Ryan Moran

Before we begin, I have a very short, very blatant promotion: I’m selling one of my niche sites. (See how quick that was?) Now, let’s begin:

Every niche, every search term, every forum, and every crowd of hungry buyers has a list of relevant products that you can promote as an affiliate.

Once you have entrenched yourself into a niche via forums and social networks, and you understand the mindset of your prospect, then you are ready to give them exactly what they want and make handsome affiliate commissions in the process.

There are two ways to sell stuff to a hungry crowd:

1) You can pick a product and attempt to jam it down the throat of your market.

Or

2) You find what the market already wants and give it to them.

Both of them work; we’ve all been “sold” on stuff. But remember that people LOVE to buy, but they HATE being sold. Therefore, sales method #2 is way easier.

With that in mind, there are an endless supply of affiliate networks and programs to match you with something that will sell well to your niche.

The most obvious is Clickbank.com, but it comes with its own set of challenges and opportunities. Evaluating products is difficult without purchasing them (something that you should do when promoting a product heavily), and its strict stance on selling only digital products makes it difficult to promote to certain niches.

Nevertheless, there are millions of dollars to be made on Clickbank alone.

Recently, however, I have been working more and more with Amazon’s affiliate program. At a 5% commission, it can look like peanuts in comparison to Clickbank sales (unless, of course, you are selling high volume or high-ticket items), but it allows you to sell a host of physical products, and it allows you to sell a very trusted brand.

In other words, it’s easier to sell the Amazon name than it is to convince someone to purchase an ebook that they’ve never heard of.

In addition to Clickbank and Amazon, there is Convert2Media, CJ, Azoogle, Clickbooth, and a few dozen other reputable affiliate networks to choose from.

To make things easier, you can do a search over at OfferVault, which will bring up results from many different affiliate programs to match you with an offer for your niche.

However, here’s a little secret of mine:

I have had the best results with independent affiliate programs that are specific to one company or product. In other words, I dominate in-house independent affiliate programs. Since these are rarely listed on any affiliate search engine, the best way to find these is by using Google.

For example, if you’re selling bird cages, you’d search for:

“bird cages affiliate program”

Doing so will bring up a list of affiliate programs, some of which will likely be in-house. The reason I’ve had so much success with them is a direct result from working directly with the product owners, in addition to having fewer competitor affiliates.

Of course, there are full-time business dedicated to CPA offers, digital offers, physical products, continuity programs, and the like… and you should promote all of them as long as they are related and desired by your niche.

Finally, allow me to address a common concern:

“How do I promote a program when I don’t know if it’s good?”

There are two ways to answer this question:

1) Quit overanalyzing.
2) Buy the product.

If someone in a forum (or social network, or Twitter) reveals his desire for a Green Autococker Pro Paintball Gun for under $500, and I give him my affiliate link to a Green Autococker Pro Paintball Gun for $437, I’ve done my job. If there’s a problem with the order, it’s between the buyer and the seller. Quit overanalyzing.

Of course, as an affiliate, it is my job to make sure that the buyer is happy and is getting products that are going to make his life better. Therefore, if you have a product that you plan on promoting for a long time, or to a lot of people, or it takes a hard sales approach, buy the program and evaluate for yourself. It will give you insight to write better reviews and better answers to customer emails.

In the process of dominating a niche, finding affiliate programs should be the least of your worries. Find a hungry crowd, and the commissions will be there.

Next week, I’ll cover the next step in the process: building a basic website.

(Or, in the meantime, you can just buy one of mine )

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It amazes me that such little hurdles can prevent people from taking the steps necessary to start a campaign.

These little hurdles go all the way back to the beginning of the process – even as far as the first step of choosing a niche.

I can’t count the number of emails that I receive that say, “My biggest problem is that I don’t know what to sell.” What they really mean is, “There’s so much to do, and I don’t know where to start.” And, of course, if you don’t choose what you’re going to sell, then you’re going to have a hard time selling it.

The first step to building a campaign is to get to know a niche. For many people, this step is already taken care of, because I am a big advocate of selling what you love. As Gary Vaynerchuk famously said, “If you love Alf, start an Alf blog! If you love Smerfs, SMERF IT UP!”

Some will disagree with me, but I believe in promotion your passions. It makes your job easier, because you already know the niche, and it allows you to work in something that you love. For example, my passions are business, baseball, healthy living/alternative medicine, and free markets economics. These are all niches that can be monetized.

