Ok you got your links, banners and html code and other materials to promote and advertise other people products. You're now officially an affiliate. But the burning question is will you experience success as an affiliate? Personally I don't know, only you can answer that question. One thing I do know though is part of your success depends on how well you construct your content based website.

What is a content based website? A content based website is more than a portal full of articles, blogs, and forums. It is an ever-evolving sales tool. As the web master learns how to read their web analytics data, and improve their SEO strategies, they learn how to fill their website with text content that serves a dual purpose. First, the content needs to be written to improve the web site's ranking. Second, the content needs a high conversion rate. The content does this by balancing information the visitor needs against their needs.

The conversion rate is the most important number for affiliate programs. Page views can indicate how successfully a SEO strategy is working. However, if none of those visitors are buying, then the web site will not make money. The content must convert visitors to consumers. The content must encourage visitors to click the affiliate button. Encouraging visitors to click is not difficult. People come to a web site looking for three things, a solution to a problem, information and entertainment.

Very few people reach a web site with the intention of clicking an affiliate button and spending money. It is well written content that converts visitors into buyers. This is done by filling the website with content that does the following: Explains a need, explains a benefit, gives the reader something free. Once those three elements are met, the content must encourage the visitor to click through. There are two ways to encourage a visitor to click through. Number one is the decision to buy and number two is Lead.

Decision to buy. This combines the visitor's reason for searching for information that solved their problem with the content's ability to offer a solution. Once the visitor has a solution they are more apt to buy.

Lead. There are several ways to lead a visitor. One way is to write an article and then have it lead to a free ebook or tutorial. This ebook should solve basic problems and then tell the visitor how they can solve future problems. This second section is where the affiliate link is offered.

Another way to lead the visitor is Funnel Navigating. This follows the same theory as 'all roads lead to Rome.' The website promises the visitor more and more, leading them through the site until they find what they need.

There are two ways to design a content based website. FTP published site and Database and Content Managed. A FTP published site is one where every page is uploaded onto the web host site. Each page is designed individually. These sites work as long as they are hand coded. For SEO purposes, do not use WYSIWYG HTML editors like FrontPage or DreamWeaver to create these sites. If you do not know how to code, then create the web page in these HTML editors, then copy and paste the code into WORDPAD and FTP publish them.