Daren H. Russell

You must have a business mindset
You must see affiliate marketing as a real business and for it to be successful, you must run it as such and that means having a business mindset. What does that mean? It means being prepared to invest money when needed, even if it is only a small amount – how much will depend on what your goals are and how big your marketing campaign is. Sometimes, you will need to invest in learning what to do next, how to take your business further and how to improve your system so it works. It is a business; run it that way and you have a much better chance of success.

You must be prepared to take action
Knowing something is one thing but taking action on it and doing something about it is quite another; if you don’t take that action, your knowledge is useless and worthless. Too much time is spent on thinking and not enough on doing, do your thinking, get your ideas down on paper and then start putting action on them. Start doing or the money won’t come and nobody else is going to do it for you.

Positivity is key
So many times you will hear it said that you must have a positive mindset but, believe me, you will never hear it enough. Positivity is what keeps you moving forward, it keeps you motivated and it keeps your energy levels up. With the successes in affiliate marketing, you also get the setbacks and that is when you need your motivation. For some people, the setbacks, the lack of results, is enough to knock them back straightaway but this is the very time when you need that positivity.

When you choose your products, don’t go for what you like; go for what sells. Pick a successful niche and pick the products that people want to buy, not what isn’t in demand. The reality of affiliate marketing is this; people are not interested in what you like. All they are interested in is whether the product works for them.

Top 5 Affiliate Marketing Niches

The one question most asked by new affiliate marketers is, how do I find the right niche? There are thousands to choose from and knowing where to start can be quite overwhelming. If you want some advice, as a complete beginner, stick to one of the evergreen niches to start with; these have proved themselves time and time again to be the most profitable. The top five are:
Finance
This takes the top spot every year but before you dive in, think hard because finance is, without a doubt the toughest industry in affiliate marketing. There is an awful lot of competition here and, unless you have something truly unique, something that people really want but no-one else is offering, or you have something very special to bring to the market, you are going to find a new website or blog very hard to rank.
You can get in there but be prepared for it to take time. The only way to really break in is to be consistent – publish high-quality relevant blogs or posts, set up email marketing and even paid advertising and your business will start to grow.
Health
This is always going to be a popular niche because everyone has concerns about their health at some time or another; this makes it one of the best niches to start in. Promotion of products in the health niche has always yielded high revenue amounts and ClickBank offers plenty of products for you to work with.
Web Hosting
Web hosting will always be one of the most lucrative industries for affiliate marketers, provided you do it correctly. Take WP Engine, a web host provider, for example; for every sale you make of their product, they will pay you $200 in commission. You don’t need many of them in a week to start seeing the cash do you! The number of new websites and blogs that are set up daily is huge and web hosting demand will continue to grow to support that.
Technology
Another market that is rising fast is the technology market; technology is always going to be in demand, be it a smart TV, a mobile phone, the latest tablet and so on. Whatever it is, this is a market that you can get a serious foot in the door on and leverage to your benefit.
Romance
Bet you didn’t expect to see this one here! Everyone wants romance in their lives and the topics under this niche stretch further than you could ever imagine possible. Think outside the box for this one – dating for the disabled, romance in an autistic world, and so on. And you also have the td and tested topics of improving relationships, dating tips, sexual health, dating for the single parent; you name it, you can write about it.
So, time to move on; let’s look at how you choose and narrow down your niche.

There are two types of approach to solving a problem – proactive and reactive.
● Proactive – your main thought is that you WILL succeed as an affiliate marketer and nothing is going to get in your way. When a problem arises, you will be proactive in finding the solution for it; you will use the search engines to look for the solution, you might head to YouTube or you might even go down the route of paying someone to solve it. Whichever you do, you are being proactive and not letting that issue get in your way.
● Reactive – you will be thinking, I’ll just see if this works, if not I will give it up. When you encounter a problem, your first thought will be, “I can’t fix this, it’s too hard”. You will turn your back and give it up as a bad job or you might turn to one of the many affiliate forums to complain about the problem; what you won’t do is look for the solution. And then your mind starts to try to justify why you failed, to come up with excuse after excuse.