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Diary of an Affiliate Marketer

There are plenty of affiliate marketing scams on the internet and it can be very difficult for you to tell the good from the bad.

In my earlier years I fell for a couple of bad buys, so called software that was going to accelerate my success to riches and of course turned out to be a big letdown.

There is no get rich quick scheme but I have found a group of people who help you get what you want out of life by sharing the correct system to succeed online whatever market you may be in.

I was introduced to them through Ken McCarthy’s … The System.

Over the last few months I have been very fortunate to see some very successful people share their success with us at The System Intensive in London and again at the Blogging Seminar in Manchester where Mark Attwood truly showed his outstanding knowledge of blogging, Facebook and Twitter.

To avoid affiliate marketing scams it is important you mix with the right set of people. Genuine people who are making money online every day with systems that work and a genuine desire to help you succeed by following their proven techniques.

James Martell author of Affiliate Marketing Handbook

For example. There is probably no nicer or more genuine guy that James Martell who does what he says. He is a successful affiliate marketer who continues to earn vast sums through Google Adsense and other money generating ideas such as affiliate marketing and internet marketing coaching.

A family run business this is one of the most genuine and solid business models you will find on the internet and by following James’s system you will never need to worry about Google changing its algorithms because the websites he builds are genuine and solid with quality content.

To avoid affiliate marketing scams do what I did and surround yourself with people who are successful doing the right things on the net. No blackhat marketing scams just quality websites with quality content and Pay Per Click or SEO (search engine optimization) techniques guaranteed to make you successful.

There are no short cuts to success in this business but there are tremendous rewards for those who put in the effort and follow a successful formula.

Diary of an Affiliate Marketer

One of the problems for anyone new to the affiliate marketing business is that there are so many affiliate marketing programs and tools available that it’s hard to know where to start and you can easily become overwhelmed with information.

Anyone familiar with SEO (search engine optimization) will know how important it is to get backlinks to your website. A backlink is simply the text link you find on a webpage that links to someone else’s webpage.

For instance you may have a webpage written on the topic of “dog training” and in the article you refer the reader to further information available on Wikipedia via are suitably placed link in your text.

As an affiliate marketer these backlinks are very important as you look to improve your rankings within the search engines. Google places great value on these links especially those from important sites and those pages that already have a high pagerank.

As you build your online business you will always be looking for affiliate marketing programs that help you achieve your goals and I have just started using a new resource called Articles Underground which can be found at Articlesunderground.com.

Article Underground Articles and Backlinks Program

I’m very excited about this website because one of the biggest difficulties any affiliate marketer will have is obtaining quality links to your webpage from a webpage with a good pagerank. This usually involves writing to other webmasters and trying to get articles placed on their websites with links back to your site.

The beauty of Article Underground is that they have already written the articles using professional copywriters which you can edit to create unique content and post on your site. You are then able to post an announcement on various websites with a high pagerank providing a strong link back to your site.

There aren’t many affiliate marketing programs out there that I would fully endorse but this is certainly one of them.

Diary of an Affiliate Marketer

I think I may have final stumbled upon some successful affiliate marketing techniques thanks to reviewing James Martell’s the Affiliate Marketing Handbook.

One of the many obstacles you face when working online is the many distractions that you encounter each day such as emails, You Tube, podcasts and all the other things that you do that are not directly contributing to your business.

It’s very easy to get off track and lose sight of your objectives and your goals. I have been looking for some more niche markets that I may want to take advantage of and started doing a bit of research.

At this point I started to get frustrated because I had so many ideas that I realized I was meandering and not really being very business-like in my approach and that will not result in successful affiliate marketing, in fact it will be the opposite and a complete waste of time.

It’s usually a good idea to take a break when you lose focus so I did and it was then that I decided to refer back to the Affiliate Marketing Handbook for the chapters on selecting a niche for your website.

That was the best cup of coffee I have had in a long time and 45 minutes and two chapters later I was back on track. James Martell has been in the affiliate marketing business much longer than I have and I always refer to him when I feel I’m off track or losing focus.

Anyway, after this short break I was able to research with more focus and came up with some fabulous ideas for niche marketing. Sometimes you are so busy doing you forget to check that what you are doing is going in the right direction.

James Martell author of Affiliate Marketing Handbook

One of the things that James Martell will tell you is to look deep into any market you’re considering building a website on.

