In the coming days and weeks I will publish a sequence of articles trying to cover all steps to a lucrative business of affiliate marketing. This is the first article and it is intended to explain the idea of affiliate marketing to people who are just starting to look for information on the subject. I will also show some ways to find a product to choose to promote.

This article is not meant for skilled marketers or for people who are familiar with affiliate marketing and with the process of identifying products to promote, as it will discuss only the very basics. Hopefully some of the future articles will cover advanced steps, which even veteran marketers will find beneficial.

Let me begin by answering the question “What is affiliate marketing anyway? I like to compare Affiliate Marketing to the California Gold Rush. The treasures are there and they only need to be discovered. However, to get to the point: if you are an affiliate marketer of a certain product, the merchant or the product publisher will pay you a commission each and every time he or she makes a sale as a result of traffic you have sent to their sale page.

Roughly, you’ll find three types of products: material ones - from shoes to yachts; information products - videos, software, ebooks, that are instantly downloaded to the purchaser’s computer; and subscriptions to newsletters, registrations to a course etc. Thousands and thousands of sellers pay commission to affiliates for purchases and for leads.

So, you see, the gold is there, all over Internet Marketing World. The question is how to find it. And, indeed, many people who decide to try affiliate marketing discover that the first step they need to take, i.e. finding the right product to promote, is the most difficult part of the whole process.

I will show you a few ways to find it:

1. Promote a product that you have bought online and really liked. The way to do it is to go back to the merchant’s website or sales letter, look for a link that says “affiliates” and click on it. There you will find how to become an affiliate and what the terms are. Subscribe for free and start promoting the product.

2. Start thinking about your hobbies, things you are interested in, things you have knowledge about. Perhaps you are a member of some forums in which you discuss your passion. This will help you a lot later, in your promotions. Let’s say you like basketball; you know everything about the game, the teams, and the players. Start searching for products that are associated with basketball, find their affiliate programs and start promoting them.

3. Try to think of something that is very popular in the United States, but hasn’t reached Europe yet, register to become an affiliate and start a Google Adwords campaign in France or in Great Britain. And, vice versa. Perhaps you’ve been to Europe and discovered a great product that is not yet known in North America. Contact the production company and start promoting it in the US.

4. Talk to your children and/or other teenagers and try to find out what their newest fads are. Teenagers are great customers.

5. Read popular magazines and see what new fashions and products they report about.

6. And last but not least: join one of the big Affiliate Program Providers, such as Commission Junction, ClickBank, to name just the biggest ones, but there are more out there which will offer you thousands of products to promote.

In a couple of days I will publish Part 2 of the step-by-step plan to lucrative affiliate marketing.