... of markets am I talking about? Well, there are quite afew. Industries like travel, web hosting, and dating come tomind. One just has to look at the typical commissions beingoffered to marketers to promote these types of products torealize that there is quite a large mark-up on these services,and therefore mounds of competition.However, there is one industry that trumps them all: thefinancial industry. Whether it is mortgages, loans, orinvestments, there is simply no other ma...

...rket that even comesclose to the amount of fierce competition and ultra-highcommissions than financial products. The financial market thatI'd like to discuss in this article is the credit card market."In Short, It's Where The Money Is... Literally."Credit card companies have been marketing their cards onlinesince the early days of affiliate marketing. Back then, they hadaffiliate programs that would pay out anywhere from $10 to $20per completed credit card application. With increasedcompetition, and more people putting their trust into the webthan ever before, this situation has drastically changed.Now, online marketers can pull in a commission of around $30 to$40 for each referral and completed application. This is morethan double the commissions being made as recently as five yearsago, and more accurately reflects the high profit margins andlifetime value of the customer to the credit card company.With such high commissions, hordes of marketers flock to pushthese offers on PPC networks such as Google Adwords andOverture, skyrocketing the bid levels up to astronomicalheights. It is for this reason that many less brazen marketersshy away from this market, and may even feel intimidated by it.But rest assured, even with such a high level of marketpenetration, there is ample opportunity for a savvy marketer toexperience very handsome profits."The Secret To Success In This Market Is... "The secret is that a marketer needs to be crafty to succeed inthis market. You can't just blindly throw up a PPC campaign,outbid whoever is in the #1 position, and hope to profit. It'sjust not that simple – this is a mature market. Instead, thebest strategy is to uncover ways of sending prospects to theoffers that are often overlooked. The fact is, there areunlimited amounts of ways to send leads to highly profitableoffers, without paying upwards of $10 per click to do so.Let me just give you one idea to get your mind working. If yousell anything online, then you have probably had the experienceof a customer asking if they can pay by check or money order.Even if you have not had a customer ask this, it's likely thatsome customers are leaving your site if the only option is topay by credit card. What better time than that, to put a linksaying “Need a credit card?”Those who don't will just ignore it. And those who do could nothave been your customer anyway, since you only accept creditcards. In that case, you provide them with something that theyneed and also give them the opportunity to buy your product withthe very credit card you referred them to (and pocketed a $40commission for doing so).You'd be surprised at how effective this method is, and it costsyou nothing. You turn a lost customer into a paying customer,and get paid $40 for doing so. What could be better?There Are Dozens of Simple And Low Cost Ways To MarketHighly-Competitive ProductsIf you use your head, you can uncover dozens of simple tacticslike this to promote highly profitable markets and products atminimal cost. These techniques don't just work for marketingcredit cards – they work for any high-demand, high-margin,commodity product. So get cracking, and stop shying away fromthe competition. Thrive on it!