For example.

If you are considering building a website on a topic related to kitchens you may want to consider narrowing your niche nice and tight so that you can dominate a corner of the market.

How many searches are there for cooker hoods, microwave ovens, blenders, coffee makers, extraction fans, wood-burning ovens or any other item you may find in a kitchen?

Would an experienced successful affiliate marketing person consider building a website on cooker hoods? Of course they would. Why?

• There is demand
• There is reasonable competition
• There are advertisers
• There is repeat business

Anyone who has pride in their kitchen and buying an item such as a cooker hood is open to repeat business.

Offer a free report and start collecting names and you have a group of people on your list ready to hear what other items may enhance their kitchen and improve their lifestyle, or perhaps you offer money saving ideas or equipment for their kitchen.

It’s important to remember when putting a topic together that repeat business is the real success behind most successful businesses including those who do their selling online via websites.

The real value of any online business is in your email list so when you are researching your next niche remember to look at the repeat business options in the total value of the niche before making any decisions.

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.

James Martell author of Affiliate Marketing Handbook

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.

Diary of an Affiliate Marketer

After my conversation with my good friend Gavin the other day my head is full of affiliate marketing ideas and it occurred to me that many people struggle to get started with affiliate marketing because they don’t know where to start or what to sell.

The successful affiliate marketers find things to sell in niche markets and I remember every time I heard that phrase it used to drive me mad … what is a niche market?

It’s important you understand what a niche market is otherwise you will not fully profit in your chosen market place and will get frustrated when all that was required was you do some research first. Let me try and explain in a bit more depth.

Let’s say I’m looking for a new market and I start thinking of some affiliate marketing ideas. How about promoting cars? (I’m being ridiculous here but stay with me).

The two tools I am going to use here for simplicity is the Google Keyword Tool and Google’s search engine as it is the most popular these days. Typing in my keyword “car” returns

506 million searches and 814 million results … ridiculously competitive

So let’s go nichier … what about “car accessories”

20 million searches and 86 million pages show up in the results … better but still ridiculous

Now you can start to think of popular car accessories, what’s hot at the moment? I know, let’s try “sat nav” … more and more people are using these devices every day.

2 million searches …. Fantastic!    Oh! … 21 million results

Okay, we’re moving in the right direction. We are narrowing down our target market. We started off with a car, then car accessories, now an individual car accessory, sat nav. So what’s next?

How about a particular make of sat nav? Let’s try “Tom Tom Sat Nav”

Now we’re talking …

200 000 searches per month and only just over 1 million results for the main keyword “Tom Tom Sat Nav”

By the time we put together a keyword list with everything related to our main keyword “Tom Tom Sat Nav” we will have a formidable list, plenty of traffic and with all the other things we have learnt about affiliate marketing we should be able to achieve high rankings for our keywords.

If you understand the principle of what I have shown you above you can come up with lots of affiliate marketing ideas. All you have to do is start with anything you see selling anywhere, in magazines, down the mall on television … anywhere.

Now just keep narrowing it down until you have a niche which may be the brand as in the above example, or type such as wooden, metal, glass etc.

The whole idea about niche marketing is provide your visitor with exactly what they were looking for … a specific product or service.

One of the most important rules you need to realize with the internet is that unlike shopping at a mall where you may browse and find something you want, with the internet the surfer already has a picture in their mind of what it is they are searching for … it’s usually very specific and if you can provide it from your niche website built around that very specific topic … $$$.

Diary of an Affiliate Marketer

I had a phone call today from Paul a close friend asking what affiliate marketing training materials I would recommend to someone who is just getting their feet wet.

Ken McCarthy author of System Secrets

This is one of those questions I always find easy to answer. I always recommend that before you do anything, before you spend any money on anything else, you buy these two books. System Secrets by Ken McCarthy and Affiliate Marketing Handbook by James Martell.

Paul asked me why I was so sure of myself and isn’t there some software his friend should be buying instead? After all, books are old fashioned and there’s all kinds of great stuff you can buy on the internet these days so why two books?

The reason why I find this question so easy to answer is because these two books changed my business around and put me in the big league. Without them I would still be floundering, looking for the golden nugget or the magic button that was going to make me all this money. It was never going to happen until I was recommended these books myself.

