1. It is possible to do affiliate marketing without your own site or lead capture system.
2. Setting up a website and lead capture system requires technical knowledge that some people don’t have.

Let’s talk about the technical angle, first. Just how computer savvy do you need to be? If you are going the do-it-yourself route, you need to learn the following:

1. How to register a domain name
2. How to sign up for web hosting
3. How to make your domain name point to your web host
4. How to create a basic web page
5. How to set up an ‘autoresponder’

While there’s not quite enough room in the report to explain each of these steps in depth, I can assure you that they are quite easy once you’ve seen how to do them.

Creating a web page, for example, is a lot easier these days because most web hosts offer a “what you see is what you get” type of site design software that looks and functions a lot like a word processing program.
Also, you’ve always got the option of finding someone more technically savvy to help you - maybe a neighbor, relative, friend or even a freelancer that you hire to do the whole set up for you.

Now, let’s talk about this idea of doing affiliate marketing without a website.

The thing to understand is that your affiliate is your key to earning commissions. That link needs to be somewhere on a website, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be your website.

For instance, let’s say you created a promotional video and uploaded it to you YouTube. There’s a ‘description’ area that you can fill in for the video, and this information appears on the page YouTube creates to serve your video.

If you want to do so, you could drop your affiliate link into that description area.

Any traffic going through your affiliate link there would be YouTube traffic. You’re basically ’stealing’ both their traffic and their website capabilities. Make sense?

Some affiliate marketers love doing this sort of thing, but there is a definite purpose to having your own website, and to capturing targeted leads.

Why We Use Websites and Lead Capture

The two primary reasons for having your own website are as follows:

1. You can send whatever traffic to it you want, and control what that traffic sees when it arrives.
2. You need a web site in order to put up your “lead capture form” for collecting the names and email addresses of your visitors.

Again, let’s look at why you’d want to do things this way. First, why do you want total control over your traffic? It is quite simple: if you control what your visitor sees, then you control what he thinks.

That sounds more Orwellian than intended, but it is an important truth.

First impressions are very important, and you’ll be a lot more successful in your affiliate business when you control what information your prospects see about the affiliate product you’re promoting, and when they see it.

Second, there’s the matter of “following up” with your visitors. If someone comes to your website, looks around for a few seconds and then leaves, you’ve lost a potential sale.

A certain percentage of your visitors are going to leave, but many of them would be happy to receive more information (follow ups) from you.

In order to send them that information, you have to have a way of contact them. That’s why you collect their names and email addresses.

By giving you that information, they indicate their interest in your information, and you can follow up on that via email.

Instead of losing the visitor (a potential customer), you can ’slow drip’ information to him in order to ‘pre-sell’ or persuade him towards buying a particular product.

This method works because people like to be sold to, when you do it right. Give them free information. Show them the benefits of the product you’re promoting. Make them focus on the solution or end result of owning the product.

The ability to follow up is the number one reason for an affiliate to own a website and lead capture system. You can prep your customer to be in a buying frame of mind before he reaches the merchant’s web site!

The people selling you the information are, of course, Internet marketers.

Hence, many people decide to start their affiliate marketing journey by promoting Internet marketing related products.

Some ‘gurus’ will tell you not to do this, and to focus on an unrelated niche, instead.

There’s wisdom in this advice, but getting your feet wet as a newbie affiliate by promoting the products you know best is also a great way to start.

Is it competitive? Yes! Can you learn a lot from promoting Internet marketing products?  The answer: most definitely!

So, rather than try to persuade you away from promoting these types of products as an affiliate, I’d like to share with you some tips on how best to succeed at the game.

Success Tip #1: Promote What You Know
While it is tempting to promote the latest ‘big name’ Internet marketing product, I’d recommend avoiding that tactic unless you own a copy of it already and have studied it thoroughly.

The absolute best way to improve your copy writing skills, as well as build a trusting relationship between you and your potential customers, is to know a product inside and out. You should be able to provide a full review of a product’s ‘pros’ as well as ‘cons.’

Success Tip #2: Build Your List Relationship
You need to build a targeted opt-in list, and then focus on building the relationship with your list. This means you’ve got to send relationship-building material - such as free gifts, articles, etc - just as often as you send out promotional emails.

Your list can be a cash cow for you, but not if you treat them like a herd. Reach out and speak to your list’s interests and needs. Let them know you’re only one step ahead of them on the learning curve, and that you’re all in this Internet business together!

Success Tip #3: Brand Yourself
What do most of the top-name Internet marketers have in common?  They have visibility. The fact that you know their names points to how good a job they’ve done branding themselves. Each one has a ‘unique spin’ on the way he does business, too.

