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Affiliate marketing is an extremely popular way of trying to make money on the Internet and its popularity is growing every day. This is because it costs nothing but time, after you have a computer and you are online. This makes it very attractive to people who have recently lost their jobs, the young, the stay-at-home parents and the millions of people in the Third World to whom a couple of dollars more means such a lot.

All this rivalry means that the affiliate marketer has to work a great deal harder to make a living and so has to be more selective about the product that he advertises. This in turn encourages the distributor to produce better promotional material and pay higher commissions, which all feeds the stimulation for more people to give Internet affiliate marketing a try.

In Internet affiliate marketing, the promotional material is usually provided by the distributor or manufacturer free of charge, which means that every marketer finishes up employing the same creative displays, advertising content and pictures.

I get hundreds of emails a day and whenever an Internet guru brings out a new promotion, I get emails from dozens of hopeful people around the world all commencing with something like: ‘Do you know my eminent friend So-an-So, the best Internet marketer in the world? Well, I twisted his arm to allow me to offer you his top secret strategy for only $49! Blah, blah, blah’.

These gurus must get sick of having their arms twisted by so many friends all the time. These emails go straight in the waste basket. And so will the majority of yours if you just follow the herd and send out the same old text that your distributor has sent you. You have to be imaginative and I think that you should not tell lies, although many, many do lie on line. ‘…my great friend So-and-So …’, what drivel.

My first two tips for any would-be Internet affiliate marketer are: 1] be creative and as original as possible 2] work hard at it. Too many people send their adverts out by the thousand and sit back and hope for the best. If it was that simple, millions would be trying it, which of course they are, but 98% of those people are failing as well.

Unless you are innovative in your work and unless you work hard at promoting it, you will join the ranks of those millions who get up to eagerly check their inbox for a sale’s confirmation, only to find it full of other hopeful marketers’ spam. And after a few months of that, it becomes depressing, believe me. This is why most people fail at Internet affiliate marketing.

Another tip is to only market something that you understand or that fits in with your website. If your web site is on handmade Moroccan leather shoes, but you notice that a marketing guru is giving $50 a sale on his software, do not just put his ad up on your website and hope for the best, build a new website around it.

Keep your web sites and sales letters focused – it works much better. How many websites have you come across that are plastered with banners and other creatives promoting everything from fishing hooks to model aircraft and holidays in Barbados?

Are they not horrendous? Nobody buys anything from these sites. I know, I used to have one. And it was fairly popular at 1,500 visitors a week. I did not make enough to buy a bottle of Coke a week.

So, tip number three, is to advertise what you know about and if you do not know about it, research it. Sell what fits into your existing structure or make a new one for it. All this takes more work, so work harder. Now, I am convinced that you are beginning to understand why people fail at Internet affiliate marketing.