After our last article, a number of readers emailed us questions about how to make money with an affiliate marketing program.

Here’s our best advice to you: If you want to join an affiliate marketing program and make lucrative commissions promoting that company’s products through your website, then you have got to find a viable niche market FIRST.

…Because if you join a bunch of different affiliate marketing programs and start promoting a bunch of different products to a large, unfocused, general group of people, you’re going to find it extremely difficult to succeed online.

You need to be able to identify a narrow, targeted group of people who share a common problem — and THEN offer them products that solve that problem. It’s the only way to guarantee your chance of success with an affiliate marketing program.

So. Before you even *think* of joining an affiliate marketing program, we strongly urge you to do extensive research using a keyword analysis tool such as the Google AdWords Keyword Tool or the keyword tool built into our complete point-and-click online business builder, BeBiz.

Or, if you want to save yourself many hours of time and effort, you could use our 5-Minute Business Finder software tool, which walks you through all the steps involved in keyword research and crunches the numbers for you so you can discover viable niche markets in five minutes or less. (Click here to learn more about this one-of-a-kind Internet marketing tool.)

Your keyword research will help you identify a niche market of people who are searching for a solution to a common problem without much success. Once you find your niche, only should you start searching for an affiliate marketing program to join. Look for a company that offers products your niche market would be interested in buying.

By recommending affiliate products you’re sure your market will love, you will go a long way to ensuring the success of your website.