Here are six essential practices to maximizing your income as an Affiliate Marketer!

If you are like most new affiliate marketers, you have signed up as an affiliate and posted links and are actively promoting products but you are making few sales. Here are things that you can do to start making real profits:

#1 – Build your own Website:

You need to build your own website to promote the products. Make sure it has its own paid for domain name (mybizsite.com), not a free site like (mybizsite.othersitename.com). If you have been using free hosting, people looking at your site will not take your business seriously. If you don't know how to build a website there are many services that offer simple website building programs for a small fee or you can hire someone build a site for you. Check out elance.com where website designers will bid for the opportunity to build a site for you!

#2 - Write reviews of the products you are promoting:

You need to know the products you are promoting! It is crucial that you purchase all the products you are promoting so that you can write honest reviews about them. Let potential customers know that you are using these products and why they are worth buying! You then need to post these reviews on your website, in your newsletters and in articles.

#3 – Get yourself a Blog:

I recommend that you get a Blog and link it to your website. This will allow you to create discussions on the blog about the products you are selling and list any updates to your regular website. Blogs that are updated and posted to regularly (I recommend every other day) are indexed quicker by the search engines than are new websites, and after the blog is indexed, the pages you have linked to the blog will also get indexed. This is a very powerful way to get your site indexed and to get more links to your website. I recommend posting link to your website at the end of each post you make to your blog. This will give you even more links to your site

#4 - Write Articles:

One of the best ways to become an expert on your product is to write articles on the Internet and include a link to your website in the resource box. There are many places to submit articles and the more you write the more exposure to your website; more click thorough of your affiliate links and purchases of the products you are promoting which will in turn make you more money.

#5 – Join forums on the internet related to your products:

Go to google and search; forums (your affiliate products), Join the forums you find After you join the forums make sure you use your signature in your posts and threads .You then need to have your website links in your signature line. Make sure you post regularly! It is important to post relevant and useful information in the forums. You will find an incredible amount of free, useful information in the forums. They are an indispensable resource. I highly recommend this tactic! Signature links are also indexed by the search engines and will provide you more links to your site thus increasing your ranking in the search engines and driving more traffic to your site!

#6 - Use text links not banners or buttons:

Due to the enormous use of pop-ups and flashy banners that we see each time we visit a website, It's much more professional looking and effective to have a text link with a few lines about the products you are promoting. Stay away from banners and pop ups, Most web surfers are sick of pop ups and have pop up blockers built into their browsers

Utilizing all of the above mentioned tactics will help your affiliate commissions grow

Significantly!