Here’s a problem you might face: I may know enough about baseball to write about baseball. But I don’t know enough about baseball to be considered and EXPERT in baseball. This can pose a problem. After all, if I start blogging about what’s happening in Major League Baseball, well, I’m probably not going to get very far… I might get somewhere, but I’m outmatched by people who are professional baseball bloggers.

However, I do know a ton about the Cleveland Indians. I know the city, I know the players, I know the management, and I get to about fifteen games a year. I’m an expert on the Cleveland Indians… and now we’re narrowing down the niche. In fact, I would have no problem writing killer content that was relevant to Cleveland Indians fans while also running an e-commerce store that sold only Indians memorabilia.

Of course, this is just a fictitious example to demonstrate that your passions are often your best niches, and if that’s the case, then you already know enough about your niche to get started.

If, on the other hand, you don’t know your niche very well, or you’re diving into a new niche, here’s how you can quickly get to know the people within it and find what they are ready to buy:

The most important thing that you can do is listen. You do not have to enter into a market and ‘wow’ them… you simply need to listen to what they are already discussing and meet the market where it is.

One of the best places to do this is on a forum. If you Google “your niche + forum,” you’ll find plenty of people talking about the niche. If your niche is to improve eyesight, there are forums for that. If your niche is to gain muscle, there are forums for that.

Inside, people talk all day about their fears and frustrations, their desires, their hot points, and their buying triggers. If you listen, you can gain valuable information before you enter into the market.

Furthermore, you will have located a hub of users who are all targeted to your niche. Contribute to the community of the forum and your credibility will begin to stick.

If you’re unable to find relevant forums, then it’s time to reconsider your niche – you may not be targeting a hungry crowd. A sustainable, hungry crowd will have several forums discussing the niche.

There are also blogs, social networks, and news groups within almost every niche, and each is filled with people who are talking about what’s important to them.

If you really want to dive deep, then you can head over to Quantcast and research different websites that are relevant to the people in your niche. That will allow you to analyze the demographics of your niche and find out what types of sites they frequent.

Once you have identified the fears, desires, frustrations, interests, and hot points of your ideal customer, you can begin to put together a campaign that is ready to give the niche what it wants.

Eben Pagan talks about creating a customer avatar or profitle for your ideal customer. Once you understand your niche, create a profile for what your typical customer looks like. Besides your website, what else does he or she read? What are his or her hindrances to buying your product (or affiliate product)? What benefits is he or she looking for?

Once you do this, you can literally tailor all of your marketing efforts to your customer avatar as if you were marketing to one single person.

And if you truly understand your customer, then you can be the world’s worst salesman and still have hungry buyers knocking down your door.

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Now that I’m a college graduate (unbelievable, eh?), there is time left in my day to do this internet marketing thing. And I am relearning something from years ago when my career first kicked off…

ELBOW GREASE.

There are marketers who have been kicking the tires of making workd for years and are yet to build a sustainable income. The most successful marketers in the world will agree with me when I say to them, the #1 thing you are missing in your business is elbow grease and hard work.

Allow me to clarify…

Checking your Clickbank account isn’t work.

Replying to emails isn’t work.

Picking the brains of other marketers isn’t work.

Hard work is writing good articles, building quality links back to your websites, creating opt-in email lists for your websites, and building healthy websites that solve problems of readers.

For example, this is the process that I take when building a site:

1) Get to know the niche.

2) Pick a few products to promote.

3) Build a basic website.

4) Test the market with PPC.

5) Write articles that link back to the site.

6) Build the SEO.

7) Scale.

This is it. There’s nothing fancy smancy about this process. There is no trick to how I do it, and you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to do it. The problem is that most people think that there is some magic bullet to making money online. That, however, is not the case. It is all a matter of building, testing, and scaling what works.

If I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again:

The biggest mistake that people make is trying to learn TOO MUCH and not putting into action what they learn. If you apply half as much as you learn, you will be miles ahead of the rest of the people who try to make it in this game.

Your assignment today: pick a niche. I don’t care what it is, but here’s a few that you could start with: singing, playing guitar, going “green,” fat loss, dieting, poker, pet training, gardening, crafting, marriage help, computer spyware, baseball.

Take your pick.

If you have been in this game for a long time and are yet to do any of the six steps listed above, pick a niche NOW and begin to research it. What are people buying? What are they searching for? What types of benefits are they looking for? What products would match well with the market?

I’m actually getting excited as I write this… this is why I’m going back to the basics. It’s not difficult to make money online… it just takes ELBOW GREASE.