You seem like the type that takes action and the type that wants to make this work badly and I applaud you for that. You've asked a very good question so I'll do my best to point out the steps you want to take to start making some sales.
I expect others to join in this discussion as well if they have anything to add.
Your first step should be:
Finding a Niche.
Find a niche market and work it. One important thing I must add is to stay away from the "make money online" niche. Its a tough industry for a newbie so you might want to make other things work before you try that out.
There are thousands of other niches you can try besides 'make money online' type stuff and they do make a whole lot more money much EASILY.
How to find a niche?
Remember that a niche isn't a keyword or a product - its a group of people with a common problem. So what you want to do is find a group of people who have a problem and then find a solution (affiliate product) to help them. This means money for you. Its either a problem (like a partner's snoring) or a passion (like concert tickets for example).
*1* Here are just 7 ways (just a few) to generate niche ideas:
1. Look in the mirror. You may be your own niche. What do you spend money on as a way of solving a personal problem? Is there something you absolutely love that you would spend money on?
2.
Watch some tv. There are hundreds of ideas you can get just by watching the ads alone (No, affiliate marketers shouldn't have Tivo).
3. Read magazines
4. Look through affiliate program directories like Clickbank
5. Visit blog directories and see what people are blogging about.
6. Visit
Google Hot Trends and see what the buzz is all about.
7. Whats in the news that everyone is talking about? Visit sites like CNN, Yahoo and MSN's home page.
Step 2 - Research Your Niche
Miss this step and you're just going to be wasting your valuable time. If you don't research your niche then you won't know what they want, what they're emotional about or even what products they're already using.
Another benefit to be derived is that you will gain some really handy intelligence about your market such as the way they talk, words they use that are specific to the niche...that when you talk like them you're going to be seen as an expert.
To do niche research all you'll need to do is to go hang out online where your market hangs out. Niche specific forums, blogs, social networks? Those are the places you need to go to do niche research.
Trying to get into the golfing niche? Go hang out at golf forums. Find an authority blogger on golf and subscribe to his blog. Read every post and also the comments. Look for the forum threads that get the most responses and you've probably identified a problem that you can use as an approach for marketing in that niche.
The following article will give you some more insight on this topic. Read it through thoroughly.
5 Steps to Becoming an Expert in Your Niche
Also here's an article on
how I use Yahoo Answers to do Niche Research.
Keyword Research
You don't need any expensive tools for this one. One of the best tools you can use for this is the Google Adwords External Keyword Tool.
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
You can start using a broad search like say "golf" and see what related searches come up. Then again you will know what type of problem you're going after, you can start there. If you've been doing step #2, then you would have probably come up with some problems your niche has. Type this into the keyword tool and see what comes back.
Don't go for broad keywords like everyone else. You need keywords that are relevant. Think about what your user may be thinking when they typed the keyword.
A user will usually go through different stages before they decide to buy. They go through the research phase, the decision phase and the buying phase. What you want to do is skip the first two phases and just go straight for the buying phase - its the quickest way to money.
You'll recognize buying phase keywords because they usually contain the product name and and identifying prefix or suffix like:
buy
purchase
review
is xxxxxx a scam
free shipping
cheap
You know, the type of stuff that says that the person already has their credit card in hand.
Find a Method of Promotion
You can do PPC or Article Marketing or Content Websites or Forum Marketing or Blogging or Social Network marketing but NOT all at once. If you're going to choose a method, choose that method and learn how to be a master at this type of promotional method.
Who gets paid more? The general practitioner or the brain surgeon? Be an expert at one thing at a time.
I personally love using free methods and article marketing is my favorite.
To make this work, once you've done the first set of steps, you will usually set it up like this.
- Set up your main promotion on your own domain (website). If you don't have a website use a blog (blogger) or you can use a free website service such as Weebly.
- You'll need to search engine optimize your articles so that they rank on Google's first page. To achieve this you'll have to choose low competition keywords
- To find low comp keywords, search your keyword on Google in "quotes" and see how many results are returned. Ideally you want results of less than 10,000.
- To get a high ranking you want to use sites that already rank highly in Google. These sites you will use to link back to your main promotion. These are sites like Ezinearticles, Hubpages, Goarticles, Squidoo etc.
- You'll need to get backlinks to boost your articles rankings. You can set up a network of these articles all linking to your main promotion and interlinking each other. Also social bookmark these articles where possible and find other places to submit your content.
- Once you've made a sale, this usually means the niche is a good one. You can do a full campaign which includes collecting opt ins, PPC and other methods.
- Start right back from #1 with another subniche or a whole new niche
If you'd like a real step by step, Wealthy Affiliate offers an
article marketing accreditation course as well as a PPC accreditation course for those who have a budget.
Conclusion
When you get to the point where you're making money, don't go blowing it all as soon as you get it. Put that money right back into your business, whether you spend it on other promotional methods such as investing in an autoresponder, hosting, education, other promotional methods such as PPC or outsourcing some of the article writing.
Last but not least:
NEVER GIVE UP. Don't be afraid to fail. You will fail many times before you have just one success story.
References:
1.
How To Do Niche Research