Affiliate marketing

I know! I have been doing this for just 3 months now and the deeper I dig, the more I find I have to dig even deeper. Where does it all end?

I actually wish there was some educational product on how to effectively start a successful affiliate program.

I guess you probably have to just go in there and get your hands dirty, keep reading forums like this and learn from your mistakes.

Coming from someone who's done affiliate marketing for over 6 years... You're better off focusing on creating your own product. The only real advantage of affiliate marketing is the variety of offers available for you to promote. Everything else is better if you create your own product.

The only way to make it in affiliate marketing is to not get in it, unless you are getting free traffic or you have your own traffic source (email, etc). Competition is high and advertising space is dominated by super affiliates or product owners themselves. The only way you're going to compete on a large scale is to own your own product. This allows you to earn as much as possible per sale. Which in turn lets you compete at a higher level.

But then again I am posting this on the warrior forum. Most people here are affiliates for clickbank products. Clickbank isn't where the super affiliates hang out. So you might be able to make it as a clickbank affiliate promoting those weird niches. Any other major products just stay out until you know what you're doing or you will lose a lot of money

I write articles and get them published as widely as possible in front of highly targeted traffic comprising the people I want to attract to my site. Like this. It means I don't have to do the targeting myself, and I don't have to depend on SEO traffic.

I have a pretty specific list of selection criteria, myself: http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post2161932

I suspect a lot do - probably including a high proportion of the ones who don't post. I can't prove that, obviously. I think a high proportion of those who do post feel that it's somehow "better" or "more secure" or "earns more" to be a vendor than an affiliate, but I don't agree with this, myself, and I think (a) many of the reasons put forward as "advantages" of being a vendor actually apply to affiliates too, and (b) there are many advantages of being an affiliate that don't apply to vendors. Here are ten of them: http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post6694793

Every Affiliate product has its own FAQ and Swipe kit. By going through them, you will know what is necessary to promote the right product. Creating your own product does not preclude you from promoting affiliate products. These are two different activities.

1) Squeeze page

2) Pre-sell page

Test both, and drive traffic using free methods at first. If you're promoting a high price affiliate product... you may want to drive some paid traffic to your squeeze or pre-sell page, and then convert them from there. Just make sure you pick a hot selling product.

Affiliate marketing can be difficult depending on what products you are trying to push. I know that quite a lot of people have success with setting up Amazon and ClickBank affiliate websites. If you have a site that you are trying to sell affiliate products on, one of the main things that you are going to need in order to be successful are unique product descriptions.

Having your own product is great too, but there is a higher barrier to entry their. Becoming an affiliate is a much faster way to get in business than going through the process of developing your own product. That being said, if you have an idea for a product that you feel like you can use to make money online, you should definitely put some time into making it and giving it a go. Most people who are successful making money online do not make it big right away. Some ideas that you think are great will fall flat, while others you are unsure of can end up being your biggest money-makers.

creating your own product and making a name for yourself seems to be the best way to make it in affiliate marketing. It isn't easy, and takes some real work and research, but it can be done. You just have to find the right niche to build your product in and market the product to the right audience.

Pls don't get me wrong, but I think you still have to learn a few things out there about different affiliate marketing methods.
There are lot of answers in this Forum and in other Internet sites to get through the issues you mention to succeed as an affiliate (i.e. Alexa Smith's post #5 and its links above).
At the bottom line, for most of the people will be much easier to learn how to outsmart those "super affiliates" than to create their own product and succeed with it.