You've decided to earn all of; or to supplement, your income by becoming an affiliate marketer. To make the highest commissions possible, you need the skills of a super affiliate.

Becoming a super affiliate goes way beyond having an attractive web site that motivates consumers to click on your sponsor ads and generated lead commissions. Your web site must offer a reason for those consumers to return to your site again and again for repeat leads, and to have them recommend your site to others. Visitors enjoy a clean site that is easy to read, understand and to navigate. Each page of your site should have links to other pages/sections of your site, and you should keep these links in the same location of each web page.

Common beginner affiliate site design mistakes:
Large sized text
Unnecessary sounds, such as wavs
Distorted graphics
Graphics that do not match the site's content
Font colors that are hard to read unless enlarged
Background colors that make text difficult to read
Using superlatives such as "The Best Site!"
Overuse of exclamation points

Common super affiliate site design:
Primarily uses 10 or 12 pitch fonts
Makes sound an option
Clean graphics that match page content
Light background with black text
Uses facts instead of superlatives
Limited use of exclamation marks

After you've created your web site design, the placement of advertisements is very important. Beginner affiliates generate load their web pages with several dozen banners, each offering a different product or service. This confuses your site visitors. To be a super affiliate, you need to place similar advertisements on each web page. For example: If you have a fashion web site, you should put all advertisements for shoes on one page which contains textual content about shoes. Then, place belt advertisements onto an accessories page, which contains textual content about how to match accessories to clothing. In addition to making your site more understandable for your visitors, this method can also help improve your natural search engine ranking. When a person searches for shoes, if your page is considered valuable by the search engines, your shoe page URL will be listed in the search results. But, if you mix all the ads and content together on a page, then search engines will not be able to properly categorize each of your pages.

Super affiliates don't just stop once they've created their site and placed advertisements. Super affiliates continually judge how well each of their web pages perform. They use analytical tools, including statistical reports, to see how many visitors each web page obtains and how many of their visitors result in a lead commission. If a page is not performing well, they will edit the content and reposition advertisements. If that does not improve their click-to-lead ratio, they may replace those advertisements with those of a competitors'. Let's say the super affiliate's web page was about fishing lures and had tackle advertisements from a company called ABC Tackle. The super affiliate may remove ABC Tackle's ads and replace them with Ultra Tackle's ads. They do this to compare conversions rates (conversion rates is the ratio between the number of visitors and the volume of lead commissions generated). You may wonder why changing ads from one company to another could make a difference, and the answer is simple. Not only do visitors judge the attractiveness and professionalism of your site, but also the sites of your sponsors. So, if Ultra Tackle's site is judged to be better, then it is likely to generate more lead commissions for you than ABC Tackle's ads. So as you can see, super affiliates carefully examine more than just their own web sites, they place themselves into the shoes of their site visitors.

Next to creating an attractive web site and strategic placement of ads, your next strategy should focus on gaining repeat visitors and recommendations. Super affiliates know that the best way to do this is to offer services of value, such as free online calculators, free email addresses, free newsletters, free chat rooms, free online games, etc. But you don't want to toss just any free service onto your web site. The services you offer your visitors should complement the products and services you promote on your site. If; for example, your web site offers credit cards, focus on services such as a credit card interest calculator or free email reminders of bill due-dates. There are scores of free software which you can add to your web site for your visitors to use. Simply use any major search engine to find the type(s) of software that will complement your web site. Find software which your visitors will find useful, as well as software which will help users remember your web site. For example, the bill due-date reminder software enables you to include your web site name and URL in all outgoing reminders.

Besides site design, ad placement and consumer valued services, super affiliates look for other ways to instill visitor trust and to motivate them to take actions which result in commission revenue. Often, beginner affiliates do not take an objective look at their web sites, and the worst mistake beginners can make is to ask other beginner affiliates for their advice and opinion. Super affiliates get advice and opinions from other super affiliates, and by viewing professional web sites. Another way is to ask visitors for their feedback. You can also go further and enable visitors to submit comments about the products/services you advertise on your web site. Not only will this tell you which companies your visitors trust and shop from the most, but it also reveals which products/services on your site generate the most visitor interest.

