I’ve recently delved into the world of affiliate marketing. I’ve seen the stuff for years, but never really gotten into it. The idea is simple enough, you get paid a “commission” for selling someone else’s “product.” These products can be anything from ring tones to dating sites to tuna fish. The key to all of this is getting traffic to the offer for less of a cost than what you are being paid – easier said than done.

I’ve studied this for some time now, but am far from educated on it. You could say I’m very low on the affiliate-marketing-street-smarts scale. However, here’s a few of my very simple observations on the methods people use to get the traffic and make the moolah.

The Brute Force Method

Send as many people to your landing page as possible (even if it sucks) and a few are bound to complete the offer and earn you some coin. This is by far the easiest method. You don’t have to have a good offer. You don’t have to have a good sales/landing page. You don’t have to have a good domain. You just have to have traffic.

This problem is, how do you get that traffic? One of the primary ways of generating traffic in affiliate marketing is through PPC advertising. Well, if your offer or your landing page stinks, you’re going to be paying out the you-know-what for junk traffic. Operating at a loss isn’t the most profitable position is it?

The only way this works is if you can drive hoards of traffic without paying for it – usually not an easy task. I read the blogs of many who have run this route. Their final conclusion is usually that affiliate marketing is a scam, no one makes money in it and Santa Clause is a lie.

The Look-At-Me-I’m-a-Fricken-Genious Method

Sending a few interested people to a targeted offer with a well done landing page is a much better way to go. This keeps your costs much lower as you’re not paying for hundreds or thousands of clicks and your conversion rate higher as the people comming to your sales page are actually interested in what you have to offer. Lower advertising costs plus higher conversions equal higher profits.

But, if it were only so easy. This method requires two very important things (and two of the closest guarded secrets of affiliate marketers) – great keywords and a great landing page. Both of which take a lot of research and experimenting to get. That’s more work than most people are willing to put into it and come to many of the same conclusions that the ‘Brute Force’ people come to.

Are you and idiot?

Obviously one of the two methods above isn’t going to win American Idol (or County Star Idol or Canadian Mountie Idol.) The thing is, most people try to succeed in affiliate marketing by using Method A. Sure, they’ll tell you that their keywords are targeted and they’ve spent hours stealing other people’s landing pages. But, their stats say otherwise.

Which category do you fit into? Honestly, most of us are fooling ourselves. We have to look at this stuff objectively. Affiliate marketing is a tough business, but if you’re really willing to put the work into it, it can pay off in big ways.

I’m spreadin’ some link lovin’ to my twitter followers. Props to Kate Brodock and Internet Marketing – Best Web Ezy. Want some linkage for yourself? Follow me on twitter!

I’ve given in. I’ve jumped on the tweeting bandwagon. Twitter, the not quite so new internet fad, has drawn me into its fold. My joining was prompted by the musings of blog giants Darren Rowse and John Chow, both of which are active twitter-ers. These guys use twitter as a social networking/marketing tool. They tweet regular updates through the day highlighting new posts and other random happenings (The other day Problogger let his 6,600 followers know that his son poked him in the eye.)

Stealing Their Ideas

Well if twitter works for my favorite full-time bloggers, then it works for me too. I know that social networking is a big key to driving traffic to your blog. This is an area that I need to work on some more. So here’s my secret plan (shhh! Don’t tell anyone!) <secret plan>…I’m investigating the social networkings of all my favorite blogging heavyweights. I’m looking to see what works for them, what sites are driving traffic to their blogs and what is generating the most reader interaction. Twitter is my first attempt at this. </secret plan>

Are you Following Me?

Become one of my faithful followers on twitter – WallerBlogDotCm. When you become of followers, comment below and I’ll give you a shameless plug in a future post (free link love baby!)

