If you've never sold products as an affiliate, this series of Affiliate Coaching Tips is going to be a goldmine! Because your success as an affiliate means more folks are seeing, and buying. I want to be sure you're armed with great information for building a successful affiliate business.

So what's the first step? You might think it's getting the word out, fast, to your client list. But honestly, that's a lot like selling door to door before you know how to take an order! Here's a checklist for building a successful affiliate business:

$ Create an attractive niche website that focuses on one or more related products. Build into that website the appropriate affiliate links to order and download each product.

$ Create a series of autoresponders to be sent to your email list, pointing them to your niche website.

$ Continue to promote affiliate products to your list with ads in your ezines and other marketing pieces.

$ Tweak your niche website with new promotional squeeze pages, audio, video, and other content to keep interest fresh.

$ Use banners to advertise your affiliate products on your own website.

$ Submit articles on topics related to the affiliate product to article directories.

You might be saying right now, "Whoa, Alan, I thought all I had to do was put a link on my website and send out a couple of emails"! That’s a great start. Why not use all the tools available to make some serious affiliate income?

If you're also using banners to sell affiliate products on your own website, that's great! But have you ever visited a site so cluttered that it was just plain aggravating? If you're offering your own extensive line of products or services, your prospects may start getting confused.

With inexpensive domain name registration and webhosting readily available, many successful affiliate marketers are promoting affiliate products by directing traffic to separate niche websites.

We're going to focus today on getting a niche website built that encourages more sales. Sound like a lot of work? Setting up a website for an affiliate product doesn't have to be complicated. In fact, you can probably set one up yourself within one day, if you take advantage of the web site creation tools available through most webhosts.

Basic Rules for Building a Great Niche Website:

1. Choose an obvious domain name. www.jonsaffiliateproducts.com won't capture their interest like www.investmentguide.com! Choose a domain name designed to reinforce interest in the products.

2. Keep your niche site clean! The point of creating a niche site for related affiliate products is to deliver clear information about them to your prospects, and make it easy to order and download the product. Don't clutter up the page with excess content or graphics.

3. Optimize your content for search engines. If you want to build your own list as well as sell to existing clients, you'll need to pay attention to SEO. We'll talk more about this later, but choosing great keywords and making smart use of them in your content makes all the difference.

4. Take advantage of banners and other resources offered. I'm committed to helping you be successful as an affiliate, so take advantage of banners, special promotions and other marketing resources as I offer them.

5. Tell prospects why the product captured YOUR interest! When you're offering someone else's product to your list, they want to know why. Don't leave them thinking you're just trying to sell them something...tell them why it's a great product and why you're proud to offer it to your own clients.

6. Test your site frequently! Is there anything more frustrating than finding a great product and not being able to buy it? You, or someone who works for you, should test your order, download and redirect links frequently to make sure nothing has changed. If the affiliate link I've assigned you stops working, I want to fix it ASAP. After all, if they can't order it from you, they might not order at all. Test your site and correct problems quickly.

Get started today creating a niche website. You'll be pleasantly surprised how much difference it can make in your ability to earn a rewarding affiliate income.

E. Alan Cowgill