Editor’s Note: This is the third in a series of five quick affi­liate tips by guest blog­ger Robert Plank. Videos of each are also pos­ted at the end of this article. Enjoy!
– Michel Fortin

Affi­liate mar­ke­ting is not a “push but­ton solu­tion”… it’s just a dif­fe­rent type of selling than pro­duct launch mar­ke­ting or AdSense marketing.

You are not going to be able to just sign up as an affi­liate to some pro­gram and expect to make money… you have to DO something with that link!

The big for­mula for inter­net mar­ke­ting is:

List + Traf­fic = Offers.

When you sign up for something as an affi­liate, that affi­liate pro­duct or ser­vice is your offer. Once you have that offer, you need a list and you need traf­fic if you ever expect that offer to convert.

You’d be sur­pri­sed at how many peo­ple for­get this step!

For this rea­son, I don’t recom­mend pro­mo­ting affi­liate offers right out of the gate in inter­net mar­ke­ting. Build up a list first, even if it’s built from a small $7 report or a free ethi­cal bribe.

Join list buil­ding givea­ways, place your sig­na­ture link at the bot­tom of your forum posts, com­ment on blogs, leave tes­ti­mo­nials for pro­ducts you own, publish artic­les about your niche… do wha­te­ver you can to get as many eye­balls in your niche in front of that opt-​​in box. Add an e-​​mail subsc­rip­tion box to sites that need it, such as your blog.

Bot­tom line: build a list first, and then send offers to that list once you’ve built up 100 subsc­ri­bers or more. Does that sound like a lot? Okay… then focus on 8 subsc­ri­bers a day.

Do you think that with forum, article, blog, and givea­way mar­ke­ting, that you could get a measly eight subsc­ri­bers in a day? If you can, then keep it up for 12 days and you have your­self 100 subsc­ri­bers pri­med and ready to receive your affi­liate offers.