Affiliate Marketing – Why You Should Use It
Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to test out a new niche. Obviously if you are going to market in a niche you will want your own product. That should be your goal but before you take the time and effort it is better to address the niche and find out the following.
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Is it profitable?
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Are people spending money?
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What types of products sell best?
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What is missing from current products?
Knowing these things before you even start to create a product are important and will allow you a much better chance of getting it right the first time. Not a guarantee but definitely a much better chance.
Using affiliate products to enter a niche also allows you to start to build a relationship with the existing vendors in the marketplace. If you are selling their products I can almost guarantee you will get their attention and they will know who you are.
Believe me if someone starts selling my products regularly I make it a point to know them and most product owners are the same.
Affiliate marketing can allow you to discover all of these things before you even start to create a product in that niche.
Once you decide that you are going to use affiliate marketing to explore a niche there are some steps you need to take.
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Find quality products that will convert
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Create a good pre-sell system for the products you picked
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Build your list while promoting those products
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Generate traffic to your pre-sell system
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Test and tweak the various processes
By the time you finish the process you will have already started a list within the niche, started to build a relationship with the players within the niche and have a very good understanding of what the gaps are and what products are WANTED within the niche.
As a marketer it is important to remember that WANTS sell – needs don’t. When you are ready to create your product address the wants and sneak in what they actually need but always sell the wants.
Thanks to all that added what they would like to see in this series and fell free to leave your comments here on what you think so far. Next time I will discuss picking products to start your promotion.
Mike Paetzold
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Disclaimer: Some of the links mentioned within this post or posts it may lead to are my affiliate links and in such case I will get compensated for recommending those products. However, I will never recommend something that I don't personally believe in and I welcome your questions and feedback.
April 13th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
I have always enjoyed Affiliate Marketing and see it as a very profitable way to start a career on the internet. Sort of like getting your feet wet. I agree that having your own product is an added advantage.
April 13th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
Hey Mike.
You hit the nail on the head….find what people WANT and are buying, not what they need, or you feel they need.
Looking forward to reading more on this subject…
Ron
April 13th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
Affiliate products are a great way to explore a niche before you decide if it is worth the cost of creating your own product. As you stated above this also allows you to gather information about what people really are looking for before you create your own product and will allow you to target your product to exactly what your visitors want.
Best part about affiliate marketing is that there a really no upfront costs, although you would technically at least need an autoresponder to start collecting names.
April 13th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
Great start of the Affiliate Marketing series Mike!
Product selection is key, as an affiliate of as your own product. So you have to look around to find products people want. Not all affiliate products “out there” will qualify, so you need to make your own assessment.
Fred
April 13th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
Perhaps a little easier to say than to do. Judging the best products is maybe not that hard, and after a while setting up a way to capture leads should be apparent, but generating traffic to a new product quickly enough to be able to make judgments implies Pay per click, and while I have had some success there it has definitely been a mixed bag. Now if the resources are there and you are able to suffer some negative cash flow as a cost of doing business, this makes more sense.
April 13th, 2009 at 7:35 pm
Great post, Mike – the concept of using affiliate marketing to test the waters in a given niche before committing to developing products for that niche is really powerful, yet seldom discussed.
Just be sure to be building an opt-in list from your affiliate marketing efforts, so you already have a targeted audience for your own releases in that niche down the road!
April 13th, 2009 at 10:24 pm
That is a very good point Mike! To many times I see beginners starting to create their own product for a niche without fully testing to see if that niche wants your product. Using other products to help test is a great way to do it!
April 14th, 2009 at 6:59 pm
Mike, you make some excellent points in this post. I will be looking forward to future post. All of your points could probably be expounded on but I would especially like to see more information – a future post on:
Generate traffic to your pre-sell system (what is a pre-sell system?)
and
Test and tweak the various processes