You’ve got marketers who brand themselves as ’super affiliates’, ‘expert copy writers’, ‘masters of traffic generation’ and so on. Many of them started out as affiliate marketers before they took the plunge into creating their own products.

So, ask yourself, what will separate you from the next affiliate promoting the exact same product?

If you’ll follow just these three tips starting today, I guarantee you’ll see a huge improvement in your results. You’ll convert more customers, earn more money and be well on your way to real affiliate success!

What does it mean to have a strategy, and why is it so important?  These are the questions we’ll examine in this article.

Any affiliate marketing strategy worth its salt will cover multiple levels of planning. In other words, your strategy should include things like: how you will present your offer to your market, how you will drive market traffic to your web site, how you will convert your customers.

Why?

Quite simply, you must learn to think of the entire sales chain from beginning to end. Conversion is crucial to each step in the process.

For example, getting someone to click on your pay-per-click advertisement should be considered a ‘conversion’ because the individual has taken the desired action of clicking an ad that leads to your site.
Once that visitor reaches your site, you must determine how you will convert them into ‘leads.’  Typically, you’ll capture the visitor’s name and email address to an opt-in list. In order to do this, you need a strategy for creating an attractive opt-in page offer.

Yet another strategy comes into play when you’ve gotten the lead onto your list. Your follow up email series must be designed to convert that lead into a customer.

However, conversions on new leads will not make up the bulk of your profits. If you desire serious affiliate income, you also need a post-sale follow up strategy.

What types of follow up offers will you send to your list of existing customers? This is important because the repeat customers are really your bread and butter.

Finally, think about how to expand your affiliate business.

Do you want to remain in the same market niche indefinitely? If not, consider your long-term strategy. You can replicate your current affiliate model into another niche.

This will add an additional stream of income to your bottom line, and is a great long-term strategy for building your own affiliate empire.

Spending too much money for too little return on investment?

Affiliate marketing can be as ‘easy’ as it looks from the outside, but you’ve got to focus on real, proven marketing tactics to make it work ‘big time’ for you.

Unfortunately, many people come to affiliate marketing with no idea what a truly successful affiliate marketing campaign should look like.

What you don’t know that you don’t know can hurt you!  So, let’s look at the top 3 reasons for affiliate marketing failure. If you’re having a rough time, I’ll bet you’re making at least one of these critical mistakes.

Mistake #1: Incomplete understanding of niche targeting
Have you ever asked yourself what it really means to target a niche? It’s not just about ‘widgets’ versus ‘blue cheap widgets’.  Key words can tell you a lot about the way a broad market breaks down into sub-markets, but they can’t give you the complete picture.

Niche targeting is as much about identifying the right *solutions* or products for the market as it is about identifying the market proper.

Any time you’re researching a niche, it is always a good idea to check out the top-selling books and magazines targeted towards that niche. What this will do is give you a better of idea about your market’s true needs and concerns.

Once you have this information, sit down and think about your ideal customer. What type of solution does he want?  Is your market looking for ‘fast’, ‘cheap’ and ‘easy’ solutions, or are they looking for something more comprehensive or of higher quality?

The answers to these questions matter. Think, for instance, about the difference between a casual golfer and a golfing fanatic. The latter is prone to buying almost anything you put in front of him, while the former isn’t going to invest as much in his hobby.

Each type of customer represents two different niches, even though they fall into the same market category.

Mistake #2: Slacking on your list-building efforts
New affiliates are often especially guilty of this. It’s really a matter of patience.

There will be a period of effort where you’re building your list for the first time, and not seeing very much in the way of commissions.

This is the point where many people assume they must be doing something wrong, but that’s not the case. It is simply a matter of building momentum. Have patience and avoid the urge to stop midstream and change everything, as this only puts you further behind!

Mistake #3: Not devoting enough effort towards targeted traffic generation
Traffic generation takes time and consistent effort. Again, it is a case where momentum will be on your side once you’ve set it in motion.

To do that, however, you have to do more than start one pay-per-click campaign here, and article campaign there.

You’ve got to have a plan of attack that includes daily action, and you must stick to that plan. Set aside time each day to write new articles and submit them to article directories.

Be on the lookout for a variety of potential advertising opportunities and jump on them right away. Speed, consistency and commitments are all key in this equation.

Last, but not least: keep learning! Successful affiliates invest in their own marketing education. There’s always something you can learn a bit more about, like copy writing or how to create a better-converting landing page.

Take your affiliate business seriously by focusing your effort, and you’ll be able to turn those past failures around in no time.

Getting traffic from videos requires more action than a simple video upload to YouTube. You’ve to couple together several parts into a strategic system before the ‘set it and forget it’ traffic starts to flow to your site.

