there’s a great new product or when there’s something so newsworthy that everyone’s using the keyword to know more. What you can do is cash in on this and make a huge income either from affiliate commissions or Google AdSense or - both.

To actually find these keywords, you can use a Google feature called Hot Trends. It shows you what keywords people are using on Google search. You can see searches that are suddenly popular highlighted in this feature, along with deviations in the normal trend. You also know in what context the keywords are being searched with all the relevant information like location, etc.

From this list you can pick at least ten that have the potential to make you a profit. Here you must identify two types of keywords - revenue keywords and information keywords. Revenue keywords are the product related ones where people are likely to buy. So what you do is create an ad around that keyword on AdWords generate traffic to the affiliate program promoting the product. Find out how much competition there is and the number of existing ads in Google AdWords for the keywords. Choose the ones where there are hardly any AdWords ads. Next, find a website that has this product with an affiliate program. Sign up for the affiliate program and create an ad around the keyword for the product. Enjoy your commissions. And keep monitoring the keywords.

This entire technique will not take you more than thirty minutes. Surprised? With the information keywords, people are after information. But you can capitalize on these also to get you AdSense income.

Check out the whole package at Project Quick Cash with all the techniques. Do it now.

Popularity: 27% [?]

There are two important concepts you must understand to start enjoying success on the Internet. The first one is affiliate marketing. You’ve probably heard and seen a lot of information about affiliate programs. Possibly, you’ve also wondered how a handful of well-known affiliate marketers have made millions by just selling other people’s products.

Well, affiliate marketing is the easiest way to make money online. All you have to do is select the right products you want to promote, sign up with the program, direct visitors to your affiliate link, and earn commissions on each sale you make. It’s as simple as that and does not require any specialized knowledge to be successful. You could be earning as much as 75% commission on each sale depending on the product.

But here’s what you should know - just don’t sign up for random programs that look good. There’s a big secret you should know when it comes to choosing the affiliate program. Only look for ‘two tier” affiliate programs. In these, you earn a first tier commission on your sale. Then you earn the second tier commission on sales generated by people you refer to the program. Easy, isn’t it?

Now lets look at the next concept - Joint venture brokering. You locate different site owners who are already well established and receive a lot of traffic. If they are related to the site whose affiliate program you have signed up for, you introduce them to ‘your’ site, and give them the idea of making money by signing up through your affiliate link. This means you are brokering a deal for your site. For every sale they make after signing up through you, you will earn the ’second-tier’ commission.

The marketers you identify to sign up through you can promote the site either by adding banner ads to their site. This will enable you earn a commission each time someone clicks the ad to buy the product from the site you are brokering for. If the marketer has a huge email list that’s interested in the product you are promoting, all the better. You can earn a commission for every sale resulting from the list.

Can you see how you can practically earn a fortune as a joint venture broker from a little research? All you need to do is identify a site owner who wants to sell his products and a marketer who can sell that product. You act as the middleman, coordinating the deal - and earn your profits in the process. Legitimate. Easy. In upcoming articles, I’ll show you exactly how to find the products, the markets and several advanced techniques you can use to set up your automated cash formula.

Popularity: 20% [?]

When you know how, it is not difficult to recruit and retain your affiliate army and reap the benefits in the form of huge profits. Building your affiliate army is all about recruiting them, activating them and keeping them motivated to keep up a steady flow of sales. So how can you inspire and motivate them?

You’ve got your affiliates. However, it’s a highly competitive world out there and you need to keep them enthusiastically promoting you as well as recommend you to their successful peers. Here’s how you motivate your affiliate army:

1. You’ve got to help your affiliates by giving them all that they need to be successful. Have a regular affiliate newsletter featuring tips. You could have a toll free number to provide them affiliate support with someone knowledgeable answering their queries.
2. Inspire your affiliates by demonstrating by example the methods used by your top affiliates to be successful. This must be a step-by-step method and simplified so that they can replicate them.
3. Recognize the affiliates who are doing well. A token gift would be a good idea.
4. Treat your affiliates as friends and phone them. They will be impressed that you care. Your top affiliates can turn into your loyal friends and supporters.
5. Ask your affiliates for their feedback to improve your affiliate program. Act on it.
6. Praise your super affiliates on your website and provide their affiliate links. They benefit with more traffic while other affiliates are inspired. It develops loyalty in the top affiliates.
7. Another way to build affiliate loyalty and motivate them is to recommend your super affiliate in email discussion groups. They will really appreciate you for it.
8. Make sure your affiliate receives the commission for a sale whether the customer visits the next day, the next week or even one year later. Customer tracking will make this possible. Set your ‘return days’ duration to a minimum of 30 days - the more, the better.
9. Think about paying lifetime commissions to your affiliates.
10. Allow your affiliates to earn special bonuses when they perform well.
11. Categorize your affiliates and consider paying the top ones special commissions.
12. Apart from commissions, you also need to work out residual commissions and two tier commissions. Referrals are valuable and deserve compensation.
13. Give your affiliates preferential treatment in discounted prices.
14. If there are multiple products, it is better to give your affiliates one link per product.
15. Make sure all your loyal affiliates get a mention from you at affiliate marketing conferences. They feel good.
16. Don’t ignore those affiliates who are not very active. Instead, ask them what the issue is so that you can fix it.
17. Drop by your affiliate’s sites and give them suggestions for more success.
18. When you add to your product portfolio, and a customer buys via an affiliate link give them credit for it. Your affiliates shouldn’t have to sign up each time a new product is added.
19. Let your affiliates be informed via email each time they make a sale. Give them the option of receiving these emails or turning them off.
20. Make sure you send a weekly status report that is easy to understand.
21. Pay your affiliates as often as you can. Give them the option of setting minimum payments.

