Hello To All,
One of the biggest deciding factors in affiliate marketing is going to be the traffic through your site. Many of the posts so far are great advice, and are part of the affiliate marketing mix, but without having TARGETED visitors to your pages, you will not have prequalified visitors that will click on your affiliate programs.
The key to this part of the affiliate mix is knowing your visitors, and then being able to determine what affiliate programs you can offer that will meet their needs. Beyond that is the concept of presell, which is the ability to put your visitors into the required open and receptive mind set required for them to click on your programs.
Without trusting visitors that accept your advice and offerings, and without knowing what interests and needs you can fullfill for these visitors, you will have a rough time at the affiliate marketing game. Yes, you can have tons of traffic coming through your site and offer a wide variety of programs for them to click on, bit it lacks a targeted direction that will not leverage your visitor traffic, and the results will fall short of what you could actually be realizing in affiliate marketing income.
If you would like to read more in depth information, we invite you to drop by the following links:
http://www.sanders-consultation-grou...tegy-index.htm - Affiliate Marketing Strategy
http://www.sanders-consultation-grou...ting-index.htm - Emotional Marketing
http://www.sanders-consultation-grou...cept-index.htm - The Concept of PRESell
I would also agree with Catalyst on the avoiding free sites comment.
Hope that this information and these links help you with your affiliate program.