And remember... even after completing all of the steps mentioned thus far and fine-tuning your web site, do not consider that portion of becoming a super affiliate to be over. You must continually add new, fresh content to your web site pages, as well as test advertisement placement; and, reposition or replace ads as often as necessary according to which performs best.

Only after you've completed the above steps should you even consider marketing your web site. It does not do you much good; if any, to spend money on advertising if you site design and ad placement is not yet optimized.

When you are ready for web site marketing, the first thing you need to consider is your budget and your resources. Many super affiliates spend less on advertising than beginner affiliates, because they are able to obtain natural search engine traffic. Natural search engine traffic is defined briefly as: Visitors who use a search engine to find a product or service, and click on a web site(s) listed in the search engine's search results. Super affiliates are able to acquire this coveted free traffic due to many factors. Namely due to their site layout and content. Search engines give more value; and a better search result listing, to web sites that offer valuable content, and content that is continually updated. Even if you do not have a news web site, you must still update your content and never let it become stale. Let's say; for example, you have a gaming web site. You need to update your content to mention new games, or perhaps on video games impact children, etc. As mentioned earlier, you content should stay focused on the products/services you advertise. You would not want to put content about; for example, pharmaceuticals on a web site that is about office supplies or computers. Otherwise, search engines won't know if your web site is about prescriptions or computers, etc, and won't know how to effectively categorize and rank your web site.

Even after you optimize and update your content, unless another web site links to you, it will be difficult for a search engine to even know of your site's existence. Try to get at least one web site to link to you, one that has been indexed by a search engine. To find out if a web site has been indexed by Google; for example, simply go to Google and type the web site's URL into the search box. If the site URL appears in the search results, then it has been indexed.

Once you do get listed in a search engine, don't expect immediate traffic via that search engine. In addition to content and how often the content is updated, search engines also look at how long that web site has been active and how many other web sites of the same category link to it. They use this data to determine how well to rank it within the search results.

When you are ready to spend your hard-earned money on advertising, do what super affiliates do: Super affiliates look for mediums which attract the types of visitors they need in order to earn commissions. A super affiliate with a sports web site may opt to advertise in a sporting magazine, or on an online sports discussion web site. When bidding for paid keyword placement at a search engine, focus on the keywords and phrases which your desired customers may use. If your web site offers payday loans, target keywords and phrases such as bad credit cash loan, no credit check loan, etc.

Super affiliates also work closely with their ad sponsors, and make sure they comply with the sponsor's marketing terms and conditions. An auto loan sponsor may not want to be marketed as a never pay back loan. In addition to obeying marketing terms, super affiliates also ask for guidance from their sponsors and affiliate program managers. And, whenever they are contacted by their affiliate program manager, they quickly and professionally respond. By keeping open the lines of communication with affiliate managers, super affiliates often enjoy increased revenue, better payment schedules, and are often allowed to be among the first to market a new product or service.

Another key requirement to become a super affiliate, is to openly reveal all of your web sites for review by your affiliate program manager, as well as providing your correct name and address. Most affiliate marketing networks will terminate an affiliate who gives false identification information, because they suspect such affiliates will likewise generate fraudulent commissions. Just as you have a reputation to maintain, affiliate marketing networks likewise must protect relationships with sponsors.

Super affiliate competition:
If you can master the above tips on how to become a super affiliate, achieving super affiliate status is easier than you think. There are probably only a few hundred super affiliates in the U.S., so there is very low national competition. If you use search engines frequently, you may have noticed that you often see the same web sites listed in the search results for related products/services. Many of those are corporate level web sites of major companies, and not those of U.S. super affiliates.

Start today and work your way from a beginner to a super affiliate.

Not a Pulsar Marketing affiliate?
Get the Power and Prestige you deserve via our innovative marketing technologies.
Affiliate Program Registration