Someone whom I met on a WAHM forum recommend that I check out http://www.mattbacak.com and I was blown away by him. This guy is a millionaire from doing marketing online. I read just about everything that I could read from Matt Bacak and decided that I was going to subscribe to his Marketing Dirt newsletter as well.

In the past 4 months since starting, I have learned so much and I totally recommend you check this guy out. I have not made that much money yet, as one thing you should know is that it does take time, but I am slowly starting to see more traffic to my sites and more sales, which I am thrilled about.

I am hoping by summer 2010, I can have 15 websites generating at least $2 a day each, so that would generate a monthly income of around $1000 which is great for part- time. Anyways, check out his site to learn what you should do and how to make money from affiliate programs.

I also am an affiliate marketer, and it is something that I love to do! I have been doing it since November, and no I am not making thousands a week, or a month, but it is getting to a point where I am seeing a profit. But, I do mostly PPC advertising, so I am just trying to stay even for now until I figure out the right products and the right keywords to make it work.

That is what the "super affiliates" do. Some may be very lucky to be able to make big money right away, but I am sure that most of the "gurus" have been at this for years before something clicked for them and they made a fortune.

What can you try? I would say if you really like affiliate marketing, like I do, learn all you can about Internet marketing–read everything you can. Do you have any keyword tools? Those help me a lot, since you need to find keywords which have less competition. I have 2 different ones, plus I use Google's keyword tool.

Do you have a website? Or do you just advertise your affiliate links?
If you find the right niche, and make a website about that niche, and include advertising for the affiliate products on the website, choose the right keywords, and get your website included in the search engines and get traffic to your site, then that will begin to just run on autopilot.
That takes several weeks to get a site listed in the search engines, so continue advertising your affiliate links through other ways. PPC if you have some advertising money available, or through traffic exchanges, email campaigns, etc.

If you continue to learn and apply all you can (not just what the affiliate programs tell you to do), invest some money into helpful software (like keyword tools), make your own websites with your own domain (so you don't have to compete with others of the same affiliate programs), and just continue plugging away at advertising in different ways (articles, blogs, social networking, etc), you WILL start seeing a profit!!

BELIEVE you can succeed, and don't focus on the sales (or lack thereof). All it will take is finding the right combination, and you will be successful! Affiliate marketing is a legitimate way to make money (too bad other people don't understand that, and judge it wrongly…).

Blessings on your marketing ventures!

BEST WISHES!

You have an affiliate link that you want to promote on search engines and you don't want to use your own website.

If that is the case, then why not create some articles related to your affiliate programs and insert your link so the search engines can pick up the article for content.

I learned this from my internet marketing group.
See the source.

1. All you have to do is to join a merchant program as an affiliate and send visitors to the merchant site

2. All other work such as making a sale, delivering the product or service, receiving payment, attending to the complaints or making a refund, is handled by the merchant site.

3. The merchant site also sees to it that you are paid commission when a sale is made through your efforts.

4. You are also rewarded when a sale is made through the efforts of an affiliate referred by you to the merchant site.

All easy and simple. But most affiliates soon find that in spite of their best efforts they are not making any money.

This is because the affiliate earnings depend not on how many visitors they send to the merchant site, but how many of them buy the product or service of the merchant.

So just sending visitors to the merchant site is not enough.
You can do this easily by joining traffic exchange or autosurf programs. Your merchant site will be seen hundreds of times but it will not make a sale. This is because these visitors are not interested in your site. They are looking at it to earn credits so they can show their site to others.

This is not to say that traffic programs have no use at all.
I have used them successfully to build my downline in free-to-join programs, but have never made a sale through them. Most members of such programs are promoting their own programs. They could get interested in joining other opportunities, but would rarely go for a product themselves.

So if you want to earn from affiliate programs, the thing to do is to send interested visitors to your merchant site.

Who is an interested visitor?
This is the visitor who reached your site by himself. He is looking for the product you are promoting. This is why he took the trouble of finding it from a search engine or from the particular kind of ads or forums.

This visitor is red hot for a sale. He is already interested in your product. If he finds what he wants on your merchant site, he is very much likely to look at the product's features, mentally compare it with other similar products, ask for more information by giving his email address. All this can lead to a sale and a commission for you.

How to target interested visitors
The best way to reach interested visitors is promoting your products through search engines submissions, placing catchy ads, posting in forums or through your own website.

This may sound daunting to newcomers at first but all these are do-able with a little effort. You can get help for mastering all these skills from the resources freely available on the internet.

Joining right affiliate programs can also help a good deal to gain affiliate mastery. While great many affiliate programs give you a few text ads and banners and be done with you, there are some programs that give valuable training to succeed.

Be positive
Most newcomers to internet earning fail because they expect to be rich in a week, if not overnight. When this doesn't happen as it rarely does in real life, they get discouraged. They are also influenced by others who like them tried but failed to earn with affiliate programs. The result — they give up, frustrated.

The reality is that nobody becomes rich overnight in internet marketing. You have to work at it consistently. Most important of all, banish negative thinking from your life and believe that if others have succeeded, you, too, can and will.

That perhaps is the most important ingredient for your success.

If you are interested in promoting gaming sites, then you may find my article helpful; it's called "Seven Tips for Choosing an Online Gaming Affiliate Program". It contains tips as well as my top 12 recommended affiliate programs.
http://robertmedl.com/7OGAPtips.htm

Email me directly if you have additional questions!
Robert