Affiliate Tracking

If you have read part 1 of these series of articles on finance affiliate marketing then you have obviously decided to take the plunge into a very exciting and hopefully profitable world as a finance affiliate. That being said your decision to continue to read about the topic does not mean you have to provide complete commitment at this stage. We are only at part 2 so there is still plenty of information to digest before you are entirely sure that you have the commitment to make some progress into the next steps.

By now you would have already decided that you have a genuine interest in affiliate marketing and have also identified a niche in finance that you would like to expand on as an affiliate. It does not matter which niche at this stage, only that it is of personal interest to you for whatever reason.

Before we do anything else you need to ensure that your chosen niche has market potential and that there are affiliate programs associated with this market so you can make commissions as an affiliate. So lets first look at the market potential of your chosen niche.

In this example we are going to look at Credit Repair as an example of a financial niche market. There are lots of companies out there that provide a service for improving an individuals credit history. Rebuilding credit history legally generally means removing negative information from an individuals credit report.

The market of credit repair is huge because millions of people have been forced into debt and when they cannot pay bills etc they may end up with bad credit. Any search on google will provide you with instant information on what these companies offer in credit repair services. Have a look at the sponsored ads and you will see plenty of companies willing to pay good money for traffic. You can print out there sponsored results on the right of the page and check again in a few weeks. If the same web sites are advertising you know they are making money in the market.

Simple research like this will reveal the size of the market. Dont be put off by lots of competition. You should look on competition as a green light for business. Where a niche is popular on the search engines you know that money is being spent in that market so there are also money to be made. In this example a Credit Repair search on google provides 45,000,000 results. Thats great, you have just found a market where money is in circulation big time.

Competition is your friend, not your enemy so remember that fact. We are looking at simple market research at the moment, not how we are going to crush the competition. This comes later with powerful marketing techniques.

We know money is being made in this market but how can you get your slice of this Credit Repair niche? Go back to googles results again and visit the web sites of the advertisers and have a look for affiliate program links or do a search on google for Credit Repair affiliate Programs.

Have a look at what is on offer and what type of commission they pay their affiliates. Do they pay you for leads, commissions on sales or for simple clicks through to their web site. You can probably work out from this what web site traffic numbers you need to make a reasonable return on your efforts as an affiliate. Anything from 0.5% to 5% conversion on traffic is a reasonable gauge for this calculation depending on what marketing tactics you use.

If you like the profit potential of your financial niche after the initial market research then you are ready to move to Step 3. This is the stage where you need to ensure you have the commitment to proceed because very soon you will need to make some form of small financial outlay to get your affiliate marketing business off the ground.

Mark Fynn has been involved in affiliate marketing for over 7-years and regularly writes articles on the subject. Mark also runs a network of Financial Directories at Financial Directories

Copyright 2007 All Rights Reserved. Mark Fynn