As a first step, identify what you are interested in, because this will help you find the right products to promote. When you are enthusiastic about the products you sign up with, it shows in the way you promote them and it doesn’t seem like work at all. Your eagerness to share the product comes through in a genuine manner and it becomes much easier to convince others. See what we mean? So identify what you are passionate about. In fact, make a list of all the things you love. If you love music, go a little further and identify a ‘niche’ in that broad topic.

After you’ve zeroed in on a few music related topics you are passionate about, you can use ClickBank, the affiliate networking site to find sites you can broker for. When you go to the “promote products’ sections and click on the marketplace link, you will land on the ’search the ClickBank marketplace’ page. Here you can choose a category from the dropdown list.

Check out the ‘money and employment’ category for a huge database of niche market ideas in that category. Now all you need to do is find the niche market that interests you. You can check out the links to know more about the sites. See, right now your motive is to find ideas of the markets you can broker for and finding the specific sites is the next step. So shortlist the niche markets that grab your attention.

Probably the most intricate step is to find the sites to broker for, but once done with this, you would have set up a system that will earn you money for years and years to come for just a couple of hours of focused work. Let Google help you with this. Type in the search phrase with your niche market name followed by two tier affiliate program. You’ll get your search results. See the number of results? Look through it to find a site that suit the parameters we talked about in part two of our training series, namely provide promotional material, dependable tracking and a percentage from the sales of the affiliates you recruit.

With the steps outlined above, you can find a niche you love, a two tier commission structure, a commission of $10 or more from the sales of marketers with whom you broker the deal, promo material, and tracking system. Go for it.

Notice that you don’t even need a website to get started with JV brokering. But suppose your two-tier affiliate program asks you for your website URL? In most cases, you can continue signing up by mentioning ‘coming soon’ or not available. You can also find niche two tier programs from affiliate directories.

Popularity: 93% [?]

In my last two articles, “Is Click Bank A Scam?” and “Do You Know The Adwords Secret?“, I covered the basics of how ClickBank works, some of the strategies affiliate marketers use to drive traffic and why some of those methods don’t always work. Today, I’m going to get right down to the nitty-gritty of bringing in that ClickBank cash - choosing the right kind of product. If you were to assess the biggest losers in the ClickBank game, you’ll find that they all have one thing in common. They are promoting the wrong kind of products.

Yes, it’s true that with some products, the market is simply too competitive to even hope to get noticed. Other products are just things that very few people even think about buying. The secret is to find that spot between these two extremes- ideally, the products you promote should fill two important criteria. There should be a demand that exceeds existing supply. Secondly, the market shouldn’t be saturated yet.

Right now, you’re probably thinking, well all I have to do is promote new products then, right? Not necessarily- the first thing to do is check out the ClickBank Marketplace. Choose a category that you like and then select New Products. Now sort these results in order of gravity or popularity- right now, this is your most important factor. But the most popular product doesn’t necessarily mean it will bring you the most money.

The Whole Equation

There are a series of figures that you need to consider when selecting a product. When you select one, you’ll notice that it comes with a list of symbols.

• $/sale is the amount you can earn per sale.
• %/sale is the percentage that the affiliate will receive.
• %/refd is the sales generated by that vendor solely from its ClickBank affiliates
• grav is the gravity or popularity of the product

A promising product should pay you more than $20 and have a minimum percentage of 50%. The ideal gravity threshold is 10- 60. Over 60 means the product is already doing well and the market might be saturated already. However, there have been instances of products ranking higher than 60 while having low market saturation. Less than 10 is a risk, because it says that the product hasn’t been able to prove itself as a seller yet.

Apart from these figures, it’s also important to take a good look at the product and the vendor’s selling page. Deciphering sales letters does take a little practice but soon you’ll be able to spot the winners and the ones you can ignore. Testimonials, benefits and time sensitive offers are all positive aspects you should look out for. Make sure the page is designed well- this doesn’t mean it has to be fancy, just clean and pleasing to the eye. A good, attractive headline is also a good sign.

Popularity: 92% [?]

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.

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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.

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In this article, I’m going to look at the best sites to broker for. After all, this will be the basis of your earnings. As a JV broker, here’s what you do:

• Find someone who wants to sell products
• Find a marketer to sell these products
• Broker a deal between them
• Earn profits

You’ll remember in my last article, “Taking The First Step Towards Profits“ that I talked about how two-tier affiliate programs are the best ones to sign up for. To get a little deeper into this, here’s what you should look for.

Sites That Pay A Minimum Second Tier Commission Of $10

We are looking at a minimum commission of $ 10 per second tier sale. This is not tough to do. Even if the marketer you broker a deal with makes ten sales, you earn $100. If the marketer has a huge list of subscribers, just by sending them a simple email, you are looking at a high conversion rate that can earn you thousands in commission. See how powerful this method is? So even with a product that doesn’t cost much, you can still make a lot of earnings by identifying and leveraging marketers with huge lists.

