The truth is that affiliate marketing works very well and is actually a growing industry so the time to get in is now. However you will need to learn certain skills in order to succeed as an affiliate and there are certain things only experience can teach you so make sure you take action.

The first step in affiliate marketing is selecting an affiliate product to promote. You need to pick a niche that has lots of buyers so doing keyword research is the first step. The free google keyword tool or the overture keyword tool which is also free are ideal for research purposes.

Type in some of the major keywords in your niches and check how many results come up. If there are more than 50,000 searches for a month then there is a good chance that the niche may be profitable.

Once you have found that there is a good market for your niche, now you need to locate great affiliate products to promote in that niche. Doing a search for 'niche affiliates' in a search engine could give you some good results. Also you can look at affiliate networks like Clickbank and Commission Junction.

Clickbank sells digital products and marketing digital products can be a great way to start in affiliate marketing. Many people online like to buy digital products because as soon as they pay they will usually get instant access to the product or service.

When choosing products at Clickbank look for ones that have a gravity higher than 30 which is a good indicator that it is a quality product. Also be sure to check out the sales letter and make sure it looks convincing and professional. The commission rates at Clickbank are also very good usually at least 50 percent for most products. It is a good idea to pick an affiliate program where you will receive at least 20 to 50 dollars or more per sale.

You can also find many good affiliate programs at Commission Junction and Linkshare. There are many pay per lead affiliate programs that can be great to promote since it is not that tough to get people to fill out a form. Most mortgage, loan and credit card companies offer these kinds of affiliate programs. In addition you will see many fortune 500 companies at these networks too so you can take advantage of their brand. When you are applying for these programs ensure that you have a website that is very closely related to their products or services to maximize your chances of getting accepted.

The main thing at the start is to select one quality affiliate program and focus on that. The next step after picking your affiliate program is to promote it. There are many different approaches you can use to promote an affiliate program and the size of your budget will dictate what is the best approach for you.

If you have money to spend then it is a good idea to learn how to use pay per click advertising like google adwords to market your affiliate products. With pay per click advertising, selecting the right keywords is very important. Do not pick too general keywords but rather look for the most relevant keywords in your niche and bid on those.

In addition, when using Google adwords it is best to make small ad groups that are closely related to the keywords you pick. Add the keyword to the title and even the body of your ads as this should help increase click through rates. It is also a good idea to add the keywords to your landing pages naturally as this will help to improve the quality score of your account which means you may pay less per click.

If money is an issue the do not be too worried because there is still a way to make money using affiliate marketing. Using article marketing is the best option in this case since it is a free way to promote your products. All you have to do is write an article around 500 to 700 words related to your niche and then submit it to major article directories like Ezinearticles.

Each article will have a link back to your site so this will help to build traffic to your site from the article directories and from search engine traffic as the ranking of your site improves over time. Submit a unique article roughly once a week and make sure it is of good quality too. Be consistent and in time you will see the results you desire from affiliate marketing.