AFF - How to Succeed in Affiliate Marketing - 10 Proven Affiliate Marketing Tips For Guaranteed Success

If you can turn on a computer, browse the internet and work an email program then you can become an internet affiliate marketer. Sounds pretty easy doesn't it. I suppose you could get into the game with just these skills but most folks who want to take a serious stab at affiliate marketing want to know how to succeed in affiliate marketing so they can create a substantial residual income and possibly quit their day jobs.

Wow...quitting your day job! Not working for the man any more. That sounded pretty exciting to me as I'm sure it does to anyone who has dreams and goals of becoming a successful self-made internet entrepreneur.

Actually, a bit about me, if I may toot my own horn for a second, I have experienced the wonderful freedom of being a successful self-made entrepreneur in the bricks and mortar world.

So I figured that if I could make the transition into the virtual business world, I would be able to draw from my successes and experiences and relay the information to budding internet entrepreneurs.

To my surprise, I found that what worked in the bricks and mortar world didn't necessarily work in the virtual world without some serious modification.

I know, believe me I know because at first as an internet affiliate marketer I failed miserably and it really set me back because I wasn't used to failing in business.

Let me explain.

To be successful in affiliate marketing, that is, to make money, there are probably 10 things you absolutely must do very well:

1. You must be able to find the right market niche.
2. You must be able to find a starving crowd of buyers.
3. You must be able to promote effectively to this ravenous mob.
4. You must choose the right product for you chosen niche.
5. You must pick a product that has superior affiliate tools and support from the owner so you can compete and succeed along the way.
6. You must use the best methods that your budget will allow to promote your product.
7. You must get really good at thinking outside of the box so you can choose the best keywords for your promotional campaigns.
8. You absolutely MUST rank in Google with your keyword selection and promotional efforts.(Search Engine Optimization)
9. You must know who you competition is.
10. You must understand Page Rank and how to get the best back-links you absolutely can.

If you are into affiliate marketing then you know all too well that each one these steps is very labor intensive. It takes time to complete each one of these steps.

What's really scary about all this is that whether you have mastered these 10 steps or not, you will still put in the same effort!

If you mess up just one of these "musts" your whole marketing campaign goes from scary to very sad.

After all those hours in front of my computer and all the resources I had at my disposal, I thought I had it all down but I didn't...I failed big time!

I almost threw in the towel but I didn't because if I learned anything about being in business in the bricks and mortar world it was not to quit. You had to go back to the drawing board and rethink your approach.

The problem with the internet unlike the "real" business world is that it moves so darn fast. People are in, they're out, products come in, and they go out it seems within a blink of the eye. It's hard to hit a target when the target is always moving.

So I decided I needed to find someone who was already doing well and copy them. I figured I only had to do it once and then I could use the model over and over. (By the way, this modeling approach is very common in the bricks and mortar world.)

So back online I went and what I found this time was nothing short of remarkable and (hint) it had a lot to do with a hotdog vending cart. It changed forever the way I do business online.