Whether you are a newbie to Internet or a proud owner of a website, affiliate programs are great opportunities for you to make money online. It is an interesting concept that allows affiliates to develop a source of income and the program owners to sell their products more effectively.

As an affiliate your job is to drive traffics to the program owner's site. You get a commission from each sale made to a customer that originated from your marketing efforts.

Once you become interested in making money through affiliate programs and do some research you will come to know that there are many affiliates, who consistently make thousands of dollars month after month.

James Martell, who also wrote a handbook on affiliate marketing, claims that he makes over US$ 40K each month from his 30 over niche affiliate sites.

Phil Wiley lives in a remote area near Australia's Great Barrier Reefs but it does not create any barrier for him to make a comfortable living from his online incomes.

Rosalind Gardner, author of the Super Affiliate Handbook, made over US $400,000 last year alone by promoting different affiliate programs.

There are numerous examples like these, but the question is do all affiliates make that much of money? Is it truly possible to make your living by promoting affiliate programs?

The truth is very few of thousands of affiliates are successful in making good amount of money from affiliate marketing.

If you follow the tips stated below scrupulously your chance to become a super affiliate will increase considerably.

Try the product first

Don't just start promoting an affiliate program because they offer handsome commission! Internet marketing is a complex and time consuming process! If you decided to spend your valuable time and ingenious brain in promoting a product, you better check out the product first. Try the product! As a consumer if you feel that the money spent on the product is really worth it, then you probably found a right affiliate program to market.

Sell products consistent to your website's content

If the visitors are coming to your site and spending time, that means they like the content of your pages. If you offer them something which is relevant to this content, chances increase dramatically that they will check out that product.

Write ad articles and text ads for the product

Don't use banners to promote your chosen affiliate programs! Our eyes are so accustomed to see banners that in very rare case, nowadays, we click on a banner. Use text ads instead! But don't just use the generic ads supplied by the affiliate program owner. Spend sometimes in creating the text ads. While writing the text ads, think how you can relate the content of the page with the text of the ad.

Write articles about the subject matter of the affiliate product and use links within the article. Studies show that the ad articles have good click through response. You can submit these articles to other websites and create a viral marketing process for your affiliate program. Get a domain name for the affiliate program

If you are getting result from promoting an affiliate program and would like to get more serious in marketing this particular program, get a domain name for this program and use it to redirect to the link given by you affiliate program owner. Here is why you should do this:

Many people don't feel comfortable with the idea that you will get a share from the sales made to them. A domain name convinces many of this type of people that you are not merely promoting an affiliate program, rather you have something to do with this product or better yet, some even might consider that you are not making anything out of a sale.

Redirect a buyer to a page with relevant products

If you sell a product of your own from a website, once the buyer finishes the purchasing process, i.e. charging credit card, redirect him immediately to a page with products that compliment the product he or she has just purchased. The idea here is to try to sell more products to the same buyer while he is still in the buying mood.

Build mini sites for the niche products

One of the best approaches in promoting affiliate programs is to build mini websites dedicated to these programs. Here are the steps you should take:

* Choose a market segment

* Choose niche products for this particular market segment

* Build a content rich mini website specifically oriented to this segment

* Promote related affiliate programs through this website

Use free materials, programs etc. to attract visitors

People love free stuffs! Especially, if there are values in them! Many affiliate programs supply free materials like articles, e-books, programs, etc. in order to help affiliates market their products. Use these materials sporadically to lure customers. If you don't get any worthy free materials from the program owners, search for free relevant materials on the Internet. You will be amazed to see quantity of free e-books, articles and other materials that you will be able to dig out! Create exit Pop-Up pages with specific and targeted offers

If the visitor of your site is leaving, why not showing him a page with highly specific targeted product offers? Best idea is to create several pages with highly targeted products for different pages. If the visitor browsed through a certain page, that means the content of the page some how interested him. If he decides to leave the site right after viewing this page, it definitely makes sense to show him an exit pop-up page with products consistent to the content of the page. Build a directory of e-books, articles, and affiliate programs

Information is the number one reason why people spend time online. It's not always easy to create large amount of contents required to satisfy the need of the visitors. Why not use materials created by others for this purpose? Besides, you can also use those materials to promote affiliate programs of your choice. You can add materials to your directory yourself and you can also ask visitors to submit their materials in relevant categories. Post Pay per click ad on the most successful affiliate program

If an affiliate program generates considerable revenue promote this particular program more aggressively by posting pay per click ad for this program.

Overture and Google Adwords are the best options available for pay per click advertisement campaign.

Affiliate programs are great way of making money online! However, don't expect an overnight success! Like any other business, here also you require proper planning and persistence. Most super affiliates confess that, in general, it takes one to two years of hard work to become successful in this field. So do your homework before jumping in!

Nowshade Kabir is the founder, primary developer and present CEO of Rusbiz.com. A Ph. D. in Information Technology, he has wide experience in Business Consulting, International Trade and Web Marketing. Rusbiz is a Global B2B Emarketplace with solutions to start and run online business. You can contact him at mailto:nowshade[at]rusbiz.com, http://ezine.rusbiz.com, http://www.rusbiz.com