02/03/2011 Author: Andy 0 Comments

Simple Affiliate Marketing Strategy for Newbies

Niche affiliate marketing is an easy and very effective way to make some extra cash. While I don’t spend most of my time doing this style of niche affiliate marketing, I do incorporate it from time to time just because of how easy it is to do. When I say easy, I don’t mean that it is point and click. If I said that, I would be lying to you.

Affiliate marketing does take some work, but this affiliate strategy is very basic, and is something that anyone can do starting today. The reason I am sharing this strategy with you is that I always have people asking me questions about how to get started in affiliate marketing with little or no money, so here it is.

Before I get into this easy affiliate marketing strategy, let me first mention why most people fail. The #1 reason is that they can’t decide on a niche market. This is usually because they have read a ton of ebooks on keyword research etc… They usually spend way too much time on this, and before you know it, they have done nothing! I only go after BIG markets for one reason. That’s where the most money is! If I am going to try and sell someone else’s product for some extra cash, I don’t want to sell an ebook on knitting with a $15 commission regardless of the competition in the niche. I’d way rather go after the weight loss niche, or some other major industry where tens of thousands of products are being sold online everyday. All I want is a piece of the pie.

When I search for a product, I do like most people, and search for high gravity products on clickbank. I like to find products with a gravity between 50 and 250. I usually stay away from the top products because that means there are too many affiliates promoting it, and its harder to get a piece of the pie. I also don’t promote anything that pays less than $20, but that’s just me. If you are unfamiliar with how Clickbank works, click the link below. http://www.clickbank.com/ranking.html

The first thing you should do when you find a product you want to promote is to buy a domain name as close to it as possible. For instance, if the product website is: loseweightquickly.com, you should buy a domain name such as weightlossquickly.com. Then in the control panel of where you registered your domain name, (such as NameCheap.com).

Just set your domain to point to your affiliate link given to you by clickbank or which ever affiliate program you are using. This way, anytime someone goes to weightlossquickly.com, they are immediately sent to your affiliate link for the site you are promoting. Simple! If for some reason your domain provider doesn’t offer that option (some don’t), you can use a re-direct code in your main index page html (index.html) just open up notepad and put this code:

<meta HTTP-EQUIV=”REFRESH” content=”0; url=http://www.your-affiliate-link.com”>

and save it as index.html After that you just upload it to your root directory of your domain, and you are done! Now that you have your domain name set up and pointing to your affiliate link, it’s time to get traffic to it. Since I want this to be an easy affiliate marketing strategy that anyone can use, I am only going to discuss some free free traffic methods.

The methods I recommend for newbies are:

1.Article Marketing

2.Forum Marketing

3.Yahoo answers

First thing you need to do before beginning this easy affiliate marketing strategy is some quick research. Don’t spend too much time on this. This is just one of my methods, and others are probably better, but hey, it works….. I get out a notebook and start searching the web for questions related to the product I am promoting. I search for questions based on the bullet points that are on the sales page of the product I plan to promote. I then start Googling around for a couple hours writing down any questions and answers I can find. I can easily get 3 or 4 pages of content in this time. For me, that is enough content to write at least 10 articles off of.

If you hate writing articles, you can hire someone to write them for you for around $5 or $6 apiece, but you can write them yourself for free if you’re short on cash. I then submit these articles to the following article directories:

1. Ezinearticles.com

2. Buzzle.com

3. Goarticles.com

4. Articledashboard.com

5. Articlesbase.com

6. Articlealley.com

I find these ones bring me the most traffic. If you are having trouble structuring your articles, just browse ezineatricles.com for the most viewed articles, and see how the top writers are doing it. Simple. After you start making some sales, you will want to start outsourcing all of your articles at scriptlance.com or another freelance website. I am pretty lucky because I have found a great writer already. Sorry to say, but for only $5 per article, it will take some time to find a quality writer, but there are actually plenty out there. My writer in my opinion writes just as good as people who charge $20 per article. The best advice I can give is to post a job on scriptlance.com for maybe 2 or 3 articles and see how they do. Once you find a good writer, you can keep giving them more and more work, while you know your sales will increase. You can also (and should also) hire either them, or someone else to do the article submitting for you.

This may sound like a lot of work so far, which it can be, but if you stay focused, you can set up a stream of income such as this in as little as 2 or 3 days.

Next is forum marketing. I will keep this short. First, you simply sign up to forums in your target niche. Always make sure you read the rules first, because you will be placing your affiliate link in your forum signature, and many forums do not allow this. The trick is to not set up your signature link until 2 or 3 weeks after you’ve signed up, and built up a decent post count. This keeps any moderators or admins from suspecting that you are a spammer (which you aren’t by doing this). For each forum you sign up to (I would do at least 5), keep your name and password somewhere where you can remember it (or have it saved in your browsers autoform). It’s best to write them on a piece of paper, because it will help remind you to go back to the forums and post everyday. You should make ONLY high quality posts (Just use the notes you took during your research). Just replies to the threads you feel comfortable with.

I would post no more than 2 or 3 times a day to each forum. The thing with forums, is that search engines love them, and your post (along with sig) could be seen months from now! This usually results in unexpected surprise commissions, which are nice. Sometimes I get commissions from products I promoted over 2 years ago. When creating your sig (signature that goes below every post you make), don’t make it too obvious. Just keep your signature short and put your link there. It’s really that simple.

The last traffic source in this affiliate marketing strategy is VERY easy. Yahoo Answers! Go to http://answers.yahoo.com/ and create an account if you don’t already have one. All you do here is search for questions related to your niche, answer them, and place your link. Simple. I can easily respond to several answers in just 15 minutes time. If your answer is chosen as the best one, your affiliate link will be right there at the top. And since you have cloaked your affiliate link by buying a new domain name, most people won’t flag your answers as spam. (Just make sure it doesn’t sound too overly promotional) Oh yeah, search engines LOVE Yahoo Answers too!

If the best answer is already chosen, there is a link below it that says “comment” You can post in there even if the question is closed. Just write a quick sentence and place your link. It’s very simple, and it will stay there for a very long time! Who knows who might find it and then buy from you!

As you can see, this affiliate marketing strategy is very simple, and is laid out in a way that anyone, including the newest of newbies can do this. Are there more advanced strategies out there? Yep! Wayyy more advanced, but that’s for another time. If you do this right, you will set up a nice income stream that runs on complete autopilot. If you start making a lot of sales, you can take it even further and start to promote your product with videos and other sources of traffic, eventually leading up to your own content filled blog.

With just the basics however, I know you could easily set up a nice income stream. If you spent just 2 solid (LASER FOCUSED) hours a day on just this. Affiliate marketing can be pretty rewarding if you put forth the effort, but always remember, at some point you want to create your own products, have your own blog or website, and have the affiliates selling for you! It’s much nicer to be on the other end of the spectrum