Sites That Give Your Marketer Promotional Material That’s Ready To Use

The marketer you are brokering the deal with will love it when he can earn without doing a thing. If you outline even a couple of simple jobs like sending out an email or setting up a banner ad, chances are that they’ll never get around to doing it. Instead, if the product site you are brokering for provides all the promotional material in a ready to use form, you can tell your marketer that all he needs to do is copy paste it into his email software and send. Don’t forget to tell him that he’ll see money within the hour of doing this. It’s a lot easier to send out an email campaign that has already been written for you than go through the process of writing them and then sending them. So you simply need to find a site owner who is smart enough to provide the promotional material to sell his products.

Sites That Give Your Marketer Promotional Material That’s Ready To Use

In fact, this is your first priority as the success of your JV brokering depends on this. What if the marketer doesn’t sign up right away through your link? There is every chance of them signing up even a couple of months later. How do you keep track? More importantly, how do you ensure your commission on the sales generated by them?

Here’s where you need to ensure that your site owner has a cookie tracking system in place. Sign up with sites that offer you a two tier program as well as track everything through cookies valid for several months. No matter when your marketer signs up through your link you will get a commission on the sales they make.

Popularity: 29% [?]

In this article, I’m going to discuss the importance of AdWords when working with ClickBank. I’m also going to be looking at some popular strategies affiliate marketers use to sell their products. But perhaps most importantly, I’m going to take a look at why some of these strategies work and some don’t.

Let’s start with the basics- first of all, why is AdWords so important to your marketing strategy on ClickBank? Affiliates use AdWords in two very important ways. One, they are used to find out what people are looking for on the Internet. In that way, you can choose to promote a product that people actually want to buy. Secondly, affiliates use these same AdWords to market and promote their products. If your Adwords match the ones people tend to use in the search engines, you can drive a lot of traffic your way.

It used to be pretty easy to use AdWords in affiliate marketing- all you had to do was set up a direct link campaign, put your feet up and cash the checks when they came in. Today, the search engines have made things more difficult. In fact, Google now won’t allow more than one affiliate on the same page. This has simply meant that different strategies are needed to make AdWords and ClickBank work better together.

Choose A Strategy

One of the popular ways to make AdWords work for you is to bid on a specific product name. This approach can be very competitive, especially when you are bidding for a very attractive name that drives enormous amounts of traffic- you could end up in a very aggressive bidding war. The benefit of this kind of strategy is that, it gives you a direct link to traffic that is interested in making a purchase. However, the cost per click for these words could also be high.

Another option is to use keyword lists- this means, consolidate as many keyword phrases as possible and track the sales of each one. This is a very thorough strategy and will put you right on the pulse of what’s hot and what’s not. However, this can be a time-consuming job as well. You’ll probably have to invest in some keyword software to help you along.

Some affiliate marketers create campaigns, which are targeted towards sites that are AdWords enriched. This is probably one of the most difficult strategies of all, since it tells Google which web pages should hold your ads. Another drawback of this method is the click through ratio- this means that if you don’t generate enough sales, you’ll end up paying for the impressions, even though they didn’t translate into clicks.

An effective and relatively easy method to work your way around affiliate bidding wars is to write a review for your product, then offer visitors a gift or bonus if they buy using your link. It’s even better if you can harvest names and email ids, so you can do direct follow-up sales later on.

If these methods still seem too time consuming for you, you can visit CB Affiliate Revenue for a quicker way to start attracting traffic for high-profile products.

Popularity: 28% [?]

You would be amazed that the number one reason why most affiliate marketers seem to fail is because they don’t identify niche markets that are desperate and hungry. The average affiliate marketer finds a product, tries to sell it. What if there’s no market, or a small market that dries up in no time?

Let’s understand that there’s no dearth of markets out there. The point is to choose a few that are highly popular and lucrative. Why not just one? Because in case it doesn’t work out for you, you can always find better ones.

Here’s the secret to finding that hungry market that’s waiting for you to sell to them. Find the right keywords. These are the magnets that will let you find your profitable markets. A keyword selector tool can help you with this activity. Finding the keywords will help you identify markets and product ideas as well as to use Google AdWords successfully. We’ll cover this in a later part of our training series.

Keywords are those words that people use to find your website. By finding the best ones that describe your business or product, you can also use them in your pay per click advertising campaign. Using these words, your hungry market finds your website in the search engine results and then comes to your site.

The keyword selector tool tells you the number of times these keywords or phrases were searched in a given month. You can also find out how competitive these keywords are. The most popular keywords are the ones that were searched the most number of times. From the information you get, you can gauge whether there’s a potential market in that niche area for related products. Now remember - just because a keyword is popular does not mean all those who searched it were customers.

However, it gives you a pretty good idea about whether there’s a market and you constantly need to monitor it. Internet markets tend to change and by keeping track of it, you can move with the profitable ones. That’s why I said - its better to identify a bunch of markets so that you have a lot of people to sell to.

To know how hot the market you have identified is, look at its demographics. Check out related forums and online discussion boards to see what these people are expecting. If what you intend offering is available for free somewhere else, then you can bet your market will go there to get it.

