How do you get started?

[Kizzy]

From reading, I have concluded that the best place to start is having a idea of what you want to promote. You don't necessarily have to prior knowledge of what you are promoting, but once you have decided to do it, you do some research and get intimate knowledge of the product so you can promote from an experienced perspective.

[Karl]

The gurus recommend that you find a hot niche, one that is in high demand, that way you can be sure to have a ready market. The flip side to this is that you have much more competition, so you really have to pull out all the stops to be successful.

[EGS]

Originally Posted by Karl

The gurus recommend that you find a hot niche, one that is in high demand, that way you can be sure to have a ready market. The flip side to this is that you have much more competition, so you really have to pull out all the stops to be successful.

Ditto, that's pretty much a n00b guide right there.

Find a niche that you think you can handle, and market it. Generate backlinks and do some SEO work, and you'll be good.
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[Green-Moo]

If you've not got a niche, why would anyone visit your site? There's so much rubbish on the net, that we can all recognise a site set up just for affiliate links now and click straight back out again.

[shudogg]

It doesn't matter about your site. I go through domains every few days. If you are into Adwords, then find something out of the box that you want to promote. Don't do what everyone else is doing. There are a few reasons. You will pay more per click, meaning less clicks for your budget. This means less chances to make money. So if you do something not too high in competition, you can just broadcast freely. Then tweaking your keywords. If you use the adwords tool, i suggest not using the keywords that have a high competition. Also use keywords that relate to what you are running. If you are running for "Age Reducing Cream", then you might want to keep "lotion" out. Now "Age Lotion" or "Wrinkle Lotion" will be okay, but just the term lotion is too broad. The key is getting a nicely targeted audience that will convert and not waste your clicks. If they aren't looking for "Age Reducing Cream" but are looking for "Suntan Lotion" then you don't want to even show your ad to them. If they click it, they will not convert.

You don't have to SEO anything. You can setup a domain and get thousands of visitors right away. To get more use out of your domain, use a general one. Say you are running a promotion for the Nintendo WII... Make your domain something like www.hott-console.com or something. Then if your ad expires, doesn't perform, or you want to push another ad at the same time, you can use the same domain. You could then create www.hott-console.com/xbox/ and point adwords to that url. Now you have two campaigns off one domain.

[xaasid]

Shudogg is pretty right spot on!