This is a 6 parts articles everything about affiliate marketing your need to know to start as an affiliate.

Affiliate marketing is an outstanding way to get started making money online, because you don’t have to invest much (or any) money, you don’t have to have your own products, and you don’t have to deal with customer service or shipping.
All you really need to be successful in affiliate marketing is a strong desire to succeed and the knowledge to make it happen. I can’t give you the motivation you need, but I can certainly get you started with the knowledge you need.
In this report, you’re going to learn the basics of getting started with affiliate marketing. You’ll learn how to choose profitable niches, how to choose the right affiliate products to promote, and how to get traffic to your offers.
Everything I’m going to teach you will require little or no upfront investment, and very little technical knowledge. These are very basic techniques that absolutely anyone can learn!

The first thing you need to do is choose a niche to promote. This isn’t as easy as it sounds. You can’t just choose a niche – you must choose a profitable niche. Not every niche is going to be as profitable as you might hope.
I have chosen niches in the past that I truly expected to be profitable, yet despite my best efforts I was unable to find a single affiliate product that would convert well enough to make the effort worth the time involved.
Fortunately, I have learned how to lessen my chances of choosing dud niches. Just a few simple steps can help you eliminate some of the risk of choosing these unprofitable niches.

Brainstorming
Your first step is to make a list of niches you’re interested in promoting. Just make a long list of niches you think might be profitable, or that you’re just interested in promoting.
Don’t worry about anything other than making a list of 10-20 niches right now. If you need help, you can always look around you for inspiration.

Here are some places to seek inspiration:
• Look around your house. Things like kitchen appliances, outdoor barbecue equipment, office supplies, audio visual equipment, and musical instruments are all niches you might spot around your house.
• Browse a bookstore – either online or offline. Try Amazon.com or a bookstore in your local neighborhood. Browse the books or magazines.
• Take a look around news websites for hot topics. Check sites like Google Buzz for new trends.
Checking Potential Profitability
Once you have a list of 10-20 niche ideas, it’s time to start narrowing them down by checking out their potential profitability.

There are three main ways I do this:
1. I check to see if there are any magazines being published in the niche. This is sometimes, but not always an indicator that a niche might be profitable.
2. I check to see how many people are advertising on Google AdWords for the niche. People aren’t likely to advertise en masse in a niche that isn’t profitable, especially if the CPC is very high.
3. I check the MSN Commercial Intention tool for some of the most popular commercial websites in the niche. http://adlab.msn.com/Online-Commercial-Intention/
I really like the Commercial Intention tool. It’s pretty accurate. Let’s say I want to be an affiliate for golf equipment. I would enter something like “golf clubs” in the tool, select the “Query” radio button, and then click “Go”.

For the phrase “golf clubs”, the commercial intention is 0.97, which is almost a perfect 1.0. This means the niche is almost certanily profitable, as the vast majority of people who search for that phrase will probably be interested in buying.

The second part of this article is about “Keyword Research”.
Part 1 of 6