Tip #1: Distribute widely
The secret to getting your video seen, then shared, is to get it in front of as many eyeballs as possible. This means submitting your video to as many sites as possible, not just the ‘bit three’ of YouTube, Google and Revver.

How about iFilm, Hello World, Vimeo and DailyMotion?

Did you know there are video channels on the social networking sites like Myspace and Friendster?
All of these sites offer additional opportunities to get your video in front of more people. Remember, too, that if you have a blog, you can post videos to it, then syndicate them across the web.

Tip #2: Cross-link between sites
The popularity of video means that many of your viewers at one site will also frequent the other sites you’ve used to post your video. Hence, you can use one site to drive traffic to another.

For example, let’s say you set up a Myspace profile and begin putting up videos there. You can use your Myspace traffic to boost your views over at YouTube.

All it takes is a link in your Myspace profile, or doing a custom brand on your Myspace video (link it to your YouTube channel, rather than your main web site).

Here’s another idea. If you’ve posted your video to your blog or just a static page on your site, consider submitting that URL to social bookmarking sites like Digg.com. Include links on the page to the other video sites that you want to drive traffic towards.
You might be wondering “why would I want to send people to a page that has the video they just saw?”

The point of this is to get those visitors to view any additional videos you’ve got, as well as vote on or rate your video in order to increase its popularity.

The more popular your video is, the more views you’re likely to receive as new visitors hit those other sites.

Tip #3: Add incentive
It’s always good to give people an incentive to visit your site. Your video should do the bulk of this work, but there’s always room for improvement.

Just as you would offer “list bait” to people you want to opt-in to your email list, you can offer bait to your video viewers. Let people know they can get the code for reposting your video on their sites by visiting yours.

In fact, if you wanted to, you could build your opt-in list by telling people they can get the code plus a special gift by opting in to your list.

There are a lot of ways to build incentive.

Think of what you’d do in the traditional scenario of visitor -> landing page -> optin, and see if you can find a way to apply those techniques with video!

1.    Leverage
2.    Recurring income
3.    Duplication

Leverage
The first step in building income is always in making proper use of the power of leverage. Investing your time and money wisely can help improve your existing business, and potentially double or triple your current income.

For example, maybe you’ve always wanted to create a high-ticket ‘follow up’ product to offer to your list of existing customers because you can’t find any comparable affiliate programs for such a product in your market?

If you’ll leverage your existing profits, you can hire someone to create such a product for you, along with all of the products images and web site graphics you’ll need to set up your very own merchant site.

What this will do is give you a new potential stream of income. You continue to make commissions on the existing affiliate product, while also generating sales where you get to keep 100% of the profit.

Likewise, if you don’t want to sell the product, you can use it as “bonus bait” for your existing affiliate promotions!
Recurring Income
Recurring or ‘passive’ income is something you should consider adding to your long-term affiliate business strategy. Why is this a good income stream to add to your mix?

Essentially, recurring income is ‘easy money.’ You do ‘x’ amount of work just once to convert the customer, yet continue to earn a commission on that customer month after month.

Ideal sources of recurring income include subscription services and membership sites.

Duplication
Duplication is really about creating multiple streams of income by recreating your affiliate business model into new markets.

Let’s say you’ve developed a marketing system that is working like gangbuster for you already in one market. Why not set up a similar system in a new market? You’ve perfect your sales process, so it is really just a matter of replicating the structure of that existing business.

For example, if your unique spin is to write affiliate reviews of “cheap, but effective weight loss products,” for the weight loss market, you can replicate that approach by doing affiliate reviews of “cheap, but high quality digital cameras” or something along those lines.

Each of these approaches will help you, in a sense, “diversity your portfolio” of income-generating businesses. Leverage, recurring income and duplication are key to any affiliate marketing plan, so start putting them into action today!

1. Linking
Links to and from other websites is perhaps the most powerful method of increasing your ranking and bringing in a steady flow of visitors.  The search engines will give your site the attention you deserve as long as you are linked to sites that are related to yours.

Linking must also be a gradual process.  Search engines will penalize you if they suspect anything unnatural about the amount of links involved in your exchange with other websites.

2. Meta Tags
Work on the Meta Tags in your site by including keywords that will reach your target market.  Meta Tags help the search engines describe your website. Some HTML knowledge is required but there are plenty of tutorials online, so don’t let it scare you.

You may also hear about the lack of importance some people place on Meta Tags, but I wouldn’t let that stop you from putting an emphasis on something that won’t cost you any money to do and could add some extra visitors to your site.

