Starting Out - Need some advice!

Why not start a small product, and promote is massively, I think this would be a better option since you will be selling your own product you can be more creative when its your own.

I'd say start a blog. I just started promoting clickbank products also and I was advised by someone i respect to start a blog and post articles about your products at least a couple of times a week. You can develop trust, and then they are more likely to buy. Sending paid google traffic to plain ads with no write-up to support your ads, when people don't know you, chances are they will not be inclined to spend their money.

Here's the deal, as I see it...

Keep your money in your wallet.
There are some very successful affiliate marketers here, and elsewhere online.
Clickbank, as you mentioned, is actually now teaching more to help their affiliates and vendors be more knowledgeable. Go see what they offer.

You are going to get people responding here, they are going to say...
Build your list
start a blog
use paid advertising
be the expert
and on and on

Here is something to understand today. All business takes time, lots of time, to see sustained profit. The Internet is not a magic bullet and a business online that becomes successful takes time. Just like an offline business. Pick any franchise, sure the system is setup ready to go, but profit and sustained business takes time. The Internet is the same.

Cagey - yep, it's the Internet.

So, if you truly want to send traffic directly to a vendors sales page I strongly suggest you consider making that sales page yours. It will take time, but remember this is a business, not get rich quick. And should you decide to spend your $1K investment, don't you think it would be better to spend it on a solid business? rather than total hit and miss?

So you are not interested in the truth?

With no experience and sans building a list, you can kiss your $1K goodbye.

I'm positive!

Steps you want to take:

1. Find strong demand within one of the niches you are considering
2. "Test" that niche with some initial content and offers (I would start by picking a platform that plays to your strengths (blog for writing, Youtube for videos, itunes for podcasting, etc...) and begin to generate content around the niche to guage interest
3. You can also run small paid ad tests toward your offers as well...but these should be offers for front-end content that gets YOU the lead and then you can market affiliate products on the back end
4. Track everything, test different ads as well as landing pages with your offers - this would be the best use of a couple hundred dollars out of your $1K - this will allow you to find the right niche, message and offer which you can then scale up with more ads and/or content

Jeff

The most important aspect of any internet venture is to develop a plan and stick to it. Most, including myself get bogged down in all the information available. We bounce around and don't concentrate on one project. Develop the ability to zero in on your plan of choice and see it through until the completion. Good luck1

I'm so pleased to see that you are considering a mentor! I wish I had done when I started. I wasted a lot of time, and a lot of money I could not afford, trying to go it alone, without success. I finally realized I would not get anywhere without a mentor --- someone to tell me what to do, and show me how to do it. Another, similar, idea, is ClickBank University --- they do an online course for affiliates. Keep smiling!

Start learning SEO instead of paid ads. $1k is a bit too low for starting out, you'd probably need something around $5k. At first you'll burn your money anyway, just to see what works and what doesn't.

Secondly, I don't think Adwords tolerates affiliate sites and affiliate offers that are solely from promoting clickbank products.

As you already have a couple of niches in mind, I would suggest you narrow them further. Go to google keyword planner tool and find the a long tail keyword with low competition and a minimum of 3000 daily searches. Target a specific country, may be more local to reach the right audience.

For example: If you know that a particular product or service would sell like hot cakes in a particular state. Target that state and find the best keyword. What you are doing here is actually helping people. You will surely get ranked in google as the competition would be really low.

Make sure you start a blog and write relevant articles in your niche. Articles more than 2000 words rank higher in google. Not many people would take the time to create a quality article with loads of information. Most blog posts have 250-500 words.



Write reviews but be realistic. Give people what they want and do not exaggerate and make it a sales post.

Try to build quality backlinks from high authority sites. It's not easy, you will have to publish atleast 3 guest posts every month. Do it slowly don't be too aggressive with link building as it needs to look natural.

Then you can concentrate on paid advertising. Build a base and scale up.