One of the aspects of affiliate marketing that you will learn early on is keyword research. It sounds quite daunting, but all it takes is a bit of common sense, logic and time on your hands to ‘research’.

What you need to focus on are ‘long tail keywords’, these are the easiest to rank for not only as a newbie in affiliate marketing, but as an internet marketeer in general.
So what are long tail keywords? These are phrases containing at least 3 words that are typed in the search engines (Google for example) for people to find information on.

For example if you’re looking to promote a product on dating, you could write down things like ‘getting my ex back’, ‘how to get my ex back’, ‘ways to get my ex back’. There are lots of people who are searching for ways to win back their ex-es and thankfully Clickbank has enough products that you can promote for years.
Or if you’re looking at the diet niche, long tail keywords might be ‘the green tea diet’, ‘ways to lose weight fast’, ‘get rid of fat’, etc. Diet, fasting, fat and dating are NOT long tail keywords. These are whole markets and you’d really need gloves of iron to even try competing with these general terms.

One of the best sources of finding great long tail keywords is Micro Niche Finder. I can’t recommend this product enough, it’s really a superb piece of craftsmanship. With this software you can make your whole market research and much more. You can buy it directly here from the author.

When just start out in internet marketing, and you ask anyone what is the best way for a newbie to get going, you’ll usually get the answer ‘affiliate marketing, of course, join one of the affiliate programs on Clickbank’.

It’s true,affiliate marketing has really become a perfectly accepted and feasible business model for internet marketers and you can make a great living only by doing it.  For example,  most of the affiliate marketing programs are completely free to join and you will even have free access to a whole range of  promotion tools to get you going in the business. So yes, it’s true you can make money with affiliate marketing for free if you choose to do so. No wonder everybody is recommending it wholeheartedly.

But…as with any business, there are certain pitfalls that you need to know about, so you can avoid them, in order to be really successful. If you choose to ignore these mistakes, you might find yourself working to no end to make only pennies from your affiliate marketing – and that will NOT make you free of your so dreaded 9-5 job that you want to get away from.

Mistake #1: Choosing The Wrong Affiliate Program

Before you run off to promote an affiliate program that you get attached to, you need to know why you want to select that program. The cute header and nice words, or your personal affinity to the niche subject won’t do here. You need a  hungry crowd, meaning a targeted market that is in desperately searching for something.

Let’s say you researched a bit and found that  acne sufferers are finding it really hard to get rid of their acne, but they want to do so using natural treatments.

Now you will go to Clickbank, for example, and find the right product to promote. You will search in this case an ebook on using natural treatments for acne, which does not harm to the skin, doesn’t need for the patient to spend thousands on pills and expensive creams, and is successful in a relatively short period.

Mistake #2: Going after Too Many Affiliate Programs

If you’re like me when I first started out,   you will join several affiliate programs, as each sounds better and better in terms of payouts, etc.  You will think that by joining more programs, you will make more money. Wrong. You will soon find yourself overwhelmed and will tend to give up affiliate marketing so much faster. When starting out  go after only a few products all evolving around the same niche, so you can stay focused until you get those ones making sales.  Once you’re comfortable using those, you can always expand, and dump those that proved to be non-money makers.

Mistake #3: Not Familiarizing Yourself With The Product

To properly promote a product or service it really helps to know as much about it as possible. As a matter of fact, it’ is recommended that you buy it and experience yourself if you really want to be able to talk about it well.  Some programs allow you to buy their product using your own affiliate ID at Clickbank when it’s simply for learning, reviewing and promoting it. But it’s always best to first check with the product company, to make sure they approve. There may come a time when someone asks you a question about it and you have no answers. Knowing everything there is to know about the product will allow you to write a really good and unique review, which will separate you from the crowd who never bothered with this third step, and always copies boring reviews from others.