Quick tips to start a profitable affiliate campaign
Posted on February 11, 2011 by JP

Last night, I was playing some games with a group of friends (we meet every Thursday night to play cards, poker, backgammon all night long), and during the discussion, we were talking about our respective “Turning Point(s)”.

By, “Turning point”, I mean, something special that made you change directions, or   stick with a decision that was of utmost importance in your life. By the way, it’s always great to look back and analyze what happened at some point and what lead you to where you currently are.

That said, it reminded me of my Internet Marketing “carreer” turning point. It was not at the very beginning, but it was signigicant enough to make me think it’s possible although it  appeared impossible when I started (yes, I’ve been there too)!

In this post I want to share the steps I followed to run my first profitable affiliate campaign, so that you can replicate it (it’s nothing really new, but for sure it works). It can be applied to any niche provided you’ve found a good product to promote within this niche.

Once again, it might appear simple, but sometimes, it’s better to keep things simple and start with proven working processes.

So, here it is:

    * Identify a Clickbank product to promote. It Should not be a newly released one, but not one with 50 advertisers bidding on the product name either (Google Adwords)
    * To further analyze, you can Google ™ the product name and check the current competition, quickly review the websites on the first 2 pages and identify what makes them stand out and what is missing. You’ve got your angle
    * Create a simple website (I recommend a wordpress blog, although I simply used a static 1 page HTML website) around this product (such as PRODUCTNAME-Reviewed.com…)
    * Write your review (this can be a summary of things you’ve read about the product, or it could be your own review if you’ve purchased the product, which I highly recommend). Nothing pitchy, but tell it like it is if you believe in the product.
    * Create some extra articles (around the product) and submit them to 2 or 3 article directories with a link back to your review website.
    * Find some related forums and blogs and start posting / commenting on them either linking back to your review website, or to your articles

These steps above will get you some traffic and you should get some sales if your articles are correctly written and enticing for your audience. The last 2 steps are critical: they will put your links (and your content) in front of your exact target and they will create backlinks and increase your rankings for the product you’re promoting.

Now, you could also improve your rankings by creating extra pages (which I do with most of my affiliate websites now): Hubpages, Squidoo lenses, blogger page…

As you see, it’s a simple process… and I know from experience that most people can easily complete the first few steps, but they usually stop after creating their one page website or blog. The last 2 steps are really easy (you can also outsource those last 2 steps by finding some provider at elance or odesk), and they are the ones that will drive traffic to your review page.

Anyone can follow these steps. But you need to take action for sure :-)

Here’s your challenge: if you feel like you would like  to replicate the above process, then just devote the next 48 hours to this. Deal with it as a project and do not stop until it’s completed. Post your feedback below, share your best practices too and help other readers in turn.

JP