1. Sign up for some affiliate networks. I’d definitely start by signing up with Pepperjam and Commission Junction. I also recommend and have had good success with eBay. I’ve also used LinkShare with some success – your mileage may vary and I’m sure it just depends on which advertiser programs you want to sign up for.
2. Take a look at the available advertisers in your affiliate networks and start joining affiliate programs. You’ll want to try a bunch, it may take a few tries to find the ones that work best for you. If your affiliate network provides program payout history, be sure to follow this closely – you want to weed out the bad eggs (there are a lot of advertisers I don’t trust). You want to choose niche affiliate markets that payout a good amount of money (face it… you can only make so much off $5 items…. go for something you can get commissions that make it worth your time). But at the same time, avoid things that are likely too competitive. Do some Google searches and research your top competitors. See if you think you can beat some of them. Also it’s best to pick niche markets that you’re knowledgable about and like. This will come in handy for step #3…
3. Create your website and make it better than the typical affiliate site. If you’re going to be lazy and throw up a few affiliate links without much thought and effort, you’re just wasting your time. Keep your site’s focus on 1 or 2 related markets – if you want to get into more niche affiliate markets, then create more websites. You don’t have to be a expert on your niche, but definitely put a little thought and effort into this part. If you don’t have a nice-looking website, be sure to check out some free templates you can use at a site like www.oswd.org. Now add some content! Write some reviews and add your own descriptions. Try adding some social networking components – user-generated content (if moderated) can be great. Make your site look professional and clean (that does not mean complex and complicated!). Have a friend look at your site – if it looks spammy, clean it up! Make sure you know a little something about SEO (search engine optimization) – start by reading some of the great articles at SEOmoz. The content on your site is really going to help for step 4…
4. Now drive traffic to your niche affiliate site! Experiment with some PPC campaigns. Google Adwords is the best. Try Microsoft AdCenter as well – they don’t have the traffic but often have decent conversion rates. I’d try Yahoo as well but I’d be very careful – I’ve noticed more click fraud – you have to monitor and block certain domains. The content you created is really going to help your quality score in Google AdWords. Make sure your landing pages target the keywords you bid on, and make sure your ad text matches up as well. You can definitely do some SEO and start building some backlinks – nothing beats “free” traffic. But whatever you don’t do, don’t completely skip out on running ad campaigns. You need to get some traffic and test out your advertisers and see what converts.
5. You gotta have conversions. Now that you have some affiliate programs that look like they could work, you need to get your conversion rate as high as possible. Optimization is a must – you have to get used to testing everything! Look into doing some split testing, rotate ads, change out content. Move things around! Target more longtail keywords – they often have the highest conversion rates! Research your competition in the same niche affiliate market and find out what they’re doing. Make sure you have some sort of stats installed on your site (Google Analytics are great) to monitor your traffic. Find out what keywords your visitors are coming in on. Find out your bounce rate and try to keep it low. Find out how visitors navigate through your site. Testing and optimization are the name of the game!

I hope this helps you get started in marketing your niche affiliate sites. I tried to keep this relatively short, although there are a vast amount of resources out there on every aspect of this. I’ll try to go into more detail on some of these items in the near future. Good luck finding your niche!

At this point, you may have your doubts, but you should know that even the most popular websites such as eBay and Amazon have affiliate programs as well. So there is definitely money to be made in niche affiliate marketing. Even though you are safer with the larger companies, smaller companies will pay higher commission because they need the business you are giving them. There’s no need to limit yourself to any particular group though, you can do affiliate marketing for as many companies as you like, big or small.

In order to begin niche affiliate marketing, you need at least one web site. This will cost you a small fee to register the domain, plus you will have to pay a monthly fee for hosting. For people just starting out in affiliate marketing, it can be risky to spend money right away. This is why many people start out using free websites and blogs in order to market companies. If you become successful, you will probably want to get a paid website as it will make your enterprise look more professional. Even so, start out using free blogs and websites in order to save money.

On your website, you need to have a lot of content; a blank slate isn’t going to sell anything. Some free websites will offer templates that you can use to set up your account; this is great if you have no web building experience. Blogs are also ready to go; just choose a template and you’re ready to blog. On your website or blog, you need to write about the product you are trying to sell. This can be difficult if you haven’t used it before. It’s always a good idea to ask companies if they provide free samples to people who are doing marketing for them. Be sure to add keywords into the text. These are words that people often search for. The hardest part is getting traffic to your website, so you may have to pay for advertising.

EBay pulse is a great site to go to in order to find the next hottest niche market. Simply go to this website and it will give you the top 10 most searched for items. Thanks to this site, you now know the top 10 products that people are buying. There is also a drop down box for each category on eBay. You can use this in order to find the top 10 most searched for products in each of these groups. With this information, you have a better idea of which products you should try to sell using affiliate programs. For example, maybe the most searched for product is a cell phone; go to websites that sell cell phones and cell phone accessories and see if they are offering affiliate programs.

Next on the list is the Google keyword tool. There are multiple uses for this tool. It is most commonly used in order to find the best keywords to use when marketing a site-so keep this in mind for when you are trying to get your site listed on search engines. All you have to do is type or word or phrase into the box, and it will give you a list of the most searched for phrases. Just like with eBay pulse, you can use this tool to find out what people are searching for; and if you are planning on running a successful niche marketing business it is crucial that you know this information. You can see how easy it is to learn what people are searching for by using these sites. The best part is that it will only take you seconds.

If you are going to be a successful niche marketer, it is important that you understand the basics of marketing. One of these basic marketing fundamentals is that the market is always changing. What was popular last year may not be as popular this year. It takes a lot of work to discover what is going to stay popular and what is going to be a passing fad. Remember, it can take up to a year for you to start getting serious traffic to your niche marketing web pages; if your niche isn’t still popular, then you are out a lot of time and may be even money.

If you enjoyed this post, then make sure you subscribe to my RSS Feed.