Affiliate marketers are constantly looking to discover a profitable niche market to maximise their earnings. For some reason though, many seem to think that there's a hidden formula, or some magical tactic that will explode their sales. In actual fact, the best methods are ones that have been tried and tested over time and continue to be as important today as they have been in years gone by. If you're serious about surviving in the affiliate marketing world, you need to try these 3 hot tactics;

1; Use devoted web sites for each item

Each and every individual item needs to have it's own devoted website. Don't try to skimp on hosting costs by packaging all your affiliate products and campaigns into the one site. Each site needs to focus totally on the item you're promoting, with no distractions such as links to other products or joint venture partner sites.

The site should include product reviews so visitors can gain an immediate idea of what your product does and how it is going to benefit them. Testimonials from happy customers that have purchased from your site in the past give new visitors confidence in your integrity as an affiliate and also speak for the quality of the product you're promoting.

Writing articles detailing the uses of the type of product you're selling will swell the number of site visitors and will get them thinking how much they need what you've got for them. These information filled articles can be posted on all the popular article marketing sites such as eZine Articles, with links back to your review site (NOT to your sales page).

Note; The terms of use of most article marketing sites will stop you from linking straight back to a sales page. The site you link back to must, in itself, provide more useful information for the article reader / site visitor. Linking directly back to a sales page will, more often than not, see your article banned from publication.

2; Offer your visitors free reports

As an affiliate marketer, your main aim is to sell products and create an income. Don't forget that whilst earning money online is excellent, you need to get yourself known as a person who provides not only great products, but practical information as well.

Important; Don't offer your visitors junk! We've all visited sites and been offered an eBook that turned out to be a waste of time once you read it. Make a responsibility to offer your finest information for free. This might sound surprising, but it gets your prospects thinking "if the free stuff is this good, imagine how great the stuff is they're selling!"

I can assure you that a prospect who has received an information filled free report from you will come back again and again to see what else you have on offer.

Statistically, only 1% of your site visitors will buy from you. That means there are likely to be 99 out of 100 visitors that will leave your page, probably lost forever as a customer, unless you can give them a reason to stay with you as a subscriber to receive information on forthcoming product updates and new releases.

Position your free report offer in a prime position on your homepage, at the very top on the side so that it can't be missed. Make sure you have an auto responder set up with a relevant follow up message sequence to encourage those who download your free report to come back to the site at a later date. Statistics show that sales are typically not made until at least the 7th contact with your prospects, so make sure you have a good sequence of messages ready to go out to all leads.

3; Don't just think 'traffic generation' , think "targeted traffic"

There is no point at all in creating endless supplies of traffic to your site if the visitors aren't interested in your product. Visit article publication sites and see what kind of articles are being written about the type of products you are promoting. Start writing your own articles. As a reader, you'll quickly learn what a good article looks like and you'll know what to put in your own articles so that visitors will come to you already wanting to buy.

As a rule, you should try to write an article each day, but as a bare minimum try and write at least 2 articles a week, with between 300 - 600 words of excellent content. Continuing this output you should be able to generate around 100 targeted visitors per day to your site. Using the statistics mentioned earlier, this could see you generate 1 sale per day. That might not sound like much, but 30 sales a month of a $20 eBook is a solid $600 monthly income. From one site!

If you think about it, these tactics are not rocket science and really aren't that difficult to do. With forethought and dedication, there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to execute this plan across a range of campaigns and sites, increasing your affiliate marketing sales and creating a steady online income.

Here's to exploding those affiliate sales!

Cameron Mackay is a 43yo single parent of 3 young children and lives in Melbourne, Australia.

As owner of FREEDOM TO WORK FROM HOME, Cameron makes his living from affiliate marketing and niche blogging.

Through the FTWFH blog and his regularly published online articles, Cameron provides up to date and highly sought after information for both new and established internet entrepreneurs. Visit http://www.Freedomtoworkfromhome.Com.Au/blog