7 Simple Affiliate Marketing Tips for Success

These fundamental tips will help you earn online if you're not already, or help you earn more if you're neglecting any of these in the list.

Select a Niche You Know About Or Have An Interest In

This is one of the most common pieces of advice I have seen online. While it's not necessary to choose a topic you know about, a small amount of interest is at least required or you WILL get tired of working on a website on a topic you could care less about.

The benefits of working on a niche you're interested in is twofold. It will be easy to keep yourself motivated to work on the site because you actually enjoy working on it, and when you write content you will be able to call on your expertise to produce quality content that people are actually interested in reading or will find useful.

Banners Just Don't Convert

Slapping up a couple banners on your site is unfortunately not the way to get affiliate sales. Not only will this make your site really ugly if you have a lot of banners, but they just won't earn you much.

You need incontent links and banners where the user's eyes actually are. This is one of the reasons why I like using PHPBay - it's so simple to insert a couple relevant Ebay auctions which my readers are going to see and click on.

Diversify Your Income Streams

It's never a good idea to put all your eggs in one basket. Another easy way to profit from your site is with Google Adsense - personally Adsense earns me roughly 30% of my online revenue each and every month. If something happens with any of my other revenue streams then I can always count on Adsense to bring me money each and every month.

Experiment with other relevant affiliate programs that look promising. Test, test, test - see what converts for you and what doesn't.

Targeted Traffic is Your Lifeblood

Without traffic you will not see any earnings at all.

But, the keyword here is TARGETED. I see too many webmasters participating in things like surf or traffic exchanges, or worse yet outright buying traffic. Whether or not these visitors from these programs are even real at all, I'm not sure. But there's one thing I do know, they are certainly not targeted in any way.

Chances are they have no interest in your site or your topic, so you will see no clicks or sales from participating in these kinds of programs.

Your best bet is either through natural free search traffic from Google, or targeted PPC campaigns.

Quality Content and Links Are Vital

These two aspects will make or break a website. A website can have a great link profile but if it's content is junk it will suffer tremendously. And the sword cuts the other way as well, if your content is awesome but you have very few links don't expect much in terms of traffic.

What you need to do is focus on both of them relatively equally - though some argue you should spend the majority of your time building links. Whatever you do, just don't neglect either one!

Don't Forget Targeted Keyword Research

With keyword research you will be able to find out what you should focus your articles on, and what anchor texts you should be using when you build backlinks to your site.

For the newer sites I build I like to focus my efforts on uncompetitive niche keywords because I strive to get that site earning for me as quickly as possible. I have also noticed by focusing on content which Google has very little information on, often times I will avoid the dreaded Google Sandbox.

See if this also happens to you.

Your Domain Is the First Thing They Will See, Make It Good

While you don't have to spend $1,000+ on a premium domain, I don't advise using .info or domains with 5 hyphens in them. There are plenty of relevant brandable domains still on the market, you just have to brainstorm for them.

If you're stuck for ideas, it might be a good idea to have someone else do the thinking for you. Services like pickydomains.com will send you plenty of domains you might want to register, or you can run a domain suggestion contest on your favorite webmaster forum.

Education Is Never-Ending, This Industry Changes Fast

If one things for sure, the internet is constantly changing and at a fast pace. Read at least an article a day to keep abreast of these changes, the last thing you want to do is keep yourself in a cave. The industry is becoming more and more competitive as time goes on, so keeping yourself educated on these new changes is a must.