The goal for affiliates is to make money. The best way for affiliates to make money is offer sites or products that customers want or need. Affiliates must choose products/services that people demand and are willing to consume. Affiliate’s must make a decision early on with their website as to which niche they want to fill and how to market merchant’s products/services. Should an affiliate pick their products first or do research and decide which niche to fill?

Affiliates should research products and determine which products will be the most advantageous to promote. Researching popular sales sites, reading various publications, and product reviews should lead any affiliate to a strong list of products worth promoting. After picking products begins the real gruntwork for an affiliate. Research on  positioning, segmenting, targeting and marketing your website is the next phase of planning.  In other words, what niche will your website belong to, which consumers have similar behaviors with similar needs, how do you market to your segments and how do you get them to click through your affiliate links and make purchases.  Research into keyword, advertising, and product competition will help an affiliate choose the niche they wish to occupy.  Once a niche is filled, affiliates must research demographics, psychographics, and buying habits to determine who will want to buy the merchant’s products you are offering.  Researching mediums to target your customers is an area where affiliates may run into trouble.  The Internet is such a large community that trial and error is a great tool in figuring out how to reach the people you wish to turn into customers.  Lastly, how do you convince potential customers that making a purchase right now is the correct decision.  Affiliates who are successful understand the importance of the pre-sell.  Affiliate marketers are not trying to sell the product themselves, they are trying to draw enough interest and curiosity that the customer “must” click through to the merchant’s site and see what is available.  A successful affiliate must not worry about selling products, but rather putting customers into a buying frame of mind.