Affiliates are your business associates. To keep your affiliate army performing well, it is important to motivate them and treat them specially.

Popularity: 16% [?]

As an affiliate marketer, you are promoting products so that you can earn commissions off each sale. To make sure you continue to grow your commissions, you need to keep track of your website statistics and your sales figures if you must evaluate your affiliate programs’ success.

That said, to be successful in affiliate marketing and to manage your programs well, you must also understand the concept of “redirecting” your affiliate links, which basically involves changing your links in just one place if the merchant decides to change their system or just goes out of business. Why use redirects, though? Read on:

• Redirects help you manage your affiliate links from one location instead of spending valuable time and money finding them in hundreds of places. Change the link in one place, and, wow! All your visitors see the new link everywhere.
• A wonderful thing about redirects is simpler URLs - you gain credibility and your visitors trust you - and that’s vital if you want them to come back.
• You spend more time making money and less time managing!
• Stop others from stealing your commission.
• Track your affiliate link clicks, so that you know which links are doing the best business, helping you plan where to place them, and increasing your earnings.
• Search engine optimization is another big advantage of redirects.

Redirects can be done in plenty of ways.

A word about traffic & conversion

For your website to achieve its goal - whether it is a sale or getting your visitor to sign up for a service, there are two more things - easy to navigate and lots of focused traffic. You must make sure that visitors find it easy to do what you want them to do.

To get a high conversion rate, you need lots of focused traffic. It is possible to research all the ways you can get focused traffic - both free and paid methods.

Popularity: 9% [?]

When links change
Top affiliate marketers aim to promote products or services to people who have a requirement, so that it results in a sale and results in commissions. For affiliate marketers who promote their own programs as well as others’, it is important to be totally organized, and to know how much you earn every time your affiliate link is clicked.

All is well so far. But wait. You’ve posted your link in various websites, ebooks, articles, etc. This program goes out of business. What do you do? Can you imagine the amount of time and money you will lose trying to find ALL these places and changing your link?

Or lets look at it this way. You have found a better program and decided to promote it. You still have to change the link! What you need to do is find a way to do all this with one simple action - it is a strategy called ‘redirect’.

Cloaking links
After you’ve signed up with profitable affiliate programs the first thing you take care of is your affiliate links. Tip: Don’t use the original affiliate links. Why, you ask? Look at the following:

www.yourlink.com/affiliate_id?45938
www.yourlink.com/whatyouwant

Which link would you rather click? Yes, I’d click the second one too! Why? Because it doesn’t scare me away - with the fear that it will wipe out all the data in my computer in the next few seconds! The second one looks more like what I want. This is called affiliate link cloaking. This not only encourages your visitors to click on your link, but also protects it. There are lots of mean people out there who will try to steal your links. Cloaking your link is one way to hide it and protect it.

Another thing that a visitor is likely to do is move their cursor over your link, and if it shows the target URL in their status bar, they’ll straight away head there! How unfair can that be? So it is obvious that you must protect your links and therefore, protect your commission - which is why you got into affiliate marketing in the first place! The very first thing you do when you sign up for an affiliate program is cloak your links!

Make sure that your website is always operational. In fact there’s no harm in clicking your URL to see if the page refreshes quickly. This is all the more important if you happen to use pay per click advertising because regardless of whether your website is running or not, you still pay for each click. This boils down to spending valuable dollars on advertising without sales!

Customer support is yet another important aspect of managing your affiliate programs. You must always revert with responses to queries about your products quickly since this means a potential sale.

That’s it for today, but it is by no means all there is to know about managing and tracking your affiliate programs. To get the whole package, head over to Google Money Pro to start making money online right away!

Popularity: 10% [?]

Which affiliate program will help you make money online? Lets look at a few questions here - the answers to these will get you closer to deciding to go with the right affiliate program:

• For how long has the affiliate program been in existence?

Now, it is not as if a new affiliate program is no good - but chances are they are still ironing out minor issues and probably have issues with promotional material. As far as well established programs are concerned, most of them have already got their payment systems, statistics tracking and promotional material well in place and running like clockwork.

• You want to know the amount of commission you can earn

While a majority of affiliate programs have commissions in the range o f 2% to 75%, don’t get intimidated by this variation. It all depends on the product or service you decide to promote. 2% of a high value product is better than 75% of a low value product - see what I mean? Commission structures differ from company to company. While one may pay lower commissions to earn a profit for themselves to enable them function smoothly, there are those that will offer their affiliates more, to generate more sales and therefore more profit. You, as an affiliate will have to look at the long-term commission you can make from a dependable program.

• Do you believe in the products?

Unless you sincerely believe in what you are promoting you can never put in your full effort. If you like the product, and wouldn’t hesitate to use it yourself, you’ll find yourself talking about it with ease. Writing testimonials wont be an issue - and you’ll find that selling it is fun. Only choose products that you believe in.

• Does the company offer just a couple of products or several?

In instances where the company has a good commission structure and offer just one or two products that you really like - and you find selling them quite easy - then it makes sense. But it is always a good idea to link with a company that offers more products and services, enabling you general income from more than one product.

• Customer support

You want to be part of an affiliate program that motivates you and provides you with all the support you need, when you want it. Preferably look for one that has a regular newsletter that keeps you updated with the latest information about the program.

• Frequency of payments

Different affiliate programs pay at different frequencies - while some pay every six months, some pay when you have reached a minimum commission amount. You could look for programs that directly deposit to your PayPal account or checking account.

There! You are all set to go out and choose the most profitable affiliate program for you. In my next part, I’ll talk about how to manage and track your affiliate programs.

Popularity: 12% [?]