AFFILIATE TRAINING STRATEGY
This action plan talks about the mistakes made by novice affiliate marketers, the training needed to begin a successful online business, and where the reader can obtain the training.
How Do Many New Affiliate Marketers Start Their On-line Business?
–Many beginners start their enterprise from what appears on the surface to be a "reasonable" approach, namely: Put up a website and go into business. Shortly thereafter the perspective affiliate marketer chooses a product from a program that s/he came across while surfing the net. S/he then puts up a few banners, a few text links, maybe even makes a basic attempt at SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and then waits for the orders to come in.
While these actions seem to make sense to many, the perception is inherently WRONG:
1. The concept of "Build it and they will come" does not work in eCommerce or web design.
2. There are a host of market factors that are transparent to any Internet user; however, a marketer ignores them at his/her peril i.e.
- Market Niche (sub-market)
- Niche Capitalization (how much its worth)
- Niche Competition
- Global Searches (how much Traffic)
- Available Keywords
- Keyword Cost
- Search Engine Optimization
3. When the aspiring affiliate builds the business website, s/he likely has a "user's" understanding of website design. This is insufficient. Important factors are:
- Content Management System (the system that presents your web pages i.e. Wordpress, Joomla, etc)
- Web Site Design Factors
- Layout
- Color
- Logo/header
- Content
- Search Engine Optimization (how well search engines like Google, Yahoo, etc will find and "index" your site)
- Web Site Publication Strategy
- Advertising methodology
- Reader Psychology
4. Many new marketers simply view the website as a store, or worse, as a portal to the "money." It is much more than that i.e.
It's your:
Brand (logo/face on the Net)
Place of Business
Meeting Place (forum)
Training Center
Business Card
The web presence that so many new marketers so casually erect is arguably the single most vital piece of equipment in your arsenal of success!
How many new affiliate marketers get the proper training to understand the business and achieve success?
–If the high rate of business failure and low profit margins of the average affiliate marketer are any indication, the average marketer is in desperate need of enlightenment. As mentioned above, the mechanics behind a "sale" are deep and wide ranging. The available markets are vast and require study and review. The good news is that although it takes time, learning this business is EASY.
Lets take a deeper dive in to some of the things that a marketer must learn about and come to understand.
1. A niche is usually a smaller segment of a larger market
- It exhibits a volume of searches without many page returns
- It is profitable within the highly competitive broader market
- There is unsatisfied need within the niche market
- Keywords or Long Tail Keywords (a string of keywords) define a market
2. Niche markets are found by analyzing keywords
- Niche keywords looks something like the below
- Insurance
- car insurance, house insurance, health insurance
- car insurance in Colorado
- Classic car insurance in Colorado
- High performance classic corvette car insurance in Colorado
- Classic car insurance in Colorado
- car insurance in Colorado
- car insurance, house insurance, health insurance
- Insurance
While "high performance classic corvette car insurance in Colorado" may be a possible niche market, it still needs to be analyzed for profitability.
3. Niche markets must be examined for profitability
- Keyword tools are used to get at the underlying keywords and long tail keywords
- Potential markets are often exhibited as a problem to be solved
- Look for searches where "how to," "fix," "cure" are statements within a search.
- Review industry social sites and blogs and forums to better understand niche
- Supply and demand are the essence of profitability
- Demand is the most important of the two
- Supply can be provided by other affiliates or yourself
The niche market is where you sell a product that satisfies a specific demand, not simply by selling to the Internet as a whole. The niche will show you what products will best suit the needs of that "sub-market." Many beginners get this backwards to their detriment. Remember: Good niche = Demand + Supply. You cant identify a product for sale until you identify a demand and either create a product or locate one to satisfy demand.
How is an aspiring affiliate marketer supposed to get this knowledge and from where?
–As mentioned previously, there is a lot to learn. Its deep and varied, will take time and dedicated study, but is, for all the world, an EASY thing to do! If the expression "its not rocket science" ever applied, it fits well in affiliate marketing!
Don't let yourself see the details without appreciating the fact that it all falls into place once you start working it regularly. When I first started I just couldn't get past the research that was needed to identify a niche market. It seemed like I was back in college again writing a thesis. Only problem was I never had to write a thesis more than once in college!
Truth is though, after working the various niche tools, you will begin to see through your keywords and identify the signs of a potential market with little labor. It really does become a simple formula of 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10.
So you basically have three choice:
1. Wing-it and hope for the best (You're not really going to do that are you?)
2. Self-study (It can be done but it is hit and miss and takes more time)
3. On-line affiliate marketing training sites (And no, they dont cost an arm and a log)
In all honesty I started with Nr 2 above. But when I started there were no associations, no schools, no on-line training and certainly nothing like gurus to be had for advice (I'm sure they were up and coming at the time though). Today there are many training site. I am acquainted with three that I consider to be excellent. I will go over each in turn and give you a short idea of what they offer and how to find them.
AFFILORAMA Rating: 
—Affilorama is a training portal that offers free written and video lessons, tools, tips and support. They allow beginners to build successful affiliate marketing businesses from the get go. While Affilorama training material are designed with the beginner in mind, Afilorama also provides advanced and in-depth material including paid memberships and AffiloBlueprint, a complete 12 week, 40-video, step-by-step course to creating a profitable affiliate website.
A few of Affilorama's Basic Offerings:
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If you would like to see more, you can find Affilorama here
AFFILIATENAIRE Rating: 
—Affiliatenaire is a step-by-step, 52-week training program for making money online by promoting affiliate programs. Affiliatenaire was developed as a membership site to teach you how to promote affiliate programs in just 1-3 hours per week. Every week for one full year (52 weeks) you'll receive an email with a special download link for that week's step-by-step lesson. Included in the lesson is an assignment for you to complete so you'll make progress every single week.
Some of Affiliatenaire's offerings:
- The secret to getting lots of clicks with free ezine articles!
- How to build free viral traffic for your affiliate link!
- Where to get completely free and low-cost advertising!
- Ways to use free blogs to convert visitors into paying customers!
- Which high-traffic sites will let you advertise daily for free!
- Getting other people to promote your affiliate link for you!
- Simple offline ways to get free publicity for your link!
- How to use free social bookmarking to turbocharge your affiliate promotions!
- Dozens of free websites that you can use to market any product!
- Using free videos to attract targeted visitors to click your link!
- Free off-the-wall marketing ideas to stand out with your promotion!
If you would like to see more, you can find Affiliatenaire here
WEALTHY AFFILIATE Rating:
—Wealthy Affiliate offers Internet marketing training on how to harness the power of the Internet to sell products online and build online businesses. They teach individuals how to make money online without owning their own products or services, and also train business owners how to drive new leads and customers to their websites.
I still belong to this organization because they have a dynamic membership base that continues to be communicative among noobie and seasoned marketer alike. I dont believe it gets better than Wealthy Affiliate. OK, I biased, but I recommend them over any other organization, even though there are exceptional competing organizations such as Affiliorama.
Here are some of the offerings from Wealthy Affiliate:
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If you like what you see, Wealthy Affiliate is here