What Makes A Good Affiliate Marketing Guide

Like many online marketers, I've read I don't know how many affiliate marketing guides in the past few years.

All claim to have the answers to making unlimited money online, have all the secrets that nobody knows about, and with very little effort, if you read their guide, you will be rolling in money...probably by next week.....

Now, all this sounds very appealing....so we trudge off trying to find the "easiest way" to make money online......reading ebook after ebook looking for "the edge" .....or simply, where to actually start.

After a short time.....depending on what you have read....chances are you will end up feeling frustrated, confused and looking like the image above.

Information Fragments or Information Overload

Some guides are extremely good at giving you fragmented information.

They give you little "snippets" here and there....but don't give you the overall picture.

You understand what they are saying, but in terms of combining this "snippet" into say a workable campaign, they fall short.

Others literally give you pages and pages of ....words. Seems like they have just regurgitated everything they know or have learnt in a haphazard attempt to make you believe that you are reading the most conisise and up to date guide on the planet.

Yet when you finish reading, you are have absolutely no idea how to replicate anything discussed because you have been given so many options and possibilities.....in short, you are probably more confused than before you started reading.

So what sort of guides should you be looking for?

I have read some of the longest waffly guides around....and so have you probably.

I'd be lying if I said I didn't get at least a small bit of new information out of most of them....but as for a guide that once I put it down I said "yeh....I can do that" and just went off and started something using it as a base.....well, they are few and far between.

So what made the "few" different from the hundreds of others?

• They were resonably short and "filler free"
• They focussed on ONE TECHNIQUE

• They were "step by step" guides (do this like this, then do this like this....then go here and do that...from start to finish whithout leaving anything out)

• They used real case studies as examples to replicate
• They used both written and visual means of explaining important points
• The didn't cost something ridiculous!

So where do you find step by step affiliate marketing guides?

Funnily enough, the guides that I have found most useful and that fit the criteria above have not been written by.....err..."gurus"

I'm not saying "guru material" isn't any good, but I think some of the newer marketers material is much more relevant, current and they have a habit of just "telling it like it is", being straight forward.... rather than withholding information. (because, lets face it, if a guru told you "exactly how" to do something in the first place....you wouldn't have any need for their next product....and the next and the next......etc etc.)

For example, the easy step by step guide to help ANYONE get their first affiliate sales called One Week Marketing Action Plan doesn't overwhelm with information or confuse the reader with too many choices. It's a straight forward, step by step blueprint that anyone can follow that works.

What any affiliate marketing guide WON'T be able to help you with

As a zillion people have said before.....any guide you read will do nothing if you just let the information slosh around in your brain and not get it activated into "life" online.

That's why I think the simple step by step guides are the best place to either start, or for when you just need to "trash everything" and start fresh.

Another big thing (well I think so) is to track, test and get stats on "everything possible" with whatever you do online. Whether it be your web page copy, an affiliate link, your traffic keywords, your competition.......!

It might seem a pain at first....but the time it will save and the information you will aquire will be invaluable.