Okay so you've read (fill in the blank with internet guru's name here)'s book and decided that affiliate marketing is the way for you to earn some extra money online. I mean after all, all you have to do is plug in your name and run their ads and collect your commission check and ride off into the sunset, right? Not quite. With so many people promoting the exact same program as you, in the exact same ezines or on the exact same websites, you need some ways to distinguish yourself from the rest of the pack of affiliate marketers. Here are seven ways for you to do this.

1. Host Your Own Website.

I know I sound like a broken record, but it is absolutely essential for you to have your own website. For starters you can have a domain name that is easy to remember. I mean can you remember http://www.areallylongaffiliatemarketersurl.com/?pid=123/r=4(My apologies if that url actually belongs to someone, I just made it up on the spot for an illustration)? I didn't think so.

So if you can't remember it and it's your url, what makes you think your potential customer is going to remember it. Do you know what they are going to do? They are going to just chop off the stuff at the end and type in the main domain name and purchase the product from the main site. However if you have your own url, you could have a url like http://www.yourdomain.com which is much easier to remember and you can just point your visitors to your affiliate page in your website.

2. Write Your Own Ads

Email the owner of your affiliate program and ask if you can write your own ads. Most of the time they will not have a problem with this, but you need to check with them first. A lot of times when I publish my ezine, I have published the same ad two or three times and I wanted to email the advertisers and say if only you had used your own ad. People become immune to ads after a while and if they see the same ads over and over again, they may just skip over it altogether. Your objective is to get people to click on your link and if your wording is different they just might stop and read your ad and be curious enough to click through to your website.

3. Have some products of your own that are only available through your website.

Once you have your website going, it is important to have some products or services that your customers can't find at your affiliate site. You want your customers to keep coming to your site and the best way to do that is to have something on your site that they can't find on the affiliate site.

4. Cultivate your own list.

It's much easier to sell to people that you have already built a relationship with. That's one reason why it is important to build your own list. You may also be able to earn some money from your list in the form of advertising.

5. Buy the product you are marketing.

When you buy the product you are marketing, you can sell it better. You can tell the potential customer what a great experience you had with the product. This will make them interested enough to buy the product. You will also be able to provide support if necessary or write a tutorial on how to use the product that you are marketing.

6. Be totally honest

If you find out that the program you were promoting is a scam, stop promoting it and inform your readers about it. This will help you build credibility with your lists. We all make mistakes and admitting your mistake will boost your readers confidence in you.

7. Don't try to market everything you see.

With services such as clickbank, it is easy to become overwhelmed and try to market everything in the clickbank marketplace. That is not a good idea. It's better to focus on one market and market products that they would want. This is called niche marketing. The last thing you want to do is to bombard your subscribers with pitches for products. That is one surefire way to lose subscribers.

Affiliate marketing is definitely here to stay and it can become a great way to earn extra or even part time income. However, it won't happen overnight. Like everything else in life, you're going to have to put a lot of hard work into it. Good luck to you in your new venture.

DeAnna Spencer is the webmaster for Learn Small Business, a site that teaches how to run a small business for free. Visit today at http://www.learnsmallbusiness.com