Just two things are needed to earn significant income as an online affiliate. The first is traffic, visitors to your website, ideally visitors with something defining in common (mothers, Catholics, stay at home dads, etc.). The second is at least one product or service in which they are likely to have a strong interest.

The first question you have to address is demographics, especially if you have a website that does not attract an easy to define visitors base. But, even if your visitors can be pretty well defined, there are important demographic questions to be asked and answered. Are your visitors men or women? How old are most of them? Do they have significant disposable income? Do they often make purchases online? What are their interests? What are their needs? Their buying habits?

It is imperative to know why people come to your website. What, exactly, do they think is in it for them? Is it entertainment, sports news, information or practical advice they can use in their day-to-day lives, or something else?

By finding out as much as you can about your visitors, you’ll be able to more quickly and accurately learn what kinds of products and services they will find most compelling. Generating lots of traffic to your site is, as we’ve said, very important. But, for your website to be more than a hobby, you must provide your visitors with appropriate services and/or products. Luckily, and this is great news, you don’t have to pick the right products/services the first, second, or even the third time. Just keep learning, keep thinking, and (most of all) keep trying until you’re right.

When evaluating affiliate programs, you might also want to consider some that pay you for sales leads rather than actual sales. In some instances, programs will pay you up to $50 or more when a visitor to your site requests information about a product or service. Generating mortgage leads, for instance, pays very well, and you never have to even try to make a sale.

Because all sorts of companies want to build their mailing lists, you can even earn a commission when someone signs up for a coupon, a free restaurant meal, a few trial issues of a magazine, or countless other freebies.

Obviously, you want to consider programs which pay high commissions, but your own sales and/or sales leads do not have to be your only source of revenue. Try to find programs which will pay you for attracting other affiliates, particularly two and three tier programs. One program to which I belong pays me 10% of the earnings of everyone I sign up.

Choose your affiliate program(s) with care. I suggest you confine yourself to those that:

1. provide you with accurate tracking information. You need to know about what is working well for you, and what is not.

2. provide you with tested, successful advertising copy and/or banners.

3. offer you a quick and complete response when you have a question or a problem.

4. meet your website visitors’ needs with a high quality product or service at a fair and competitive price.

Offer your visitors a special piece of information, a widget, a newletter or a report using a sign up process in which you’ll receive their email addresses and permission to contact them again. That way you can invite them to return to your website whenever you update it and you can offer them products or services via email. But, don’t email them too often or they’ll soon tire of hearing from you.

Finally, follow the great advice I once got from an extremely successful businessperson. Track and analyze everything that moves.