Affiliate marketing 101 includes knowing your customer. This is the most basic of all skills needed to be successful at affiliate marketing and yet so few recognize this as a necessity. You won’t sell a thing if you don’t know why someone is looking for a particular product. All of the technical aspects of marketing online can be taught, but the ability to know your customer is a bit of an art form.

Many of those new to affiliate marketing begin by finding a product and putting up a website. They dream of all of the massive amounts of income they are going to make only to be bitterly disappointed when the reality falls short of the dream. Even if they are lucky enough to be getting large amounts of traffic, if what you’re offering isn’t what this traffic wants, then you aren’t going to make any sales.

The key to being successful in marketing is to drive what is called “targeted” traffic to your offer. Targeted simply means you are matching product and buyer. It’s not enough to offer big screen TV’s if you don’t know what type people are looking for, what search terms they are using to get there, and most importantly why they would want the particular TV that you’re offering. Affiliate marketing 101 includes a dialogue between yourself and your potential customer by telling them how the TV you’re offering will be exactly what they need and are looking for.

How do you do this? You go where your customers are and find out what they are saying that they want or need. Forums are the best way to ask questions and find out what people are buying and why they’re buying it. Sure, they might be looking for a 52” LCD TV, but what would make them buy one particular model over another?

To truly answer this question you have to figure out what emotional trigger would get them to pull out their credit card. Sure, the TV has great resolution and a lot of bells and whistles, but you have to create a vision in the customer’s mind of what his life would be like if he had this TV.

Would he be the envy of all of his friends? Would that big game pop and become that much more exciting with the TV you’re offering? Will his WoW game be at a whole new level of playing experience? These are the real reasons that someone might buy a 52” TV. Once you speak to these desires, you’ll have buyers pulling out their credit cards time and again.

If you are trying your hand at affiliate niche marketing and have thus far been unsuccessful, take a second look at how you are speaking to your customers. Are you talking specifically to them, or are you generalizing your ad copy. Knowing your customer is the most basic and yet most important aspect of making money online. Affiliate marketing 101 should teach this as the most important first step to marketing online.

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