Although I have mentioned that in my previous articles, I still like to mention it again. The money is in the responsive list of buyers. So building it effectively is one of the key requirements in building a long-term affiliate income.

If you have been in affiliate marketing for some time, you will understand that list usually starts with subscribers. Subscribers are people who will gladly give you their names and email addresses in exchange for your gift as in audio, ebook, video and even software. These will happen through a landing page which you can create out of either website template or blog.

If you treat your subscribers well by giving good quality content even in your gift, chances of them becoming your customers will be higher. That is another key requirement as your customers will share with the people they know and their friends will in turn subscribe to your list as well.

In the early days of internet, there was e-commerce. Most companies and business owners spend billions on advertising in major search engines.

With affiliate marketing, you do not have to spend billions or even thousands by the merchant whom you promote products for. The most you spend is a hundred or less on a web hosting account, domain name and autoresponder. Your job is just to search for a market to promote in exchange for commission.

Unlike offline and traditional businesses, you do not have to buy leads or databases to build a list. Those methods are considered inappropriate by most affiliate marketplaces and should not be practised.

The key to building good quality list is driving laser-targeted traffic to your sites. And to do that, you need to build a solid reputation be it your product or the way you promote merchants’ products. But if you are a newbie, this will take some time in doing so.

That brings me back to the topic of traffic. How big and good your list is how you drive them and even so, how much traffic your site receives daily. Having a high targeted traffic not only allows you to have more subscribers but potentially earn bigger income as well.

If the traffic is not high, you have to create a daily schedule and various traffic generation methods you should be implementing everyday to get traffic. Methods such as writing articles, blogs, classified advertising, forum posting, social media as in Facebook and Twitter and video marketing are most commonly used by gurus and top marketers alike.

If you are creating your own product, whether or not it appeals to the market boils down to two factors. One is your product and the other is how well you understand the market.

Your product choice is also crucial to every affiliate. If your product is proven in meeting the market needs and producing consistent sales, it will be much easier for affiliates to promote. Of course providing them with marketing tools like banners, ecovers, articles, ads and where to post them to will be even better.

Having a good understanding of the market and give exactly what it wants is what makes your product attractive and lucrative. To be able to deliver more than that will make you stand out from your competitors and not worried about market saturation.