3. Keyword-Rich Content
As much as traffic is critical to the survival of your website the content placed on your site is the key to getting it.  Adding or writing quality articles that gives the reader reliable information will increase the visibility of your message and subsequently a steady flow of website traffic.

Using the right keywords in these articles will give you a stronger chance of reaching the all important rankings in the search engines.  There are a handful of free keyword suggestion tools you can use to help you find those keywords.  As you become more experienced with traffic building you will realize how incredibly important the right keyword usage is to your success.

Using the 3 methods above can get you on the right path to getting a consistent flow of website traffic and since it won’t cost you any monetary investment there is absolutely no reason not to take advantage of putting them into action. But if you would prefer a step-by-step action plan I offer a very powerful e-book called Flood Your Site With Traffic.

However…

I must warn you that it’s NOT easy and there’s a LOT of work involved (which is why most people don’t even master one source of affiliate traffic).

I know you’re different from most others, so here are the keys to ALL 17 sources of affiliate traffic. The trick is to master one at a time until you can command vast floods of traffic at will. Who knows you might not even need all 17!

To help explain these traffic sources I’ve created a mindmap illustration so you can see at a glance how everything fits together…

Click here to download the 17 sources of affiliate traffic

Let me know how you get on and which affiliate traffic sources you master.

Here’s a list of 6 ezines that accept free and paid advertising that will help you get your ezine ad campaigns started…

Publication: Action Marketing News
Circulation: 55,000
Website: http://www.ActionMarketingNews.com
Subscription url: http://actionmarketingnews.com/subscribe/sub1.htm
Frequency: Bi weekly
Ad Deadline: none
Free ads: New subscribers only, 3-5 lines
Solo Ad: $35 - rules on order form

Publication: The Oyesucan Ezine
Circulation: 72,000
Website: http://oyesucan.com
Subscription url: http://oyesucan.com/subscribe/
Frequency: Every Tuesday
Ad Deadline: One week prior to date of publication
Free ads: New subscribers only
Solo Ad: $80 - 500 word maximum, text only

Publication: BMI’s Internet Marketing Reporter
Circulation: 21,000
Website: http://www.mynewsuccess.com/resources/advertise.htm
Blog: http://imreporter.blogspot.com
Subscription url: http://www.mynewsuccess.com/resources/imreporter/
Frequency: Each weekend
Ad Deadline: 3 days prior to publication
Free ads: New subscribers only, 5 lines, 65 characters per line
Solo Ad: $22.99 - unlimited length

Publication: Home Money Ezine
Circulation: 17,861
Website: http://www.homemoneyezine.com
Subscription url: http://homemoneyezine.com
Frequency: Daily
Ad Deadline: none
Free ads: 5 lines
Solo Ad: $59 - 100 lines

Publication: Interactive Marketing Ezine
Circulation: 4,600
Website: http://www.vectorcentral.com/ezine.html
Subscription url: http://www.vectorcentral.com/subscribe.html
Frequency: Every Tuesday
Ad Deadline: none
Free ads: 40 words maximum
Solo Ad: $27 - any length

Publication: The 24 Karat Marketer
Circulation: 30,453
Website: http://www.24karatmarketer.com
Blog: http://24karatmarketer.com
Subscription url: http://www.24karatmarketer.com/splash.html
Frequency: Every Thursday
Ad Deadline: Wednesday
Free ads: 5 lines, 60 characters per line
Solo Ad: $20 - 75 lines, 60 characters per line

Once you’ve got your ad converting into affiliate commissions it’s time to test the paid solo ads. The solo ads appear by themselves as separate emails from the main ezine issue, in most cases they’ll have a significantly higher success rate as a result.

Here’s the best strategy…

1. Subscribe to each of the ezines above using a free email account you have that’s seperate from your main one. This way you can see the quality of the publication and it will qualify you for your free classified ad.

2. Place your free ad with one of the ezines above and be sure to track the affiliate link you use so you can measure your success. Testing and tracking of your ads is critical to your success.

3. Run the same classified ad in each of the ezines above until you find one that converts the most clicks into affiliate commissions.

4. Once you have an ezine that responds well to your classified ad run a paid solo ad, again track your response rate.

5. Keep on testing different variations of your solo ad within that ezine until you have a clear winner. Then continue running your winning ad until your response rate drops off. When this happens move on to the next ezine and test there with your winning solo ad until your numbers drop.

If you follow this system you could rotate your ads through the 6 ezines listed above and “potentially” make some huge commissions as a result of your consistent testing and tracking.

