How To Become a Wealth Affiliate

The affiliate marketing business model is one of the most perfect marketing models available.  The benefits are extraordinary:

• There is no product for you to create, handle, inventory.
• There is no customer support for you to deal with
• You don't have to ship products or worry about handling returns or lost shipments

But it's not all sweetness and light.  As an affiliate marketer you're going to have to make sure you can actually make money, and for most people that means replacing or beating your current income. To do that you must affiliate with merchants and promote products that: 

#1 People are looking for and sell well online

#2 Earn you the most money

#3 Will provide you with the affiliate tools that actually yield high sales and better yet, offer you training, assistance and feedback.

#4 Pay you on time

Without those objectives you don't stand to earn much.  You'll be spinning your wheels only to earn small amounts of money each month.  This is how affiliate marketers become discouraged and quit.

What are products that sell well online?

It's really best to start with a topic you have an interest in.  Once you have a topic of choice then you can begin to think about products.  Don't attempt to promote something you don't like or don't have an interest in simply because of the money it will earn you.  First of all, it's not being honest with your audience and secondly your readers will pick up on that which means they will most likely move on and not buy using your affiliate links. 

You'll find out that it's a lot harder than you may think to promote something that you aren't passionate about or at least have some interest.

OK, now you have a topic of interest and possible products to promote.  But will they sell well online?  This is where your keyword research comes in.  You must do this research or you will be up a creek without a paddle. Use a keyword tool of choice, I use Wordtracker, but pick a tool that will yield real results. You want to see that there are at least 200 searches a day for your descriptive keywords. Don't worry too much about the competition, we're just measuring interest at the moment. 

How do you earn the most money?

Affiliating with merchants that pay residual income are the best.  These are things that people pay monthly for such as subscriptions, hosting or services that have a monthly fee. Make sure that the affiliate merchant continues to pay you a commission for each month the person stays subscribed.

Look for affiliate merchants that pay for leads.  This means that each time someone performs a free sign up you get a commission. 

Look for 2-tier affiliate commissions.  This means you get a commission for everyone that signs up as an affiliate under you.  The commission to you is smaller but if you get several people under you then that's additional income each time they make a sale.  Every little bit helps.

Will provide you with the affiliate tools that actually yield high sales and better yet, offer you training, assistance and feedback.

Find affiliate merchants that have good sales tool.   I like an affiliate merchant who provides well written articles that I can place my affiliate link into.  I also like it when they can provide free ebooks and pdf documents that I can brand with my affiliate links in the document.  These are a very successful way for you to make more sales and build customer confidence. 

Will I get paid, and paid on time?

Find out how many affiliates the merchant has.  It's not unreasonable to even approach an affiliate by sending an email and ask them if they've ever had a problem getting paid. 

You'll have the most success using affiliate networks such as commission junction, linkshare or xxxxx.  However if the affiliate merchant does not go through an affiliate network be sure you check them out thoroughly.  Also make sure you understand the terms of payment.  Some affiliate merchants pay weekly, some bi-weekly, some monthly and some quarterly.