Affiliate marketers make money by selling products created by other companies for a commission. But things online have become much more competitive than when affiliate marketing started nearly 20 years ago. Affiliate marketing is still a great way to make money online, but the rules have changed in recent years.

Today’s successful online entrepreneurs have figured out how to make affiliate marketing work more effectively so their efforts deliver the results they want. How they did it?

Make affiliate marketing work for you

The best way to make affiliate marketing work effectively is to increase the exposure of your affiliate links. These are the links that take your prospects to a sales page or website and trace sales back to you.

your own website

One of the most important elements of affiliate marketing today is having your own website or blog. This is where you produce content relevant to the products you want to sell. You can write general articles and provide links to suggested products at the end of the content. The most important things to remember are that everything you write must be factual and true. This helps position you as an expert worth paying attention to.

Building an email marketing list

It can be a challenge to build an email marketing list these days because people have very crowded inboxes. That said, knowing your niche and target audience are two of the best ways to find an incentive that they’ll be eager to get, and therefore happy to provide you with their contact information.

Two good incentives would be an e-book or e-course on a hot topic related to your niche. Think about the kinds of problems people in your niche have and create an information product that offers real solutions.

Be careful what you sell

Don’t promote anything you wouldn’t wear yourself or aren’t impressed with. You don’t want to get the reputation of being an affiliate that will sell pretty much any old junk just for a commission. Rather, you want to show that you’re in the know, with great deals on products that really work.

Keywords in your content

Keywords related to your niche will help generate free traffic through search engines. Your keywords should be related to your topic or niche. These should be words that an ordinary person interested in your niche would search for. Keyword all media files such as images and videos as well.