The May edition of the Blogging Tips Blog Carnival is here! Here’s the way this works – You, the blogger, have submitted your top blogging tips. I’ve gone though, weeded out the off-topic rants and spam and put them in a pretty little package for you. This Blog Carnival covers money making tips, writing tips, traffic/SEO tips and a few other oddities that didn’t cleanly fit into a category.

Use this to gain a few tips, improve your blogging and discover some new sites!

Money Making Tips

1. Marcus Hochstadt gives a great post on how he’s banking by blogging. I Made $13,692.59 In Profits Last Month, So What?, saying, “Find out how Marcus Hochstadt makes thousands of dollars online.”
2. Wilma Janszen shares 9 ways to make money as a blogger Make Money Blogging: Make Money Blogging.
3. Zork Brauk has written a creative post on generating extra cash on the side… UFO Recession Tip 73 – Top 10 Blogger Recession Tips to Make Money, saying, “Competition is stiff. There are over 112 million blogs listed on Technorati at the end of 2007! We see you and we know that not every blogger is making money.”

Writing Tips

1. Shamelle has written a really cool post called 6 Things Simon Cowell (Of American Idol) Would Say About Your Blog!
2. Steve Osborne, a freelance writer and writing instructor with over 20 years of experience tells how Short Paragraphs Attract. Long Paragraphs Intimidate.
3. Jason shares a few tips on how to use your writing to draw readers in and keep their attention: Be a Blogger – How to Write for the Web
4. Colleen M. Johnson gives a quick list on Blogger Brainstorming, saying, “Got blogger block? Ten tips to get you blogging.”
5. The Whited Sepulchre offers tips for when you’re out of time and motivation and need to get a post out: Things To Write About
6. Cindy King shares a Book Review – Letting Go Of The Words – Writing Web Content That Works By Janice Redish, saying, “Letting Go Of The Words is a must read for anyone involved with a website or blog. This is not about the tools you need or anything technical. This book is about web content and information strategies. It’s about “planning, selecting, organizing, writing, illustrating, reviewing, and testing content”…that gives readers a successful and satisfying web experience.”

Traffic and SEO Tips

1. Riggie Freyer gives some excellent tips for getting backlinks from high Pagerank sites: How to Get Do Follow Links with High Pagerank.
2. Raivyn has written an great post on How to Drive Traffic to Your Blog Through Word of Mouth Marketing.
3. Bryan presents a video case study on a blog looking to bring in more traffic Case Study: Make Money Online Blog Wants More Traffic.
4. Mert Erkal has submitted an old post, but he still has some good tips: How I Quadrupled My Blog’s Traffic In 3 Months.
5. Praveen shares a Simple Trading System: Using Long Tail Keywords to Help Create Blog Posts and Articles that Attract Search Engine Traffic.
6. George Tzenos gives a basic overview of generating traffic via viral marketing Spread Your Word The Viral Way And Boost Your Traffic.
7. Aaron Anderson talks about how Entrecard has increased his traffic, comments and RSS subscribers: Traffic Experiment Results: 308 Visitors In 6 Days
8. Brian Terry’s article: Become a Listbuilding Genius is focused on collecting e-mail addresses. This may be more useful for affiliate marketers, but, if done right, could be beneficial for your blog.
9. Ian Richardson gives some tips on getting better search rankings. Get Good Search Ranking
10. Craig Andrews offers his viewpoint on using direct e-mail to market your blog Proper Direct Email Marketing For An Internet Business (Don’t Kill Off Your Email List!).

Other Tips

1. SpiKe Introduces A New Way Of Prioritizing to make your blogging more productive.
2. Tim Gary tells of how positive thinking has affected his life: “six-pack” follow up – dang if it doesn’t work like it should!.
3. Cindy King presents Website Design – How To Hire The Right Website Designer For Your International Audience.
4. Rebecca shares some basic tips on on starting a blog: Instant Readership with a Travel Blog
5. Woman Tribune presents how they are Addicted to Entrecard.

If you liked any of these sites, leave some comments share some link love. If you want your post to appear in the next edition submit your article here.