Ken McCarthy was the catalyst to my success. I applied to attend one of his Seminars and part of the package and freebies was a copy of his book System Secrets. As you can imagine I was desperate for success and read through the book to see if it had all the answers for me.

What a mind opener. After reading this book you will understand the opportunities that are available on the internet and your main problem will be where to start!

Perhaps, in one way that is Ken’s strength and a possible weakness if you allow it to be. By the time you have read the book you realize that you can make money in so many ways so how do you choose and where do you go for that specialist piece of information.

I believe I was fortunate here. One of Ken’s main speakers at one of his seminars was an affiliate marketing genius called James Martell.

James Martell author of Affiliate Marketing Handbook

James has been online since the beginning and is known the world over and is invited to all the top conventions either as a speaker or guest. He has the most incredible knowledge of affiliate marketing and understands all the frustrations of beginners.

As a result of his tremendous success in affiliate marketing people always chased him for the answers and tuition and eventually he set up some local coaching seminars for which he charged $3000 per seat!

Unfortunately he realized that the personal coaching was taking up too much of his time and he decided to video his coaching course and use the material to write his first book Affiliate Marketing Handbook. This book is full of information on anything and everything to do with affiliate marketing.

Now here is why, without hesitation, I recommend these two books as affiliate marketing training materials.

With Ken’s book System Secrets you will understand how easy it is to set up an online business and the opportunities you have before you. He fully explains marketing on the internet and how to make money in just about any field. You get the broad picture and an insight into the tools and skills you will want to develop. This is the book you need to read first.

Once you have read Ken’s book you can then read James Martell’s Affiliate Marketing Handbook. This book will take you through affiliate marketing step by step, from knowing nothing to having a website up and running making you money. It is one of the most complete guides you will ever get.

The two books together cost less than $70 and will be the best investment you have ever made.

Diary of an Affiliate Marketer

You may wonder how you can get involved in a joint venture and it is surprisingly easy once you get out and about. What do I mean?

Well take the phone call I had last night. I met a new friend called Gavin at the recent System Intensive in London and we vowed to keep in touch. In fact we both met so many nice and enthusiastic people that I came home with a fist full of business cards off people from all over the world.

Anyway Gavin and I had agreed to drive each other on to greater heights by having a monthly conversation and challenging each other on our objectives and goals. By being public with your goals in this way you will find you have a greater urgency to meet them.

During our conversation several things came to light. Gavin was constantly being asked by clients of his whether he could provide a full marketing service for the websites he designs. As many of the small businesses he deals realize the power and the potential of the internet they need help with marketing.

Gavin is an excellent technician and designer but is still developing his skills on pay per click marketing and conversion tracking which are essential if you choose to take the pay per click option to drive traffic to your website.

As a result Gavin was looking to partner up with someone to provide a complete service for his clients to provide a complete professional service.

We also discussed a joint venture for affiliate marketing. Gavin has some great ideas for niche markets and wanted to discuss their profit potential. Whilst we were talking I was able to do some quick research on keywords, traffic potential and commissions he would likely receive.

The beauty of a joint venture like this is the products that Gavin wanted to promote are products that the majority of us would never have thought of and initially they look very profitable indeed and best of all has filled my head with other similar products full of potential which I can share with Gavin.

Best of all, now that I have mastered Thesis and Wordpress I know I can put a website up very quickly and test the market before he and I fully commit.

One word of warning about joint ventures. Know your partner and be aware that just like any other relationship things can go wrong. If your joint venture begins to grow you may find that both of you have different visions and different directions you want to go.

That is one of the major strengths of the internet.  You can go off at a tangent and do the things you want, the things that really interest you.

Many of the top information marketers in the world often do joint ventures on product launches and upgrades. When you have your own list of customers you regularly email and someone you know is about to launch a great new product that will help your customers succeed, you can often get a deal for your customers and everyone benefits.

Diary of an Affiliate Marketer

The biggest problem for affiliate marketing newbies like my friend Gavin is understanding where to start. This concern applies to most new starters and can be overwhelming at first.

For instance I know of one person who has now purchased a training package off three different people and I know these people. Each one is excellent and any one of these internet training packages would have helped this person succeed if they just knew how to apply all this information.

I know because I was in this position some years ago and my brain was working overtime. You see, as affiliate marketing newbies we all think you have to get it right first time. Right on the money, and away you go!

