Affiliate Marketing Start Up Plan

by David Cooper

If you're ready to get started making money online with an affiliate marketing business, then you'll need a solid plan of action to help you get started successfully. Starting an affiliate marketing business is not difficult, but without a proper plan of action in place you may find yourself struggling to make any money from it.

Now, there are several different affiliate marketing plans you can follow, so this article is meant to help you think about which steps should be in your own personal plan, and help you to not forget some that might be important.

Step 1: Research the Markets. The first step in creating an affiliate marketing plan is to research the market you'll be selling products to. You'll want to look around the web and find out what people are talking about, what they're asking for, or what they can't seem to find. If you can find people talking about things they desperately need, then that is often an excellent market to go in to.

You see, by finding out what people want first, you set yourself up to make much more money in the long run. If you were to choose a product first and then try and figure out who to sell that product to, you'll make things more difficult for yourself.

Step 2: Research the Products. Once you have at least one or more markets in mind that you'll be selling products to, the next step is to go out and find a selection of products that meets the market's needs. Refer back to your research at this point... did the market want something they can't find? Are people desperate for something? Are they just constantly asking where to go for X product or service? Choose your affiliate products based on what they wanted, and sign up as an affiliate.

Step 3: Plan Your Approach. Once you have one or more affiliate products in mind, you'll now need to choose your particular marketing approach. This part can get a bit confusing because there are so many options, but don't let it scare you. The primary approaches to affiliate marketing include:

• Build a blog on the topic.
• Write articles for your own website or to distribute around the web.
• Start an email list about your topic.
• Advertise the products from somewhere online such as Google AdWords.

Now your approach can be multi-pronged. In other words, you can use more than one of the above marketing techniques at the same time if you'd like. New affiliate marketers however, are usually better off starting with just one marketing approach to begin with though, and then adding others as they feel more confident in their promotional abilities.

Step 4: Get started. Regardless of which approach you chose, it's now time to put it all into action. Don't forget to be careful with your funds while you're just starting too. Unless you have some funds in reserve to use, it could be several months before you actually get your affiliate commissions as cash in your bank account. So plan for those cash flow restrictions right from the start.