You have probably heard "the money is in the list" at least a thousand times. But it is true; the money is in the list.

There is no doubt about it, 99% of people making money online have an email list. But you already knew that.

What you don't know is how they got those coveted lists of email addresses that allow them to contact prospects over and over again.

To be very honest with you, most people who have built a big email list have their own product. But I know getting your own successful product is very difficult.

So I want to talk about how you can begin building your email list as an affiliate. With no product, and no website of your own.

The first thing you need to do is understand the reason you are not making as much money as you had hoped with affiliate programs.

Lets look at a quick real world example. I think it will help you see what the real problem is with the way most affiliates try make money online.

Let's say you are promoting printers for a particular merchant. And let's say that you referred 700 visitors, generated the merchant 100 leads and made 5 sales this month. Not a bad month.

But what if you had that list of 100 leads of people that are interested in buying a printer? Some of those 100 leads are going to buy a printer soon, and since your merchant has the leads, they are likely to buy it from them.

Imagine if you had that list of prospects. You could turn some of those 100 leads into printer sales next month, and earn yourself some more commission.

But as it stands right now, you have no way of capturing those 100 leads yourself. You can only send people to your affiliate link, and those visitors really do business with your merchant.

And that's exactly the problem. Every prospect you refer to any merchant you promote for really becomes their prospect, and not yours.

But what if there was a way to capture the contact information from many of the people who click on your affiliate links.

Now every time you advertise and get a lead or a sale for a merchant, you would actually be building your email list.

So you are building your email list for the future, and not just working for pennies giving away leads to your merchants.

This is just a much better way to promote products as an affiliate. To find our more about how to do this you need to go check out http://www.affiliate-wizard.com

This article was written by David Lake, owner of http://www.AffiliateAnswers.com and http://www.Affiliate-Manager-Advice.com.