How to Start an Online Business

Every day there's at least one person who discovers 'affiliate marketing' for the first time. And, every day, there's at least one person, maybe that person is you, who goes back to the drawing board trying to figure out why they haven't yet succeeded as wildly as they'd hoped.

No matter which category you fall into, I'd like to share some concepts with you that might make all the difference in the world to your future success. In fact, you just might learn from this article the one thing that helps you start earning real money.

It really all comes down these two mistakes that beginner's make:

1. Promoting to many products at once (lack of focus), and..
2. Giving up too soon.

These two mistakes are related, and are actually self-reinforcing. It sounds obvious enough, but let me explain exactly how this scenario plays out.

Lack of Focus:

Experienced affiliate marketers do have the ability to promote several products, sometimes far afield from each other, at the same time. The reason they can do this is because they'd already learned and applied certain fundamental skills, and have developed a system for themselves which works to bring in sales consistently.

As a beginner, however, you're still learning what works and what doesn't. For that reason alone, you need a clearly defined testing ground – and this means limiting your promotion to just one product when you first start out.

Just imagine for a moment if you were in a laboratory. You're working with a new chemical and need to determine its boiling point, solubility, molecular weight and so on.

Would it be quicker and easier for you to accomplish this by working with just that one chemical, or by juggling multiple, other chemicals all at the same time...starting one experiment and then rushing over to another one midway through?

Obviously, it would be easier to work with just the one chemical, right?

Well, the same is true for marketing. Just like the variables in your lab experiment, you've also got variables in every product promotion you undertake. The variables include things like traffic generation, conversion rates, advertising response rates and so on.

So, how much data do you want to juggle? Do you want to keep track of, say, Google Adwords performance for ONE e-book...or for a dozen of them spread across more than one niche?

This is where a lot beginners get themselves into a rut. They try to juggle all of this information at once, get overwhelmed by it and simply give up.

Giving Up Too Soon:

Ok, so, information overload hits, and you throw your hands in the air in surrender.

There's no need to despair!

You can turn the situation around completely if you'll just make a commitment to do the following three things:

1. Pick ONE niche market
2. Pick ONE product from that market
3. Use just that one niche product as your testing ground, in order to solidify your skills as an affiliate marketer.

You see, its a lot like learning to ride a bicycle as a kid. You start off with a tricycle, then move up to regular bike with training wheels and from there onto riding any bike you choose.

The same is true for learning how to promote products as an affiliate. nn*Learn how to generate traffic on just one productn*Learn how to capture subscribers to your opt-in list for just one productn*Learn how to write advertisements and promotional copy for just one productn*Learn how to track your advertising links and conversion rates for just that one product....nn....and THEN, you'll be able to turn around and apply that knowledge to additional products, in different niches.

The key is to get some real results established in one place, and only then start building on that incrementally.

If you'll follow even just this one simple rule, I promise you'll see an increase in your commissions – and you can drop that 'newbie' label for the title of: Successful Affiliate Marketer!