Free Affiliate Marketing Course - Lesson 3

February 13, 2008 Filed Under: Affiliate Marketing Course

Okay so CJ.com is down right now so I will take a break from working on the case-study for this course and crank out the next lesson.

Selecting Niche Products to Market

I’m not going to belabor the point of WHY you should be targeting niche markets. That horse has been beaten, repeatedly with a bat…. a big bat!

Okay, so we got it - target niche markets….. but what the heck IS a niche market.

I wrote a post while going through the Thirty Day Challenge about what a niche market really is. Go check it out and come back. I’ll be here.

Okay, now that we are on the same sheet of music, how do we pick a niche product to market. Here are 3 separate options:

The Passion Test
I was cruising through the bookstore after a long frustrating day at my 9 to5 looking for some guidance on what I REALLY should be doing with my life. As I was walking to the door a purple book called “The Passion Test” caught my eye. With all this talk these days about following your passion I thought, “what the hell is my passion?”

So I bought the book. The first piece of advice everyone gives you when you talk about starting a business is that you should follow your passion. Sounds easy enough unless you are only passionate about beer and Monday Night Football.

What a GREAT purchase that turned out to be. If you haven’t read it, go by your local bookstore and check it out. Or buy it here on amazon (not an affiliate link). It walks you step-by-step down a path that will help you find your true passions.

I am not big on those hokey self-help books and I really hate ones with exercises and worksheets. However, I gave this one a try (exercises and all). And it was awesome. I realized that I loved computers, teaching people and I really enjoyed marketing. Ah ha, Internet marketing.

I got so wrapped up in trying to be an adult that I forgot what it was like staying up until 4 in the morning learning how to code a video game or trying to hack into government computers or building websites.

So I’m back, and I haven’t been to bed before 2 in 3 months! I LOVE IT! If it wasn’t for eating and the occasional bowel movement I would never leave my desk…. wait there’s also that annoying J.O.B.

Go read the book and come back when you’ve got a passion. Fly fishing? Hunting? Crochet? Underwater basket weaving? It doesn’t matter, what ever it is there is a market there that you can sell products to.

Summary
The Passion Test niche market selection strategy is about finding something that you enjoy and marketing to that niche. Contrary to popular belief, you do NOT have to be an expert. Blogs have opened up a whole new world for sharing your ignorance with the world. Just look at me!

Find something you like, talk about what you know and people will appreciate you for it.

Chasing Cool
Another great book (again, not an affiliate link).

*Sidenote - I’m really not using affiliate links just because I don’t use Amazon.com at all. I prefer to actually GO to the bookstore, there something stimulating about browsing around amongst all that knowledge… besides you never know what you are going to find. And like I said, there are a few things that you are going to NEED that I would appreciate you using my affiliate links for but just because I recommend it doesn’t mean I’m trying to make a profit off of you from it. I want my opinions to be completely unbiased.

Where were we, chasing cool is about how fads come and fads go but in the long run you have to focus on long-term relevance. However, taking advantage of fads can been EXTREMELY lucrative for affiliate marketers.

Tickle-me-Elmo was the mother of all kids toys. Every kid had to have one! They sold out of stores in minutes…. MINUTES! And a lot of affiliate marketers made significant incomes off that one product. X-box? PS3? Ringtones? Millions! You too can be apart of the frenzy and cash in on these “cool” products.

Just like “Chasing Cool” recommends, I don’t want to be bothered with fads. I don’t want to spend months working on a campaign to realize that it is no longer relevant, that is is no longer cool.

However, for some the thrill and lure of quick cash is too much to ignore. You choose.

Want to know what’s cool? Ask a 13 year old. You laugh but I garuntee you’ll learn more about what the latest fads are from a high school kid than you will in hour of searching the internet. But if you don’t know any high school kids or have a court order to stay at least 100 meters from them, here’s some resources:

Summary
Chasing cool is all about catching a fad and cashing in. Chasing cool is easy but actually catching up to it is tough. There will be fierce competition in these markets and you never know when they are going to fade but it sure will be a fun ride.

EPC
EPC is an average of the earnings per 100 clicks. This gives you an idea of how much money you can make by sending 100 visitors to their offer page.

