Are you ready to really start making some serious money?

I’ll let you in on a little secret. The only way that you can make money like this without a huge amount of investment and risk is affiliate marketing. No where else is it possible to make this much money fast, not even in the offline world. In the face our dismal economy, being able to start your own business up online is not only attractive, it makes a good deal more sense than wasting months sending out resumes no one pays any attention to. The answer to your dilemma is affiliate niche marketing programs.

I will warn you that you do have a lot of stuff to learn, but it will be worth the effort.

If you don’t educate yourself about how the Internet works and what the proper procedures are, you will be hard pressed to make money even in affiliate niche marketing programs. Make it a point to learn your trade from the pros and the sky will be the limit on your earnings. Every newcomer to affiliate marketing has to deal with this learning curve. Nothing you have done offline can prepare you for the ins and outs of Internet marketing.

You will need to learn all about important tools and measurements.

The fastest way to make money at affiliate niche marketing programs will be to make sure you know how to take advantage of things like:

o Keyword Tools

o Market Demographics

o Hot product locaters

o Social Marketing

o Search Engine Optimization

o Pay Per Click

o Organic Search

o Copywriting

o Publishing

o Website Building

o Article Marketing

o Video Marketing

o and more

Are you worried about the down economy melting down your money making ability online?

That will never happen with affiliate niche marketing programs. The exact opposite is more like it. The harder merchants find it to reach the ready buyers for their services and products, the more money they will be willing to pay successful affiliate marketers. In 2008, over $2,000,000,000 (yes, billions) was paid out to affiliate marketers for their performance online.

That is how you spell income security, with 9 zeros after it.

How big a piece of that pie do you want? You can have as much of it as you earn. The more successful marketers there are taking advantage of affiliate niche marketing programs, the more zeros will be added to the total payout for any calendar year. What are you waiting for? There is definitely money to be made and you don’t even have to leave home to claim your share.

You may have heard about Myspace, the News Corp.-owned social networking powerhouse. Or Facebook, the rapidly growing network which is presently independent but might one day be owned by Google, Yahoo!, NBC, Tribune Co., or any other media company which recognizes the site’s massive potential for consumer leverage.

In a sense, marketing on the internet uses high technology to advance a very low-tech agenda. Like any offline marketing campaign from years ago, generating business demand online still boils down to an objective understanding of your product or service’s utility. You still need an informed and unbiased view of your target market. Effective and efficient use of the marketing mix (price, product, placement, promotion) is as important today as it was decades ago. None of this has changed.

But the dawn of the internet introduced a new variable: a breadth of consumer touch points previously unfathomable to most marketers. Social media are among the most promising channels; according to Nielsen/NetRatings, the top ten social networking sites grew 47% in 2006.

Now a company has a variety of ways to appear in front of its audience. Take Jalima Coffee as an example. This manufacturer of organic Mexican coffee differentiates itself from competitors with a strong prosocial mission, and hired Clicksharp Marketing to inject this brand image into new channels. One of the co-owners used LinkedIn to introduce the business community to her background in non-profit and international development. The company posted a video on YouTube documenting the manufacturing process and sharing a unique slice of culture with its viewers. Jalima’s Myspace profile is linked to over 500 friends: mainly coffee lovers and advocates of sustainable agriculture. Whenever the company’s marketing department chooses, they have an immediate channel with which to communicate news and events, product introductions, or just to say hello.

Moral of the story – forget what you may have heard about the typical user of any of these sites. Their convergence is taking place rapidly and ubiquitously. The sooner you join the network, the sooner you can forge meaningful connections with the stakeholders that are key to your business!

For more, I highly recommend reading Michelle MacPhearson’s Social Media Marketing Guide.