When you are one of hundreds of marketers trying to sell the same product to the same customers, you had better have a plan to get your fair share of the market (or more!).

Every niche-market on the Internet is competitive, some more so than others of course. If it isn't competitive then there can't be much of a customer base to sell to anyway. That is just the nature of Internet marketing.

Maybe you do have a long list of paying customers. That's excellent! It means you have already won several of the affiliate marketing rounds. The problem is there are always those up and coming marketers who want your customers to be on THEIR mailing lists.

Your list and your competitor's lists will very likely contain many of the same names and email addresses. Just having a list will not be enough to assure you of ever increasing sales when selling a product. You have to create some ways that will assure that the people on YOUR list buy from you and not from your competition.

So what is it that I can do that will assure that my customers will buy from me? Nothing! Really, you won't get ALL of the business; some WILL buy from other affiliates, no question about it, but you CAN do some things to ensure you get a good percentage of the business.

What might one of those things be? Be UNIQUE!

You HAVE to be different from all the others. You have to offer something that sets you apart from all of the other affiliate marketers out there offering the same products to, potentially, the same lists of potential customers. Even if the lists are completely different (unlikely but possible), you still have to ACT as though the lists are identical. This way, you'll be certain to make yourself and your offers good enough to motivate people to buy from YOU.

There are several ways to achieve uniqueness. One way is to have established yourself as an expert in the field for which the product (or service like a membership site or insurance policy) is being sold. You have to have become credible. This credibility is not easily achieved. It takes a lot of time, effort and diligence.

Credibility is established by taking such measures as writing and marketing articles (like this one) and E-Books, posting to blogs and forums, appearing as an expert on webinars or interviewed by somebody who is already established as an expert in your field.

The fact is that when people know you and trust you, they will buy from you. They will buy from you even if your competition is offering a better deal or more incentives. Why?

Because people do not like to buy from people that they don't trust, and people don't trust strangers. It's a basic human survival tool. The Internet is a big and impersonal place to many people, and to make these people become consumers is no easy task. They want to feel like they know and trust the people that they are considering buying products from.

The time, effort and energy that you put into creating your credibility will the best time, effort and energy investment that you can make. Your reputation is EVERYTHING in the world of Internet marketing. Credibility will be one thing that makes you unique.

Another extremely important thing that you can do to ensure that your customers buy a product for which you are an affiliate is to give them a very good and compelling reason to make the purchase from you. Offer some extras that will enhance the value of the product that you are marketing. If it's software, then make the product more easily used, perhaps by offering a pdf eBook that you created to guide a first time user of the software.

If you are marketing an E-Book about Internet marketing, you could add one or two other E-Books concerning different aspects of Internet marketing.

Another free gift that people can't ever seem to get enough of is free software. There are many on the Internet and you can be sure that there are some that will fit right in with whatever product or service that you are promoting. Just because YOU know of some great free utility, doesn't mean that your potential customers know about it. Point it out to them with a free hyperlink.

While other marketers promoting the same product simply send out marketing emails that recommend the product to their lists, you will be ADDING VALUE to the product for no extra cost to your customer.

I'll talk more about enhancing the value of your offer in Part II.