How important is it to market your affiliate programs? It is VERY important. It is the difference between success and failure. The more time you spend marketing your affiliate programs, the more successful you are. The more successful you are, the more money you will make.

Statistics indicate that 90% of affiliates make little or no money from their affiliate programs. They spend an average of 15% of their time on marketing. Do you want to be in the 90% group or do you want to be in the remaining 10% group?

Marketing affiliate programs is challenging and requires more than 15% of your time. Not only are you trying to get people to buy a product, you are competing with thousands of other affiliates trying to sell the same product!

Spend more time marketing your programs than the other affiliates and you'll earn more money. If the other affiliates spend more time than you marketing their programs who do you think is going to succeed?

Just because you have to work hard marketing your programs does not mean you have to spend a fortune doing so. There are many effective, low cost and free marketing methods that work very well.

MARKETING TIPS:

Learn as much as you can about search engines and how they rank websites. Once you learn how that process works, spend as much time as possible trying to get a high ranking in the search engines for your site.

Write your own articles on subjects related to your website and post them on a separate page on your site. Once you have posted them on your site, submit them to the article resource sites.

Find out if any of your affiliate programs have articles on their website. If they do, find out if you can post those articles to your site. At the end of each of those articles, place your affiliate link that links back to the affiliate site.

Use Newsgroups to promote your sites by announcing new articles that you have written. Make sure you read the rules for each newsgroup before posting to it.

Subscribe to newsletters and ezines that are related to the theme of your website. They not only provide a great source of information, they also present another opportunity for advertising your affiliate programs. Make sure you read their advertising guidelines.

CHOOSING AFFILIATE PROGRAMS:

There are many thousands of affiliate programs on the net that you can join. How do you decide which programs to join? There are two options to choose from.

First, you can join as many programs as possible. This guarantees that at least a few of them will pay off, MAYBE.

The other option is to target your affiliate programs and choose a select few. By choosing only a small number, you will be able to concentrate all of your time and effort in marketing those and only those programs. This will drive more traffic your way.

Before you decide on which programs to join, spend some time researching the major affiliate programs. Once you are equipped with enough information, it will be easier to narrow down your options.

If you are having trouble reducing your field of possibilities, find an area that you are particularly interested in. If you have an interest in selling antique jewelry and you find there are only two affiliate programs that are devoted to this, join those two programs. You can then focus all of your marketing methods specifically to those two programs.

TIPS FOR BUILDING YOUR WEBSITE:

Are you thinking of starting your own website but not sure if you should? Read the following tips for building a site that will draw visitors and make sales.

The most important advice for building a good website is content, content, content. Your visitors want good quality content and they want a lot of it. Fill your site with articles (including other people's articles as long as they fit your site's theme), tips, and details of all the products and services on your site

Make sure you have a page that contains your contact information. Always list your name, your email address, and any other pertinent information. When visitors see that you are available to contact, they will be much more likely to trust you and click on your links!

Use a simple, no fuss style and layout with easy to find, well-marked links. (You must make it easy for your visitors to find your affiliate links!) Sites that are full of graphics and are complicated to maneuver around in do not work for affiliate sites. Keep it simple. Also, by keeping your graphics to a minimum, your site will load much quicker.