Top Affiliate Tools Every Marketer Needs To Succeed # 2 - A Handbook

It's all very well having a great affiliate website but if you don't know what to do with it then you'll never earn your full potential online.

A great handbook shows you how to set up & run successful businesses you can grow.

All chefs know that the greatest careers are built on strong foundations.

And almost all chefs built their foundations by learning their skills following recipes out of a book.

What's this got to do with your affiliate business?

Everything.

You see like a great meal, a successful and enjoyable holiday, a well constructed house or any other project that has many ingredients and variables, it's always a good idea to have some guides to help you get the best out of your efforts.

• Cookery books.
• Travel guides & maps.
• Building manuals & DIY handbooks.

And for those embarking on a new career in affiliate marketing, the equivalent is a great handbook to help to show you a genuine method to achieve success.

But Who Do You Trust In The Affiliate World?

Truth is that there are many scam artists on the internet, and the affiliate industry has it's fair share of 'Gurus' who claim that they can make you rich over night!

You've probably read the claims like:

• Work for 1 hour a day and make millions.
• Earn over $1000 in the next 24 hours.
• Get rich while you sleep.
• The easiest way to earn 6 figures with no effort.

Come on, if it was so easy wouldn't we all be using their method?

Truth is that like any successful business, online or off, some planning and effort, dare I say some thinking and hard work, is required in order to build a truly successful and lucrative income stream.

So, Who's Affiliate Handbook Do You Trust?

I want to tell you about the people who I do trust and have given me some great advice and guidance whilst I set up my affiliate businesses.

• All of them have worked hard, had their own initial failures and then worked out how to be successful.
• All of them run successful online affiliate business websites that you can take a look at and see that they actually practice what they preach.
• And all of them have websites that give you advice, continuous development and help so that once you have set up your websites you can continue to learn and build your affiliate business.

Who Are These Super Affiliates That I Trust?

Ros Gardner - The very first book I bought on Affiliate Marketing was Ros Gardner's 'Super Affiliate Handbook'. And I have to tell you that the title isn't a lie.

Ros earns over $400,000 a year from her string of affiliate websites that she has developed over the last 10 or so years.

Her story is one about a frustrated office worker, well an air traffic controller actually, who discovered the internet and then put her effort into developing a business promoting other peoples goods and services in return for a commission - Affiliate selling in a nutshell.

I thoroughly recommend you take a look at my review of her handbook, 'The Super Affiliate Handbook' and consider taking Ros advice on setting up your own super affiliate business.

James Martell - James career and introduction to affiliate marketing couldn't have been more different to Ros's. James, a carpenter by trade, found that he just wasn't earning enough to keep his family finances on the right side of black.

At first James tried his hand at selling on the internet. He tells you his story in his excellent affiliate buzz sessions that you can listen to on this website.

James had limited success with this and then moved on to try his hand at affiliate marketing. He tells of his first big failure, promoting a company that went out of business owing him money!

But then James developed his own very successful method of affiliate marketing and found success. You can read about how James came a cropper and how you can avoid making the same fatal mistakes in his excellent 'Affiliate Marketers Handbook' that I review.

Chris McNeeney - Here again is a very different story. Chris, from the UK, has developed and written some of the most thought provoking handbooks on intermediate and advanced methods of affiliate marketing.

Chis stormed the internet in 2004 with his very first book called 'Adsense Miracle' where he looks at how to turn those little 3 line ads into a huge revenue stream. This book became an instant best seller.

I must say that although the methods were highly successful then, they are less so now due to Google changing it's rules on use of Adsense, though many of the teaching techniques, especially on writing highly clickable ads, are still worth reading.

Next Chris released 'Affiliate Project X' in 2006. This time he looked at 6 clever and sometimes devious ways of generating affiliate incomes.

I am not a fan of all of Chris's methods, I personally like building long term business websites not 'get in quick and try and make a killing' websites that Chris tends towards.

However I can not knock that if you follow Chris's advice you could make a lot of money.

WARNING: Not for beginners!

Final Thoughts

Whether you like any of these books or not I strongly advise you to follow someone's advice when building your first affiliate business website.

There is nothing more disheartening than spending months on a project only to find that it isn't working.

Save yourself heartache and hassle and get your hands on a good affiliate handbook to guide you to success.

Read my reviews of the Best Affiliate Handbooks & Courses