It doesn’t work like that and there is no magic button or secret recipe, but what is true is that if you know what the system is and why The System works then you can apply your new knowledge to any good quality training package.

Sometimes people have good fortune and I certainly consider it good fortune that I came across Ken McCarthy after being introduced by Perry Marshall. Ken was running the world famous internet marketing seminar The System Seminar and one of the introductory offers was a free copy of his book System Secrets.

What an eye opener and damn frustrating when you realize you have been running around like a headless chicken and here was a book for $20 that put everything into perspective and all of a sudden it all made sense.

How frustrating is that!

When you understand how marketing on the internet works the rest becomes so much clearer and listening to his guest speakers was exciting because I could see how I could apply all these techniques and marketing skills to my website and future websites.

It was at that time I knew I wanted to  fully commit to affiliate marketing and not wonder off in various directions because if there is one thing that System Secrets and Ken shows you is that there are so many ways to make money on the internet that it is limited only by your imagination.

The System Intensive Seminar London 2009

Affiliate marketing is where I wanted to be and I’m so grateful that I was introduced to Ken McCarthy. One of his key speakers was a real gentleman called James Martell who has been affiliate marketing since the beginning.

An online veteran, James takes affiliate marketing newbies and shows you step by step how to achieve your dreams. Don’t get me wrong it’s hard work but easy to follow and if you commit to following his advice you cannot fail.

James was having major success and of course everyone wanted to know how he continued to make the levels of income he was achieving every year. He finally succumbed to the pressure and started training locally and when he realized this was a massive drain on his time he realized that he could reach more people in less time if he wrote it all down.

So, using one of his coaching seminars he wrote everything he was teaching these people, who by the way were paying $3000 for the face to face training, and released his first book Affiliate Marketing Handbook which is now in its fourth edition.

Whenever I am approached by affiliate marketing newbies for advice I immediately tell them to buy two books, System Secrets by ken McCarthy and Affiliate Marketing Handbook by James Martell. Armed with these two books for less than $70 you have all the information you need to get you started on the right path and I guarantee you will make money and invest in further training from these two guys again and again.

If you know of any other business you can start up for less than $70 let me know!

Diary of an Affiliate Marketer

Today I was asked a question I always get asked, is affiliate marketing easy? I always find this one question difficult to answer because there are two answers. Yes and no!

Yes it is difficult when you first start off because you are inexperienced and …  no once you have some experience under your belt and have started to make some money on the internet. One of the happiest days of your life will be the day you receive that first check from an affiliate merchant.

It doesn’t matter how big that check is $1 or $1000, what you will be excited about is that you now know affiliate marketing works and you can move forward and increase your income by getting better at driving traffic and converting it into sales.

If you made affiliate marketing easy then everyone would be in the market place trying to make money online and giving up the day job. The fact is that this is just like any other trade or business; you have to serve your apprenticeship first. You have to serve your time and learn the trade.

The great news for you is that there is plenty of material you can learn from and get a head start on everyone else. For instance, you could get a copy of System Secrets by Ken McCarthy or the Affiliate Marketing Handbook by James Martell.

Both of these excel in making money online and have been in the business since the very early days of the internet. If you are willing to put in the effort they will show you that you can make affiliate marketing easy or should I say more profitable if you are willing to invest the time and learn the correct way to earn money online.

Ken McCarthy and The System has some of the most high profile people on the internet as part of his faculty and students! Many of the speakers return the following year to listen to other faculty members because there is so much happening within the industry and it pays to keep up to date. They continue to learn and invest in their craft no matter how much they are earning.

James Martell on the other hand has been on line forever and is well known across the internet as one of the best affiliate marketers. Over the years many people asked James to show them how to make money online through affiliate marketing and as a result of the pressure he wrote a book and put a whole training package together which has now been running for years.

For anyone starting out in affiliate marketing his book, Affiliate Marketing Handbook is a must buy. The step by step guide walks anyone through the fundamentals of getting started and receiving that first check. His Super Bootcamp is probably unrivalled in its success for making its students profitable online.

One of the main reasons for this is that James really cares about his students and his training products. Money is no longer the motivator, getting the thank you emails and messages from successful students is something he really enjoys.

So the next time someone asks me is affiliate marketing easy? I will still answer yes and no!