With the advent of the Internet, thousands of non-sales people have turned salesmen, promoting all kinds of digital and physical products. Just like a door-to-door salesman pitches the company’s products to achieve targets and earn commissions, the affiliate marketer sells others products for a commission.

So online marketing doesn’t always involve your own product. Selling products created by others can be profitable too.

Affiliate marketing can be a spectacular platform if you’re new to the online world. It can help you get your feet wet and make that all-important first sale.

My first sale was for just $1 for a test trial of a $29 dollar product! Believe me, that feeling and joy can never be replicated.  It was validation that this business really was real. If you visit any of the popular Internet marketing forums, you’ll find ecstatic marketers telling the world about their first sale/s.

So, let’s get you on your way to making that first sale.

But the bad news first.

I seem to be making a habit of this, but I believe, the only way not to trip online is to keep those rose-tinted glasses away.

Affiliate marketing is one of the most competitive fields in online marketing opportunities today. People are attracted to affiliate marketing because it offers a way to earn money without actually having to go through the pangs of product creation.

The fact that you earn commissions from the efforts of other people, makes the industry very attractive, and anything attractive is bound to gain lots of attention.  With thousands of people promoting the same products, they end up crashing headlong into each other and fighting it out for the place at the top. The end result is – survival of the fittest.

Is there hope for the new marketer?

Yes, there is. You just have to make it a habit to follow the rules of the game. Understand affiliate marketing and you can surely make it a profitable business.

What Is Affiliate Marketing?

An affiliate program is where you join a company that has products for sale or an opportunity to promote. You sell or promote for them and receive a commission for every sale or lead.

What you should keep in mind when joining one of these affiliate programs is that they should be free to join. Set your alarm bells to ring the minute an affiliate program asks you to pay.  There are scams you should watch out for. Look at it this way, you’re doing them a favor by selling their products, why should you pay?

Affiliate Marketing Sales Programs

They are programs where you sell products for a commission, which is usually a percentage of the sale amount.

There are many affiliate networks to choose from.   Amazon is a huge affiliate network and Amazon.com has an Alexa Rank of 6. With Amazon, it’s mostly physical products you will be promoting.

Since Amazon needs a huge space for discussion, for now we’ll stick to talking about affiliate marketing with Clickbank. Unless you plan on selling hundreds of products, you just need one for the time being.

• $ earned per sale
• % earned per sale
• Gravity

Percentage On The Original Cost (% earned per sale)

This is the percentage of commission you’re paid on each sale. In this example, they pay you 75% on each sale, which is decent and you should look at a good percentage before you decide on promoting a product.  It also depends on the cost of the product.

If you find a product that’s paying you 35%, but the cost of the product is $250 and it’s easy to promote, you should grab it. It’s better than selling a $20 product at 80% commission.  So, when you look at the percentage, it should be with the actual cost of the product in mind.

Gravity

This would have to be the first factor I look at when deciding to promote a product. This reveals the number of affiliates promoting a product. If the gravity is high, you’ve got a lot of competition. While a high gravity product is an indication that the product is selling very well, it may also be difficult to promote because of the competition.

There are several factors you need to take into consideration. I would only go for products with a gravity of more than 40 since competition does mean that this is likely to be a good promotion. I would stay away from products with a gravity of over 100, as it can get very difficult to get any sales your way.

Choosing A Product To Promote

Now you know what the above factors are and you have a basic idea of what you’re looking for. But with hoards of people doing exactly what you are, it doesn’t hurt to think outside the box.

Take a look at this example that I sorted by “Gravity.” This is the highest gravity product under “weight loss,” and the gravity is a whooping 311.26. A quick search in Google for “the fat loss factor” yields millions of results. Way too much competition.

 Does that mean you ignore the product?

Since the product is selling well, it’s in huge demand. But unless you do something different from what all others are doing, you’re not going to stand a chance.

I’ll give you a small hint.

Some of the top affiliates promoting these products don’t write anything related to the products. That comes as a shock doesn’t it, because the first thought in our mind is to write lots of wonderful content related to this product.

So, how do they do it?

They find the target audience for the product, which in this case could be women in their late 20s up to late 40s.   These affiliates post content based on other things that this target audience enjoys, such as parenting, beauty, skin care, and everything else. They just have an ad to the product in the sidebar or above the fold or wherever they want to, for people to see.

By doing this, they’re interacting on a personal level with the audience and not promoting the product like all others. That is the kind of out-of-the-box thinking you’d do well to implement.

So, you have two options in front of you; to go for excellent products that are high gravity or play safe, choose a low-gravity product. Both can reap great dividends.

Promote The Product

You have a website or blog with the affiliate product advertised somewhere on it, and you have the relevant content on your blog.

Now time for some good old promotion to get some traffic your way. You can implement any of the different ways we’ve been discussing. You can choose to adopt 2-3 modes of promotion, like social sites, forum marketing, article marketing, SEO etc.

The Other Affiliate Networks

As mentioned before, Clickbank is not the only affiliate network, but it’s one of the most popular. However, for your information, the other highly popular networks are Amazon, Commission Junction, Peerfly and a few more.

Whatever network you use, keep the basics of affiliate marketing in mind. How do you go about choosing the perfect product, how are you going to research the competition and what are the traffic generation methods you’re going to employ.