Finding the best affiliate programs is hard – very hard. I’m a very organized person with a great work ethic and I have put in many hours searching for the best and most profitable affiliate programs. Even though I don’t mind putting in the hours to find a great affiliate program, I always believe in working smarter, not harder. Here is how I find the affiliate programs that I make money with.

First I open a tab for “Google Suggestions.” I use this to get ideas on keywords to search. To do this, go to Google, click “more” and then click “even more.” Click on “Labs” and then on the bottom right-hand side, you will see “Suggest.” By typing in a basic search term like “how to” or “cure” Google will give you up to ten suggestions. This is great for generating ideas.

Next, I open my Keyword suggestion tool to check the number of searches for that particular keyword per month. You can go to and click on “keyword search.” Type in the keyword you are interested in and it will give you the number of times that keyword is used each day.

I then open another tab for Google. This should be a separate tab from the Google Suggest tab that you have open. With Google, I check the number of pages listed with that keyword to see how much competition there is. To do this more accurately, put your keyword in quotation marks. This narrows the search down to only your keyword phrase. This will give you a good idea of how much competition you will have.

A good rule of thumb is to look for keywords that are searched around 2,000 times per month with no more than 50,000 competing pages in Google. This will give you the best chance of getting on Google’s first page with an organic search.

A tab for ClickBank is the next tab that I open. I have found that ClickBank is the easiest place to search for affiliate programs when you are first starting to promote affiliate products. Go to ClickBank and set up an account if you don’t already have one.

Then, I check to see how many Google AdWords there are from other affiliate marketers. This is the best indication of whether or not there is money to be made by promoting this particular affiliate product. If you don’t see any Google AdWords for a particular product, chances are there isn’t any money to be made in that market.

By keeping all of these tabs open at the same time, I have access to each of these sites as I search for a great affiliate program to promote. This saves time and energy while doing keyword research.