Clickbank is truly one of the easiest and quickest ways to get started in affiliate marketing for amateurs just starting out. Clickbank allows you to create a decent residual income by simply selling other people's products (e-books) without the need for a merchant account or website.
Getting Started
Go to clickbank.com and register. Browse through the categories in their marketplace and find a product you want to promote and create your "hoplink" using this format: http://hop.clickbank.net/hop.cgi?nickname/merchant (replace nickname with your unique Clickbank user ID and merchant with the merchant ID you are promoting)
Defining Your Niche
The secret to succeeding in the dog eat dog world of affiliate programs is to find a niche where there is plenty of people active but not a lot of competition. An easy way to do this is by entering a search term for an e-book you would like to sell into Google and observe the amount of results. Then use a free keyword program like Overture and check out how many people search for that keyword per month. High amount of searches + Low Competition is the magic formula!
Attracting Customers
You can drive people to your affiliate link by using pay per click programs, putting your link in forums or signatures, creating an opt-in mailing list, a clickbank storefront (cblicks.com), a free blog or even placing a cheap ad in the newspaper. Pay attention to what others are doing to generate sales and traffic.
Remember, try try again until you find the best method that works for your products!
