Affiliate marketing is one of the easiest ways of making money on the internet.

It’s lumpier than putting up adverts because you usually only get paid when you make a sale rather than every time an advert is clicked on. But it’s often higher income as the amount paid in commission per sale can range from a few cents right the way up to hundreds of dollars.

Start by choosing your niche

The qualities of a good niche are:

• A range of affiliate products to promote. It’s not a good idea to choose a niche with only one or two products available otherwise you run the risk of them being discontinued and your income drying up at the same time.
• A niche you’re interested in. For instance, it wouldn’t be a good idea for me to promote snowboarding, even though there are plenty of products and some juicy commissions available, as I have no interest in the subject. You need to be interested in the subject as you’ll find it hard to come up with topics or find products to promote.
• Recurring income. This isn’t essential but it’s certainly nice to have. Some of the products I still get paid commission for are sales I made years ago because the affiliate program pays me as long as the person remains a customer.
• Reliable, honest, affiliate program. Most affiliate programs fit this description but it’s worth running a quick check online just to make sure that the program you’ve chosen doesn’t scam affiliates by not paying them out.

Ideally not a one-off purchaseIf the product you’re selling is a one-of purchase that makes it more difficult to make money as an affiliate because you’re forever chasing new customers.

If the niche lends itself to repeat purchases then you can build a list and sell other products to them.

For instance, with the best will in the world, most weight loss products don’t work long term. There are exceptions such as the Paleo diet but even that only works as long as you keep with it and most people don’t have the willpower to do that.

Which means that you need to do what a lot of affiliate marketers don’t like doing, at least when they start their affiliate marketing career:

Build a list

You’ll probably need to pay an autoresponder company to handle your list for you. It’s a regular monthly investment but they handle all the subscriber sign ups, unsubscribes, working with ISPs to ensure high deliverability, etc.

You will probably need to offer some kind of incentive for people to sign up to your list. A free video or free report is a good idea. Then you’ll need to create a follow up email sequence to keep in regular touch with your subscribers.

I find it best to write the first few emails as soon as I create a list and then add messages on a reasonably regular basis, either in the follow up series or as a broadcast to all list members regardless of where they are in the regular email sequence.

A list gives you the closest you’re likely to get as an affiliate marketer to money on demand.

If you’d like to know more, check out this free video that shows you lots of affiliate marketing secrets.