In the coming days and weeks I will publish a sequence of articles trying to cover all steps to a lucrative business of affiliate marketing. This is the first article and it is intended to explain the idea of affiliate marketing to people who are just starting to look for information on the subject. I will also show some ways to find a product to choose to promote.

This article is not meant for skilled marketers or for people who are familiar with affiliate marketing and with the process of identifying products to promote, as it will discuss only the very basics. Hopefully some of the future articles will cover advanced steps, which even veteran marketers will find beneficial.

Let me begin by answering the question "What is affiliate marketing anyway? I like to compare Affiliate Marketing to the California Gold Rush. The treasures are there and they only need to be discovered. However, to get to the point: if you are an affiliate marketer of a certain product, the merchant or the product publisher will pay you a commission each and every time he or she makes a sale as a result of traffic you have sent to their sale page.

Roughly, you'll find three types of products: material ones - from shoes to yachts; information products - videos, software, ebooks, that are instantly downloaded to the purchaser's computer; and subscriptions to newsletters, registrations to a course etc. Thousands and thousands of sellers pay commission to affiliates for purchases and for leads.

As I said, the treasures are there, all over the world of affiliate marketing. The question is how one discovers it. It is a fact that many newbies in this field find that their first step - choosing the right product - is the hardest step on the road to successful affiliate marketing.

I will show you a few ways to find it:

1. Think of a product that you have purchased online and were very happy with. Try to become an affiliate. Visit the product's web site or sales page and click on the link to the "affiliate program." You can read there all the details you would want to know.

2. Do you have any hobbies? Things you know a lot about like a sport, music, cooking, whatever. You may also participate in forums in which your interests are discussed. This will be very helpful in the future when you promote products associated with your hobbies. Let's assume you like sewing; you have a lot of information about cloth, patterns, and sewing machines. Look for any kind of product in the field of sewing which you can easily promote.

3. Think of products that are on the hot list in the United States, do a little research and find out if the Europeans heard about them. If not yet, promote these products in Europe only, using the different pay per click programs that let you choose the areas where your ads are shown. The same can be done with a product that you've found in any foreign country and is not yet known in the US

4. Follow the popular products on your kids' list. Talk to them and to their friends or to any group of teenagers to find out what they like. These are usually best selling items.

5. Subscribe to or buy regularly some popular publications. Follow the reports on the newest fads and fashions.

6. And let's not forget the obvious: register to become an affiliate at Commision Junction, ClickBank and other Providers of affiliate programs. Search their marketplace to find their best selling products.

In a couple of days I will publish Part 2 of the step-by-step plan to lucrative affiliate marketing.