Affiliate Marketing Success

Diary of an Affiliate Marketer

I have a lot of plans this week to increase my affiliate marketing success by uncovering some more niche markets that will allow me to increase my income over the medium to long term.

Whenever I am looking for more niche markets I always follow the advice given by James Martell in the Affiliate Marketing Handbook which is now in its fourth edition. James has been on the internet for some time now and like many experienced people he has developed an interest in educating others who are serious about internet marketing.

One of the fundamentals of achieving affiliate marketing success is in choosing the right markets and providing the visitors with the right products to meet their needs.

I remember reading Ken McCarthy’s fabulous book (the book that put me on the right path) System Secrets and he goes out of his way to emphasize that anything can be sold on the internet by affiliates, with good profit margins when done correctly, and he’s so right!

I’ve been doing some preliminary research on a few topics I’m considering and I always follow James Martell’s guidelines as described in his book and keep all the data on a spreadsheet to review later and choose what may very well be the most profitable site. It never ceases to amaze how I can start off on one topic and the nichier I get the more profitable the site becomes.

Let me explain.

There are affiliate merchants out there selling everything you could think of and more. For instance, www.KitchenSource.com supplies every piece of kitchen equipment imaginable and delivers to the visitor’s door. What’s more, the average sale at www.kitchensource.com is $441. That’s a fair chunk of commission you could generate selling everyday kitchen equipment!

This is the beauty of affiliate marketing. You can earn substantial living selling everyday useful items where there is a demand, reasonable competition and an affiliate merchant to whom you can send your visitors.

This part of the process can be long and tedious but if you follow James’s advice at least you are going to choose a market that works for you and will make you money if you follow his work schedule as described in the Affiliate Marketing Handbook.

So far I have listed six possible topics although I must confess that two of them would be hard to do as I have very little interest in the topics and would therefore require a lot of research to gain enough knowledge to build a content rich website that provides real information of value to the visitor.

As anyone in affiliate marketing will tell you, it is far easier to be successful as an affiliate if you have an interest in the topic of the website. It is far easier to write content and build a website based on something you have an interest in as your enthusiasm spills over and into the copy on each page.

Choosing a topic can be fun and easy but doing the research right into each topic is the most important part of the business and will dictate your affiliate marketing success.