If you need more ezines to advertise in here’s a short list of directories you could also try:

Jogena’s Ezine Directory
http://www.jogena.com/ezine/ezinedata.htm

Best Ezines
http://www.bestezines.com/

Go-Ezines
http://www.go-ezines.com/

For a selection of all our proven high converting Big Selling Product classified and solo ads just go here…

Product: Big Selling Conversions
Product: Big Selling Niches

Go ahead. Give it your best shot. Out loud. Say it. Whatever comes to mind, just blurt it out.

I’m listening.

The fact of the matter is, most people don’t really understand how to BEST use ezine articles to promote an affililate product.

They know they are supposed to write an article, include some kind of clever offer in the text or in their resource box, and convince editors to publish their article. But that’s as far as it goes.

However… there is a *very* clever way to use your article to promote like you’ve never seen before.
And I’m going to share it with you right now.

There are only five steps. And they are all super simple…

Step 01: Choose the product or service you want to promote.
This one is kind of a no-brainer. It all begins with deciding what you want to promote.

It could be:

www.BigSellingNiches.com or www.BigSellingConversions.com

We’re talking about an actual offer you want to present that you’ll earn profits from when readers of your article make a purchase.

Decide what it is that you want to promote through your free ezine article. And then move on.

Step 02: Determine your “useful, but incomplete” approach.
I love to use what Jimmy D. Brown has coined as the “useful, but incomplete” approach when using freebies of any kind. (Ezine articles, free eBooks, reports, eCourses, etc.)

What he means by that is simply this: You provide your reader with “useful” information (something they find of value and are able to actually apply) but make certain that it is “incomplete” in that they can better use the information by making a purchase.

That’s “useful, but incomplete.” And it works like a charm.

The idea is to use your content to build up to your desired response. You provide the reader with content, and then you make an offer that allows them to fully utilize the content, gain extra insight from the content or maximize the content in some additional way.

Let me give you an example:

Let’s say I wanted to promote BigSellingConversions.com in a free ezine article. This is a product that helps people improve their website conversions without writing a single word.

So, how could I use an ezine article to promote the service?

By writing an article that explains how to increase website conversions how the reader can profit from implementing the ideas.

And, naturally, they will need to know more as to how conversions can be increased, right?

And I just happen to know of a great product that shows them exactly how it’s done without writing a single word.

Step 03: Turn your approach into a tips list or tutorial.
Let’s use my example again. I decided that I would describe various tips to increase website conversions and how the reader can actually profit from them. What kind of tips list or tutorial could I create?

“How to Increase, Sales and Profits Without Writing A Single Word”

“7 Powerful And Profitable Ways To Skyrocket Your Website Sales Conversions!

“Want to Increase Your Online Profits And Leads? Here are 7 Simple Ways to Do It…”

That’s all you need to do. Determine your end result. Decide how to get there with your “useful, but incomplete” approach. And then develop a list, or even a step-by-step tutorial for your article that leads the reader along.

With each new “idea” or “way” or “tip” or “step” or “strategy” that you share, you can further direct the reader towards realizing their need of your upcoming offer, and lay the foundation for them to accept the offer.

Step 04: Expand on each point to build your content.
Here’s more of the easy part. Just “fill-in-the-blanks” to complete your article.

Write 1-2 short paragraphs for each of your points. Make them good. Provide quality content. The offer you will soon make will see poor results if your information isn’t useful.

Remember, you are trying to presell the reader on the idea that they are going to need your offer. If you don’t provide them with quality information that they WANT to begin using immediately, then why will they want to buy what you are promoting?

Light a fire in them. Motivate them. Challenge them. Give them such nuggets of gold that they want to keep mining until they hit the mother lode!

Step 05: Put on the finishing touches with the “five pillars.”
There are five things that you should always do to finish up your ezine article. Don’t skip any of them. They are all critical…

1. Polish. Re-read your article. Does it provide information that really is “useful” to the reader? And yet leaves them wanting even more? That’s what you want. Polish it. Put on the wax and make it shine. It has a very specific purpose - make certain it has the means to achieve it.

2. Promote. Use your resource box to promote your offer. This is why we’ve written the article, right? Remember step one? It’s time to put it into play. Give the reader what they (hopefully) are wanting… a way to maximize the information you gave them.

3. Proof. Don’t do this yourself. Have a trusted friend, relative or co-worker check your article for grammatical and typographical errors. The last thing you want to do is present a poor image after sharing some high quality information.

4. Publish. Zip your new article out to your favorite list of publishers. Submit it to the announcement lists and the ezine directories. Don’t forget to publish it yourself in your own newsletter!

5. Profit. If you’ve covered all the bases that I’ve mentioned, then profits are almost certain to start coming in when your ezine article is published. You deserve it. Be proud of your accomplishments.

And then start it all over again!