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Affiliate marketing can be a highly profitable online business however most new affiliates fail to make any significant income. This is largely due to inexperience, a lack of focus and the mistaken belief that the web traffic and money will somehow magically appear. As with any business affiliate marketing requires both hard work and knowledge before you will see profits.

Here are 6 tips to get your affiliate business headed in the right direction:

1. High Converting Product to Promote
Firstly do keyword research to ensure there is a demand for the product without too much competition. If there is it will be hard for you to get a slice of the market to profit from. If there is too much competition then it is better to move on to another affiliate product until you find one that has a high enough demand with less competition. It is an essential first step to identify a good niche market and matching product before investing any time or money in promotions.

2. Focus on One Product
One of the main reasons that many people fail when starting out affiliate marketing online is lack of focus as they follow the latest get rich quick offering from the gurus only to change to the next one after a short time. To succeed in online marketing of any kind it is vital to follow a plan and maintain focus on the tasks involved in that plan.

3. Set Yourself Apart
A good way to compete in any market against other affiliates is to be unique by offering some type of bonus that is relevant to the product. You may like to do some research and write a report that gives some added value or valuable tips that will help the purchaser do more with the product or increase their knowledge of the subject matter even more. Then all you need to do is write a review of the affiliate product discussing the things you like about it and the benefits that the customer will get when they purchase it and add your affiliate link for customers to purchase and a short paragraph telling the customer that if they purchase via your link they will get your bonus simply by emailing their receipt number to you.

4. Create a Squeeze Page
A good strategy is to have a squeeze page or opt-in page to collect the email addresses of your prospects before sending them to your affiliate page. By doing this you can have a series of messages scheduled in an autoresponder to follow-up with the prospective customer giving you more chances of making a sale. Most good affiliate products will have a series of emails already written for you to use making this an easy method to add to your promotions. To encourage potential customers to opt-in to your list you simply need to offer your bonus report free when they sign-up.

5. Drive Targeted Traffic
Driving traffic to your affiliate page is perhaps the most difficult and important part of the affiliate marketing puzzle. It is also what usually brings most would-be affiliates undone as most fail to follow a plan of action and persist long enough to see results. It is also a good idea to combine a number of traffic strategies which will combine to become effective as a whole.

6. Copy Successful Affiliate Marketers
One of the best strategies when starting out online is to copy one of the successful affiliate marketers. As in any business those that are successful have done the testing and uncovered what works and what doesn't so copying their marketing strategies will drastically speed up the results of your marketing efforts.

Using the above tips and focusing on promoting one product at a time will greatly improve your chances of becoming a successful affiliate marketer where most new affiliates fail and go back to their day jobs. Attention to detail, hard work, and following a plan are the keys to success in any business and affiliate marketing is no exception.

Copyright * 2007 Colin Wolfenden