Affiliate marketing is one of many attractive online business models. The main appeal for me is that I can market proven products that have already demonstrated the ability to pull down sales. Another major benefit of affiliate marketing is that I don't have to put in the time or incur the expense to develop my own products. Both of these elements make for an easy entry into a legitimate online business of my own.

But there's another benefit associated with all affiliate programs and that is that I have no contact with customers other than getting them to visit the originator's sales page. Once someone has made the decision to buy, the creator of the product is responsible for delivery of the product and all follow-up contact with the customer. Many feel these three benefits make affiliate marketing the perfect online business.

If the three above items aren't attractive enough, there's yet another gem associated with affiliate marketing: generous commissions. Many of the most popular and best selling affiliate programs out there offer commissions of up to 75 percent! With such a program you're obviously you're going to make more money than the creator of the product. But don't shed a tear for the creator because with a popular product he or she employs an army of affiliate marketers. This army, of course, employs the multiplication of effort concept, which results in the product's creator receiving an outstanding financial return.

What To Sell

For years conventional wisdom has told us that we should market products or services that we are familiar with. And to a certain point that's true. But there's a little more to the formula for success than that. For true financial success it's also important for you to sell products that have high demand. For example, if you're interested in photography you might search for products to promote within that niche.

The question you need to ask yourself is this: How many people are interested in photography items? The next question is this: what might bring me a greater reward? Look at it this way, the amount of work you're going to have to put into a promotion will be virtually the same regardless of the product. So doesn't it make sense to promote something where there are plenty of known buyers?

Drill Where The Oil Is

Clickbank.com is a very large affiliate program provider. One of the tools they offer is the ability to search products by both popularity and the number of sales a product pulls in. So, if marketing efforts are going to be virtually the same, doesn't it make sense to promote a product where there are thousands or more ready buyers searching every day? Of course it does.

Does that mean you need to abandon your passion? No. It simply means you need to prioritize your approach and decide whether you want to earn money or whether you want to deal only in products for which you have passion. For me, at least when starting out, money was the more important motivating factor.

So What's Selling?

I'm not going to go into specifics here but I will say this. Generally speaking, people are only looking for three things. Those are:

?Love (friendships and all interpersonal relationships fall under this category)

?Improved Health

?Money

When you think about it, what else is there? Now, how badly do people want these things? It varies, of course. The wise marketer will do well to conduct a bit of market research to determine the best selling products in each of these categories. From there it should be easy to come up with more great products than any one individual could effectively market at one time. Good luck!