Let’s take a look at some and try to analyze what it really means:

Now that down right sucks. 5 bucks for sending 100 visitors…. nah, I’ll pass.

That is MUCH better.

Sounds easy enough, just sort all of the merchants by their EPC and pick the highest one.

Not so fast grasshopper.

EPCs have a tendency to be horribly inaccurate. It is easy for a merchant to manipulate their EPCs in order to entice new affiliates. The only way I use EPC is to rule out a merchant. If I am considering a campaign with two similar offers I will generally take the one with the higher EPC, all else being equal.

I like to stick between $30-$100. And I use the 3 Month EPC, the 7 day EPCs can fluctuate and are the most inaccurate.

Summary
Selecting an offer purely based on EPC is not a very informed strategy. EPCs are notoriously inaccurate but they can be used as the deciding factor between two competing offers. In fact you’ll see in the case-study that I had the option of selecting from 4 very similar offers but one stood out from the rest because of its EPC but I had already selected the niche using the Mosby Method.

The Mosby Method

Choosing an affiliate program to market is very simple. Go with your gut!

I’m not passionate about ANY of the programs I market but I am INTERESTED in them from a marketing perspective. You don’t have to love the subject matter but you have to love the idea of marketing it. Let me explain.

The key to a successful campaign is getting traffic. The key to getting traffic is being creative. When I look at potential offers I think about creative ways to market it. If I can think of something that no one else is doing then THAT is my next campaign.

Take Betty Crocker recipe’s. I read 45n5.com daily but I am not a huge fan of the guy. I read it because I enjoy the frustration. I think he’s a pompous ass who provides his readers with little to no value while continually trying to make money off of them.  However, that is his schtick…. that’s what keeps his readers coming back.

**Again, my opinion is my own based on previous experiences. You should not take my opinion as gospel and come to your own conclusions. (During the Thirty Day Challenge he exposed almost every single niche people were working on, citing it as public knowledge.  True but that doesn’t give him or anyone the right to share that with the greedy, seedy, under-belly of the affiliate marketing community.  Immediately after this happened I had to abandon my niche because the next day there were 4 new people trying to compete with me.  Not cool, really not cool.)

He made a half-hearted, lazy attempt at marketing Betty Crocker recipes. Notice how he chose this campaign…. uh, it’s not a dollar. Needless to say he failed and in the process convinced his readers that affiliate marketing was a waste of time. He didn’t do anything creative. I couldn’t have done any better with that offer which is why I would have passed on it.

I just wish he would have taken the time to research the offer first; determine if it will make a worthwhile campaign, then give it the old college try. His opinion has influence and instead of half-assing it if he would have put a real effort into trying to make it work he would have been more successful.

Here are my criteria for picking a good offer:

Everyone has their own criteria but as a beginner affiliate it is best that we say away from extremely competitive markets and focus on ones with a good return for our time. Find something that interests you that isn’t over saturated and pays well and you WILL make money.

In our case study I will take you through these exact steps as I try to find the niche I am going to use as proof that you CAN make money in affiliate marketing. I will start the case-study lessons as soon as we finish with the campaign development lesson so you can follow along with your own campaign and make money right along with me.

Besides, I don’t want to let the cat out of the bag on our niche too soon because some leech will try to steal the niche from us an ruin the results. It’s inevitable. That is why people are so reluctant to talk about their niche because there are a lot of worthless people out there with nothing better to do than to steal other people’s ideas.

I’m not afraid though, I anticipate it will happen but by then we will have made a few bucks and you will have learned first hand how to make affiliate marketing work!

Till next time,

Mike

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Comments

One Response to “Free Affiliate Marketing Course - Lesson 3”

  1. silver on March 17th, 2008 2:30 pm

    Mike,

    Just wanted to say one thing that’s not totally on-topic - but I totally agree with you about 45n5 being a pompous arrogant ass. ;-)

    What he did during the 30 day challenge was low and uncalled for and I still can’t bring myself to have any respect for his opinion nor his blog.

    In any case, thanks for a good post. I’d lost touch with your blog after the 30 day challenge and recently found it again. You’ve come a long way. :-)

    silver

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