Affiliate marketing is the process of selling products for the main product owner and collecting a commission for your work, once the sales start coming in. Almost since email and autoresponders were invented, this form of online marketing has been outrageously popular all around the world. What follows next is a discussion of some proven and tested strategies you can start using right away.

One mistake that many marketers make is failing to publish content that is of at least good quality for their blogs or websites. You will not find too many marketers who will argue that good quality content is not of value, and you'll find the best results with quality content that makes a good attempt to be useful to the reader. You'll get the worst results in terms of readership and conversions from low quality or even outdated content. You want people to read your content, and then hopefully they will convert either by signing-up for your newsletter or buying your products. Plus, of course you want people to have a desire to return to your site - site stickiness. The only way to make that happen is if you can produce quality content that people want to read. Just as a note, you'll want your content to be related to your affiliate offers, and vice versa. So don't make the mistake of promoting some affiliate product just because it has a high commission but isn't related to your content. Instead you should try to recommend only those products that go with your content, your site's theme and are high in quality. If content creation is a hassle, or a problem, then simply decide how much you can spend on a writer and then find one - the net is full of freelance article/content writers. But there shouldn't be any excuse for not having good content on your site, it's crucial to your affiliate marketing success.

Quality is almost always more important than quantity, it depends on what you're doing, but with affiliate marketing you want quality. You always should only promote and market those affiliate products and services that have true value and good quality. You don't want to get into a situation where you're marketing so many things that you cannot do a good job of it. If you're just starting out, take your time and make one product a profitable campaign after which you can choose another and keep moving forward. Try not to take on more than you can handle. You may juggle it for a while, but it can backfire on you.

Hopefully you understand the importance of solid market research before you get too involved with a project, among other things you need to learn the problems of your market so you know what to address in your marketing. If you drive targeted traffic to your site, and you know what your audience wants, then they'll find it when they arrive.

Increased knowledge and awareness of the problems, issues, and concerns of your target audience will naturally allow you to serve their needs better. There are many affiliate products that will not sell very well, for different reasons, but some marketers still try to promote them. A good way to directly interact with your visitors is to set up a blog where you can post different type of content that not only gives value but also gets you feedback. You could also employ polls on different pages on your blog, or static site, and ask different questions so you can get an excellent idea of what's on their mind.

All in all, affiliate marketing is not rocket science. You must take the time to educate yourself a little bit, and the most important thing to remember is take action. If it's your bag, then you can just do affiliate marketing and nothing else - it's up to you.