Breaking into Affiliate Marketing is one of those kick me in the ass type subjects. Plenty of places to sign up to join, such as Pepperjam’s Affiliate Marketing program, Commission Junction / BFAST, Affiliate Fuel, LinkShare, Performics, eAdvertising and others… But my main problem with getting started is that I don’t know exactly what merchants are signed up with each one.

I know the niche I want to build my Affiliate site around already, so I also know my products. I don’t want to sell crap, and I know the difference between what is crap, and what isn’t. Right now I’m thinking of contacting a few dozen merchants myself and finding out what affiliate marketing programs they are signed up with, or possibly working directly with the merchants themselves….  Time passes by.

I contacted a major distributor / manufacturer and some of the larger merchants in my chosen niche.  Emailing them a quick introduction, explaining what I do now, as well as that I have 20 solid years of experience in the niche I would like to now start doing affiliate marketing.  No responses and it’s been over a week.  The folks from the Pepperjam Network did get back to me however, and told me to go check out some of their featured merchants.  Pepperjam Network also told me to sign up if I wanted to see them all.   A young guy named Gabriel Goldenberg posted a piece on @GrayWolf’s (Michael Gray’s) WolfsHowl blog about choosing an affiliate marketing niche but it didn’t answer my question about how to browse the merchants available without signing up first.  So I emailed Gabriel and he was nice enough to get back to me with the suggestion that I build something first and put some book reviews on the site, and then apply to the Amazon.com’s affiliate program.  Well, that’s right out of the AM books I had bought already – suggesting that I start there because that was easiest.  So I’m headed down that path right now.

Fortunately I found about a dozen recent YouTube videos interviews of as many different professionals in my former field of employment asking them which professional books they recommended. I’m starting my reviews with those interviews.

It’s now 10/27/09, Thanksgiving and I’m behind schedule on the work for the AM site.  That’s because of three or four (possibly as many as seven) other jobs in the meantime. One new site, possibly re-doing three, one I’ve been working on for some time, and one that is a “maybe” on SEO (owner went to RIO and the wireless let him download, but not upload – so I don’t know yet… plus a few small change little site tweaks.  The good news is that I’ve come up with two more good sources of info – one is a series of articles on how to set up a successful forum and the other is some software I can run on the domain that will allow people who join the network to upload photos to their accounts (which was something I wanted to do anyway) and it even emails them their passwords so they can set it all up themselves! (Cool!)

Meanwhile, I ordered “CRUSH IT” by Gary Vaynerchuk who runs Wine Library TV.  It’s a great book and I’m getting a lot out of it.  Very exciting stuff! I’m trying to get someone I know to start doing videos with me so I can put them on the site – it will help establish him as an expert and give him exposure.  Here’s another guy who does a Video Blog (VLOG) In My Mug – a guy in England who followed Gary’s model and THEN read his book.