Affiliate Marketing is considered to be one of the easiest and perhaps most profitable ways to make money online today. There is also a lot of hype about affiliate marketing being easy money and can be run on autopilot. This latter part is not entirely true.

Like any business it does take some work and some monitoring. With a plan in force, and some necessary tools you can see affiliate success. Below are the 3 most important tools that every Affiliate Marketer must have.

Tool #1: Your Own Website

The most important and often overlooked tool in Affiliate Marketing is your own Website. The first step in any successful affiliate marketing business is building a good, credible and professional looking Website. Your Website is where you will monetize from all of your marketing efforts. Thus, you must first build a user-friendly Website, which will appeal to your prospects and encourage them to click on the links to the products and service you are promoting and make a purchase. Therefore, you must first concentrate your efforts in building a Website that will cater to what your prospects need.

The most important thing you should consider is that almost all web users go online to look for information, not necessarily to go and buy something. Above all else, make your Website full of original, relevant and useful content. People will love articles that are appealing and helpful. Keep in mind that, in the Internet, content is still king and good quality content will not only build your credibility, it can also help you achieve a higher search engine ranking. By posting relevant and useful articles, you establish yourself as a credible expert in the field, making you a more trustworthy endorser of the product or service you promote. Establishing a good reputation is a good step in building up a loyal consumer base.

Tool #2: Incentives

Competition is extremely fierce in the Internet world. You must always be one-step ahead of your adversary to make sure that you capture a significant share of your target market. Therefore, you must use every possible means to encourage people not only to visit your site but also to click and proceed to the websites of the products and services you are promoting. Building an opt-in email list is one of the best ways to gather prospects. Offer a newsletter or an e-zine. Better yet, offer incentives to your prospects to encourage them to subscribe to your newsletters. You can present free software, free e-books, access to exclusive services and other freebies that your prospects will find useful.

Tool #3: Link Popularity

The importance of driving highly targeted traffic to your Website cannot be emphasized enough. Web traffic is the most important thing necessary to succeed online. You can have the best Website ever seen and offer awesome freebies, but it will do you no good if no one ever sees them.

Attracting people to your site should be the first step you should carry out. Do everything that you can to achieve a high search engine ranking.

Link Popularity is one of the factors that search engines use to determine search engine rankings. Therefore, to enhance your link popularity, you must launch an aggressive reciprocal link campaign.

One of the best ways to do this ? at no cost at all ? is by submitting articles to e-zines and free article sites. Include your Website's link in the resource box and you are in business. You will not only gain exposure, you will also have the opportunity to advertise for free. The more sites you submit your articles to, the better your link popularity is. Make your articles original, relevant and useful so that more websites will pick it up and post it.

There are many other tools available to help you succeed online, but these 3 are essential. Without them you will only be running in circles. Remember to keep moving forward and don't get discouraged. Tomorrow you just might wake up with money in the bank.