Many people make a serious income from marketing other people's products. Unfortunately, many more spend time and effort in this area and see little or no reward. The good news is that not much usually separates the successful affiliate marketer from the novice. In this article we will look at some strategies to improve your results selling affiliate products.

1. Pick the right product

Generally you want to pick a product that has a higher affiliate commission and a higher price. However, it is Return on Investment (ROI) that is more important. In other words, if you spend $5 to make $10 you have a 100% return. If this scales up well you may just need to increase your advertising spending to get a large amount of money. On the other hand, if you market an expensive product that gives a large return, but it costs you more to advertise than it does in commissions then you are going to lose money.

As well as price and commission you need to examine the potential conversion rate. A product with a great sales letter and other benefits may be much easier to sell.

Timing is also important. If you can find a hot product before the majority of the market you are going to do well. If the product has already been flogged by your competition you may struggle to make any sales.

2. The money is in the list

You have probably heard this over and over again but the question is - Have you taken any action in this area? It is much easier to sell to existing customers than create a new one. Rather than sell one off products you should look at getting sign ups to your OWN list. From here you can continue to sell over and over again. However, you also need to provide good content or add value in other ways otherwise the unsubscribe rate will be high.

3. Spend money to make money

Sometimes you can get free advertising that works, but more often than not you have to spend money to make money. For example, you could run an AdWords campaign to send people to a sign-up page for a free 5-day course you set up using an autoresponder. Every subscriber is going to cost you something but over the long term as long as the ROI is positive you are going to make money.

4. Test, test, test

You need to continually test your ad copy, your traffic statistics, your sign-up rates etc. In particular, you should try a small-cost advertising campaign to see if it is going to be successful before putting a large amount of money into it. Find out what other successful marketers are doing. Read articles, participate in forums and if you can, get a mentor.

Who knows, using these strategies you may turn from a novice affiliate marketer to the next 'super' affiliate.