Successful affiliate marketers are always on the lookout for a good market or product that will provide them with a large and ongoing paycheck. Do they have a magic formula available to them to market these products? The short answer is no. It is a more complicated than a magic formula. It requires some hard work and dedication.

There are a number of tactics that have worked in the past and continue to work to this day in online marketing. I am going to provide you with 3 marketing tips that are essential for you to use if you want to survive as an online affiliate marketer. If you continually follow these 3 tactics, you will be able to increase your online sales and continue to grow your customer base and earn success as an affiliate marketer.

Only 3 tactics you say? In reality, of course there will be more than 3, but by using the 3 listed below with your other tactics, you are assuring yourself that you are going to make some sales. Have you pre-determined the tactics? OK, here they are.

1.) You must have your own web site. I know you've heard many 'gurus' saying you can make millions without your own site. To a point this may be true, but eventually, to be a top affiliate marketer, you will need your own web site. Once you have a site, you want to make sure you use a different web site for each product you are promoting. Do not get lazy and try to put everything in one. You don't need different hosting for each site. You can use one hosting account and use add on domains. We won't get into these here, but an add on domain is actually a sub-domain that has a top level domain name. This is an entirely different topic, so again, that is all we will say about them here.

You need to make it look like you have used or tested the product you are promoting on your affiliate web site. It is actually not a bad idea to purchase the product and run it through the mill. Then you can write a review about it on your site. Don't hold back. If you loved the product, tell your potential customers why. Explain how it works, what was easy to do, did you see something that needed improving, but wasn't a big enough problem to out weigh the good things. Let them know your honest opinion. Let them know uses for the product that you have discovered. Think outside of the box. If you found a problem with the product, it may be a good idea to let the developer know so they can consider fixing it. Make your review so it has a call to action for your readers. Get them excited about the product. Make the call to action irresistible so they want to go and get the product. Perhaps your friends could try the product and then get testimonials from them and put those on your web site. Of course, get their permission first.

By giving a review and testimonials, your customers will have some idea of what the product is about and how it works. This can get them excited enough to want to purchase from your page.

2.) Offer your potential customer something free from your site. This could be a report you have created or have rights to, an ebook you have rights to, a newsletter, anything that is of value. It is a proven fact that it takes approximately 7 visits from a customer before they purchase, so if you don't get an email address, there are only 2 other avenues for the prospect. Either they buy the first time they or on your page, or you lose them forever.

Get an autoresponder and put a subscription form near the top of your page. Make it enticing to your prospects to sign up and then have a message going to them every other day, then once a week, then once a month. Just make sure you stay in contact with them so they are constantly reminded about your product. Don't make every email a sales push, just a gentle reminder of specific reasons why they can't live without the product. Use a very strong subject line, and then make sure you focus on the important things. How the product makes life easier, saves time, makes less work, etc. Benefits are what people want to hear about. Also, avoid using the word free and other spam triggers, or your email may never get through.

3.) Get traffic that is targeted to what it is you are promoting. If you are promoting dog training and you are driving traffic to your site for everything, you are wasting your time and money. People that are not interested in dog training will come to your site, see it is not what they want, and never return. Write some articles for publication in e-zines and e-reports. Tailer them to your site theme and only send them to e-zine publishers that are in that niche. If you can, make an attempt to write and submit at least 2 articles a week. Again, you want traffic that is interested in your site theme. Another statistic is that it takes approximately 100 people to visit your site to make 1 sale. That is a 1% conversion rate. Some sites do much better. If your visitors are targeted to your theme, you may break the 1% mark.

As you can see, the above tactics for your affiliate marketing are not hard to do. However, they take some time to do correctly. The main thing you need to do is take action and implement these tactics, the extra work on your part will be well rewarded with increased sales and customer list. If you want to succeed and be a super affiliate marketer, these are easy steps to take you along that path.