So analyze your market in detail. Split them into smaller categories -find niches within niches. You need to strike the balance where you want a market with a steady flow of customers, but not so intense in competition. Next comes finding those hot products. But you don’t have to wait to know - you can head over to Duvet Dollars and grab your entire package with bonuses to know everything about making money in your sleep. Go on - do it right away.

Popularity: 26% [?]

Among list building methods for affiliate success, ezines are one of the most preferred. Simply put, ezines are online newsletters. Affiliate marketers use these to communicate and stay in touch with their subscribers. Through ezines, marketers share news, promotions, updates etc. Ezines can be used effectively to attract focussed traffic to your site.

Almost every ezine is ready to accept advertising from other marketers. The revenue from these ads can nicely offset operational costs associated with running the ezine apart from becoming a source of income in itself.

The best ezines to place your ads in are those that are very closely related to your own niche market to maximize the returns on the ad you put in. Different ezines have different rates depending on the number of subscribers they have and the specific niche. Rates are also based on the position of your ad.

Solo ads are found to work best in ezines even though they cost more because this means readers will see only your ad. In order to create a good solo ad, find an ezine that is directed at the exact target market you want. You can find other websites that run ezines related to your niche market. Searching on Google using your keyword or phrase followed by the word ezine or newsletter easily does this.

After you shortlist the most targeted ezines and newsletters to advertise in, find out the cost and number of subscribers each one has. We recommend actually subscribing to an ezine to see a few issues before advertising in it to get a good sense of the ezine. This will ensure that it speaks your language and reaches your message to your niche.

It is worthwhile spending time on designing your ad. What you say must be geared to getting your readers respond by doing what you expect them to.

Every activity in affiliate marketing must be tracked to monitor effectiveness. By tracking your ads you can know which ezines are bringing you the best response and which ones are not as effective as you expected. You can rephrase your ads to see which words work better so that you don’t waste money.

Some tips to ensure the success of your ezine advertising

• As you might have realized by now, choosing the right ezines to advertise in is the most important aspect of ezine advertising. Suppose the ezine you choose is crowded with ads, you hardly want your ad lost in it.
• When you offer something for free, as a sign up bonus in your ad, chances are quite good that the visitor would want to see what it is.
• Here’s something to check - if the ezine publisher has a policy of not running two ads for similar products within the same issue then you have a better chance of having your ad read by the ezine readers.
• Repeat your ads 2-3 times. The ezine publisher will probably offer you a bulk discount rate.

These are just a few of the many ways in which you can use ezine advertising successfully.

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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.

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Apart from the conventional tried and tested methods as an online marketer you must also keep track of new methods and concepts when it comes to traffic generation. And if it costs you nothing - even better. This brings us to Squidoo, the Web 2.0 program that’s being raved about by everyone who knows about it.

What sets Squidoo apart from similar sites is that it has quality content. Most of the pages on Squidoo, not surprisingly rank high with the search engines. The site itself is ranked seven on Google and in the Alexa rankings Squidoo is rated among the top thousand websites on the Internet.

On the Squidoo website you can set up your own ‘lens’ or web page on any topic that you are passionate about. You can leverage your lens by making a keyword rich Squidoo URL. Most forward-planning marketers create more than one lens for different topics using their primary keywords.

The keywords can also be used in the page title and scattered strategically through the content on the page. The concept of long tailed keywords, which are keywords that run to more than just 3-4 words, works effectively here, bringing in the focussed traffic that you want to grow your list and your profits.

Squidoo owes its success to the fact that its members are a dynamic community that is continuously coming up with excellent content and links. You can easily establish yourself as an expert in your area.

By optimizing your Squidoo lenses to the search engines through keywords, you will be accessing the entire Web 2.0 media tagging system. Your rankings will improve to a great extent if your links to your other sites and content are relevant.

Creating original content is the first step. It must be appealing to the visitors and the community. Since there’s community ranking, with quality content, you can be rated highly by the users. By browsing around the site, you get a good idea about how others are tapping into Squidoo and use the same methods to be successful yourself.

Squidoo tips on tags

When you make your lens pay close attention to ‘tags’. You will be asked to choose your primary keyword or tag along with three more. Don’t stop here. Add at least 25 - 30 more tags. Why do you need to do this? Tags attract the search engines. These tags, with no intervention from you, are coded into the html of your website - so imagine the result. Google just swallows it. So when users use Google to search for your tags, chances are good that your page will come up, or at the very least, the overall tag page on Squidoo. By adding the right tags to your Squidoo lens, you can maximize the chances of your being found.

The next thing about tags is this. When visitors search on Squidoo using the tags, the results are brought up based on the tags on all the pages and then by page rank. So if your site is about affiliate marketing, one of your tags must be ‘affiliate marketing’ for you to actually receive traffic on your site. Elementary.

Keep adding tags to your Squidoo lens via the edit tags option.

Now you can see how you can use Squidoo to generate traffic and back links to your website. If you are in affiliate marketing, you can display affiliate links.

Popularity: 17% [?]