1. Select a few good products
Most newbies in affiliate marketing make the mistake of registering with too many affiliate programs and try promoting everything they see. If this is the path you are treading, then it will overwhelm you and you won’t promote the products properly. Take time to understand the needs in the market and search for products that will go well with your site’s topic.

2. Employ various sources of traffic to promote services or products
Another mistake affiliate marketers make is that they run ads just on their own sites. This isn’t wrong but there are just so many other sources of traffic that you have the chance to use for promotion all at the same time. The more the traffic that your sales page gets, the higher are your chances of making money online.
Google AdWords is a good way to drive traffic to your sales page. All you must do is run an ad in your AdWords account then use the associated link. You will need to measure your conversions regularly to see if the cost of the campaign is less than its profit to keep it running.

3. Your Campaign must be Tested, Measured and Tracked
Using several strategies for product promotion is a very good idea because it gives you the opportunity to know which of them works better. You can do split testing and measure each campaign’s performance before taking the appropriate action. Changing a couple things would raise your profit. Banner ads should be placed on different areas on the pages of your site because there are some strategic points that will catch your reader’s attention.

The basic statistics of different affiliate programs are shown and you might need it for your campaign but you can still use a conversion tracking software of your own as well.

4. Find out how much the product is desired
To make money from affiliate marketing, you need to ascertain that the product has a high demand. No matter how much efforts you make, you might make little or no sales, it totally depends on the demand of the product. You need to know if it is what your audience really needs. If you manage to get a reasonable amount of traffic on your site, then you can run a small online survey to get input from visitors.

5. You should be current with new techniques and methods
This is necessary because of the competitive nature of affiliate marketing and to be able to make money online. Daily, new techniques and methods are developed; you wouldn’t want to be left behind while new trends take over.

6. Look for and select the right merchant
When promoting a product, you are also promoting the person or organization that owns the product. This should be the first thing to know before selecting the product you are promoting. You surely don’t want your clients to be unhappy after purchasing the product. Trust me; they will never come back to your site again to purchase anything! This is because you have dented your credibility. Normally, any company or website with good customer service is bound to have happy customers.

7. Use the necessary tools
To boost your chances to earn from affiliate marketing, various sites have various tools to make your campaign more efficient. There are a lot of tools which would be helpful out there. For example, if you use a WordPress site, then you should think of getting a plugin that is like the Affiliate Link Manager. Online money making is eased with the usage of right tools...