In this article you will discover how to avoid three fatal mistakes most affiliate marketers make. You will also find out how to target affiliate programs that earn you residual income, which is generally income that you receive month after month for work that you did only one time.

In affiliate marketing a Merchant agrees to pays the Affiliate a certain percentage of the sale price for products or services sold by the Affiliate. This is a win-win situation because the affiliate simply refers customers to a merchant-owned website and does not have to worry about fulfillment. The Merchant gets people to advertise for them and only has to pay them after they make a sale.

Here are three fatal mistakes most affiliate marketers make.:

1. They send their prospects directly to an affiliate website.

When you consider the time, energy and money invested in your business it doesn't make much sense to send people directly to a merchant website where you only have one chance to get the sale. If your prospect decides not to make a purchase yet, you'll likely lose that prospect forever. What you must do instead is send your prospects to a webpage where you can introduce them to the product or service your promoting as well as offer them something of value for free in exchange for their email address. This allows you to follow up them through an auto responder and have the opportunity to make multiple sales to the same customers.

2. Creating a website packed full of affiliate links, flashy banners and other distractions.

Overwhelming your website visitors with the above distractions will make them want to do one thing... leave. Instead, offer an honest review of a product or some other type of meaningful content. Pre-sell your readers on benefits and on how whatever your offering will help them.

3. Falling victim to commission theft.

Commission theft is a popular problem in affiliate internet marketing. While, you cannot eliminate it completely, there are some simple steps you can take to minimize it. Two methods you can use are cloaking and redirecting of affiliate links. Instead of having your affiliate link in the form: "www.merchantwebsite.com/?id=youraffiliateid"... You can easily set up redirects in your web hosting account that send your visitors to your affiliate link. Example: http://www.yourwebsite.com/affiliate_site

Fortunately, it takes the same amount of work to make a sale for a one-time purchase as it takes to make a sale for a residual payment type of product or service. This is why it makes good common sense to market affiliate programs with residual commission structures.

While shopping for residual payment affiliate programs you should consider the marketability of the services you are recommending.

For example, if you refer a sale for a membership website that only offers resale rights to products, and nothing else to keep the customer from canceling, people can join, download all of the products and then cancel their membership.

On the other hand, consider promoting and selling web hosting or auto responder services. These services are essential tools for your prospective customers business, and he or she is much less likely to cancel for quite some time.

In conclusion, you should always try to avoid common mistakes that affiliate marketers make by collecting your prospects email address, pre-selling them to the product's benefits, and by taking simple steps to avoiding affiliate commission theft.

In addition, you should be promoting and marketing affiliate programs with residual commission structures. Be sure to evaluate the stickiness of the product you are recommending. The best way to do that is to first become a customer yourself, use the product or service and pass on advice that will help your potential buyers.