Months later they are wringing their hands with regret wondering why they've had five visitors, four of which were their friends!

A website does not just automatically appear high in the search engine rankings and get traffic, you have to do some work in order to get this traffic and start making sales. There are thousands, or even more of sites competing for the same traffic you want - depending on your niche and keywords, there could be millions of sites!

You need to promote your website and your affiliate program and get it noticed - not only in the search engines, but in other places where you will get targeted traffic who are interested in your website.

Strategy 1 - Directories

There are a whole host of directories on the Internet. Just search for your keyword and "Directory" or "Link Exchange" or anything similar and you will find hundreds of places to put your links. Yeah, it is hard work to do this, but you will get links and traffic to your site. If it's too much like hard work for you - hire someone to do it at elance or rentacoder! Search for "Affiliate Program Directory" to find a whole host of sites waiting to specifically list your affiliate program.

Strategy 2 - Articles

Articles are an excellent way to gain traffic and promote your site. Submitting your article to directories will get you backlinks and if they are quality articles, will get you known across the Internet as an expert. Newsletter and website owners will pick up your articles and use them as content. This will help to promote your site to a much wider audience. Mention you affiliate program in the resource box or the body of the article (remember that a lot of sites don't like links in the body of the article but there's nothing wrong with you mentioning your affiliate program). You can even write articles about how people are earning so much with your affiliate program too.

Strategy 3 - Viral Marketing

Viral marketing is a concept that has been around for some time. It's a very powerful method of getting traffic to your site. You have all seen those cute or funny emails and videos that people send to all their friends? That is viral marketing. If you can tap into this through a book, a video, games or anything people will want to pass on to their friends, suddenly you have a whole lot of people promoting your site - for free! If you can make it something related to your product and include details of your affiliate program in it, then you are getting free advertising!

Strategy 4 - Forums

Forums are an excellent way to market your website. As you participate in a forum so you can establish yourself as an authority and trusted expert on your chosen subject, which will make people come to visit your website to find out more information. Be aware though, that if you blatantly promote your business without adding value or spam the forums you will do more harm than good to your reputation and your business.

Strategy 5 - Clickbank

Clickbank is an excellent place to list your product. Yeah it will cost you 50 bucks to get listed, but the exposure is potentially priceless. Many content site builds scour Clickbank looking for relevant products to include in their site. If your product is there, you could be listed and be earning money with no effort on your part whatsoever. There are competitors to clickbank such as Paydotcom and the newcomer, Salesflurry, both of which are worth looking at too. These sites effectively allow you to promote your affiliate program with no effort on your part.

Promoting your affiliate will get you targeted traffic and hungry affiliates. It will also allow you to organically move up the search engine rankings through backlinks and the use of keywords. If you are someone who is serious about making money online, then you need to start taking your website promotion seriously. Remember though - spam and other unethical practises will harm your business in the long term. Promote your site ethically and responsibly, and you can be reaping the rewards for years to come.