The vast majority of new online marketers begin with affiliate marketing and/or Google AdSense marketing.

Affiliate marketing is an attractive option for earning income online. The benefits include:

• You don’t need your own product to sell; you simply promote others’ products and get a commission for those sales.
• You have no customer service issues
• You don’t need a shopping cart or merchant account for accepting credit cards.

There are a few affiliate marketing methods that work quite well. There are MANY methods that don’t work at all…such as:

• All the “data entry”, “rebate processor”, “email blasting”, etc. type products are pure scams. Save your money and don’t waste time with these.
• In fact, ANYTHING that promises “easy money” is a scam. Don’t fall for those flashy, pie-in-the-sky promises; there are NO quick or easy ways to succeed with affiliate marketing.
• Affiliate marketing with Google AdWords was relatively easy in the past. However, Google has changed the rules. Now days, it requires plenty of experience with pay-per-click just to break even. If you wish to try Adwords to promote an affiliate product, do not set your budget for more money than you are willing to lose; you will lose money for quite some time as you learn.
• Forget “posting” to free classified sites…another waste of time.
• Find a small niche.

  Stay out of big areas. Anything related to “how to make money”, “weigh loss”, “Internet marketing”, “dating”, etc. are simply too big for all but the most experienced marketers.  Remember, it’s always better to have a small piece of a small pie than it is to get ZERO from too big of one. Many beginners believe that since are area has SO MANY buyers, that surely they can get a few of them. It simply does not work that way. Going into too big of an area is probably the single biggest mistake I see beginners making.

• Trying ANY method WITHOUT your own domain and your own hosting account is a prescription for failure 99% of the time. Sure, there are methods that work without having a “real” site, but the amount of work required to make those methods work is enormous; it is MUCH easier with your own sites.

Following are the tried and proven affiliate marketing methods that can result in success:

• Find a nice quiet niche with which your current skill level allows you to compete in. The less experience you have, the smaller the niche must be.
• Building a search engine friendly website which generates plenty of free and targeted search engine traffic is the most effective method.
• Article marketing is a method that will work without having a website. Article marketers simply redirect their bio URL to an affiliate product. However, don’t expect much success with article marketing unless you are a fairly good writer willing to write a LOT of articles on a continuing basis; just writing a few articles now and then won’t cut it. Video marketing works quite well also. But again, massive action is required.
• Social media can work too. Unfortunately, the vast majority of people use twitter and Facebook all wrong when it comes to promoting affiliate products. It simply can’t be done in a “spammy” way. Correct methods involve investing much time in building a loyal following that appreciate and get value from the content produced.

Affiliate marketing is a numbers game. If you can get targeted traffic to your site AND get them to click your affiliate links, you will make money. It’s just that simple.

How much money you make depends on how targeted your traffic is, how well your site converts (in getting people to click your affiliate links), and how well the affiliate product page converts visitors to sales.

Targeted traffic is the first step. For example, if you promote a “how to potty train a puppy” product, your target is someone who HAS A PUPPY. Targeting “dog lovers” in general won’t do. The site’s visitors must already be, at least somewhat, interested in or needing what you promote. The more targeted your traffic is, the better your site will convert.

Next is how well your site converts to clicks. Of course the traffic must be targeted in the first place. But what happens when that traffic arrives? The web page they land on has about 3 seconds (yes, 3 SECONDS) to convince them to remain on the page or they will click the back button. Your page must capture their interest with great headlines, interesting pictures or videos, or all three. Your page must offer no hint of what you are actually trying to do (get people to click a link so you can make money). Pulling this off requires offering great content. In most cases a visitor will NOT click a link until they have been on the page for a while. If your page does not appear to offer enough reasons to stay, the visitor will almost always click the back button before clicking a link on the page.

Lastly, the product you promote must be of great quality and that product sales page must convert. It does no good for you to promote a low quality product and/or a product with a poor sales page. Additionally, if the product is not top quality, you will experience a problem with refunds. If someone buys the product and then requests a refund, your commission is take away!

For someone just beginning an affiliate marketing business, the easiest steps to success are:

1. Learn how to choose a niche that you are able to compete in (very important) and one that has great affiliate products associated with it.
2. Learn SEO. You simply have to know how to take advantage of free search engine traffic.
3. Build a simple, search engine friendly website. Today, WordPress is the only way to go…in my opinion. Also, I highly suggest you don’t go the “cheap route” with a free hosted WordPress website. In the long run, you will greatly benefit with your own domain on your own host. I don’t know of ANY successful affiliate marketers who use the “free sites” instead of having their own domains and hosts.
4. Create great content for the site. Make your site VALUABLE! The more value you offer your visitors, the more money you will make. If your site offers no added value for visitors, you will have very little success…if any.
5. Be sure you ONLY promote products YOU believe in. Focus on ONLY one, maybe two, for each niche site. Having too many products simply looks “spammy” to visitors. The product you choose must convert visitors to sales! If you have a choice, select well established products which have a proven track record of converting well.

Affiliate Networks

Most beginners register with ClickBank and/or Commission Junction in the beginning. I have also had great success working with vendors who have their own, in-house affiliate programs.

Basically, pick a niche you are interested in, make sure you can compete in the niche at the level you wish, and then research all the possible affiliate product options. Look at the competition and see what they are promoting. There is no harm in doing that. In fact, I suggest not trying to reinvent the wheel; find what is working out there and simply do it a little better.

Google AdSense

Success with Google AdSense requires many of the same techniques used for affiliate marketing. AdSense success is all about getting plenty of targeted traffic. The amount of success you have with AdSense depends on:

• How much and how targeted your traffic is.
• The topic of your site.
• How good of job your site does in keeping visitors on the site instead of clicking the back button.

Again, AdSense is a numbers game. A good click through rate is anywhere from 2% to 5%. Of course higher rates are possible, but 2 to 5 is most likely. If your click rate is 3%, that means that for every 100 visitors to your site, 3 will click one of your AdSense ads.

The value of each click varies greatly.  Sure, ads for insurance and other high dollar purchases can have click values of well over $1 each. But how hard would it be to get traffic with all the competition? Remember, the topic of the ads is chosen by Google and according to the topic of your site. I have to just shake my head when I hear beginners asking what the best paying AdSense keywords are. All things being equal, it is MUCH easier to make $1000 a month in several very tiny niches combined than it is with marketing in an area with too much competition.

Some of my students have done well focused on just one website. Most however, have multiple, small niche websites. There are pros and cons for both. It has more to do with what your personality type is. There is no “best” way.

For both AdSense and affiliate marketing, choose niches that also include things people buy. If your niche is ONLY about information, it’s VERY difficult to do well. For example, what if your passion was the study of early cavemen? You could create a GREAT, content rich info site, but what kind of ads would show up on that site? I’m sure there are many people interested in that topic, but what could you offer to sell them? I can tell you that the clicks for AdSense ads for topics like that are very low priced. On the other hand, what if your passion was making stained glass art? People with that hobby buy a LOT of stuff! Your chances for success with that type of site are far greater. Just use common sense when choosing a niche.

Success with either affiliate marketing or AdSense marketing basically boils down to how well you have developed basic Internet marketing skills and how willing your are to take a LOT of action with those skills. Nothing is hard about any of it. Once you learn the required skills, just get to work and stay focused; it is not possible to fail if you do that.