Five Steps to Success With Free Affiliate Marketing Opportunities

There are thousands of free affiliate marketing opportunities available on the Internet today. Hundreds of thousands of people all over the world are making money online as affiliate marketers.

One reason for this is that starting an Internet affiliate marketing business is not difficult to do. In fact, you could probably set one up from scratch in about half an hour simply by starting a blog on Blogger.com and posting some affiliate links to products that are available on Clickbank.com.

Let's have a look at five key steps to success with the many legitimate affiliate marketing opportunities that are on the Internet right now.

1. The first thing to identify is a viable niche market in an field that interests you. First identify your niche market, and choose your products later, when you have a clear picture of your typical customer. That is a much better way of doing things than choosing a product before you know the market.

2. Once you have identified your niche market, the second step is to locate some suitable affiliate products to sell to your niche. Seek out high quality products that will sell well and earn you a nice fat commission.

You can begin your search on online directories such as Clickbank.com, CJ.com or AssociatePrograms.com. Those are all great places to find affiliate products that you can sell to your niche market. 

Look at several products before choosing the one that interests you most. One effective practice that I recommend is to buy the product yourself so that you can test it and thoroughly understand it. Not only will you benefit from using the product yourself, but you will also become an expert on it and that will give you a huge advantage when you market the product. Your expertise will come through in your sales copy. You will be able to speak with authority and authenticity, which in turn will increase your credibility and your sales. 

3. Your third step should be to subscribe to an auto-responder and write a series of promotional newsletters about the product you are selling. Again, buying and testing the product yourself will make writing about it much easier to do. You can also check the affiliate product website to see if there is any promotional material that you can incorporate into your newsletter series.

4. The most successful affiliate marketers do not advertise the product sales page directly. Instead, they make use of a "squeeze page". The advantage of sending traffic to a squeeze page first is that you can redirect your prospects to your auto-responder so that they receive your follow-up newsletters which sell the product more thoroughly. You should only send prospects to the main sales page after they have been warmed up and "pre-sold" by your newsletters.

5. Once you have set up your system (steps 1-4) you will be ready to get on with the main job, which is to drive traffic to your "squeeze page".

If you are new to affiliate marketing techniques, you will need to master the various traffic generation techniques. In order to do that you will need to learn about article marketing, ppc advertising, blogging, forum posting, traffic exchanges, ezine advertising, and so on. 

However, do not try to do everything all at once. Focus on one traffic generation method until you have thoroughly mastered it. Then move on to master another method. That way, you will develop an increasingly effective system for creating traffic, converting traffic to newsletter subscribers, and ultimately converting your subscribers into customers.

The five steps I have outlined in this article are the most effecitve steps you can if you want to enjoy long term success with free affiliate marketing opportunities.