Everyone has a differing opinion on what is needed to become a successful affiliate marketer and this includes opposing views on whether you should or should not have your own website. It is true that you can conduct affiliate marketing without a website, but I believe that a web site should be a mandatory aspect of you building your business. Considering that a number of the marketing methods available are used whether you have a site or not you might as well have sight together with a list building element for future growth.

You need to establish the niche you would like to promote- your starting point could be an interest, so that you are comfortable with the content of the subject. If you wish to promote digital products you can search ClickBank to determine if there is a good match for your chosen area of interest.

Check demand, is your chosen area popular. Often opinion would suggest that an area full of competition should be avoided, but remember that this is also where the money is so is there something you could be doing better, your site, free offers etc.

Conduct keyword research for your chosen product, dig deep for popular search terms with limited competition so that you can build marketing campaigns. It is possible to find popular and competitive niches with long tail keywords that allow you to compete in even the most competitive of areas. To achieve this and save hours of detailed I suggest to invest in some specialist keyword research tools such as WordTracker or Keyword Elite.

Purchase a domain and arrange hosting. I suggest the world’s #1 domain name registrar GoDaddy.com Your domain ideally needs to have your chosen main keyword in it, at the very least some link to the niche you are looking to market.

Build your own site so you can implement list building techniques to secure the traffic and direct it to your merchants site. It could be a review page or a squeeze page web site.

Your site will require a opt-in form and be coded to accept a third party auto responder such as AWeber.

In exchange for your visitors name and email address, you need to offer them a valuable free gift, this could be a free report, software, membership linked to the product your promoting.

A follow up series of email messages-it is a well known fact that if some one is going to buy it may take several looks at the offer before purchasing.

You need to have an affiliate marketing strategy, including what methods of promoting you are going to use and over what period ot time you are going to measure these results and evaluate what to do next.

Remember the important factors are the quality of the product and the reliability of the affiliate scheme. Before promoting any product be sure of the products value, remember your reputation is on-line when promoting a product of your choice and it is you that are giving it your vote of confidence.

Also be sure that you are confident in the affiliate scheme to pay you what you are owed and on time. Lastly any good affiliate scheme should provide you with as much support as is possible in the way of ads for your promotions.