1. Having found a product or merchant that you wish to promote then make yourself unique by creating your own landing page, website and possibly a blog.

A landing page is used to capture a purchaser's information for future follow up. This is your customer base.

You see, if you just pass the contact on to the merchant it is the merchant who is able to capture those details - on the back of your efforts.

A website (even a simple one) is used to create your credibility and also to pre-sell your product.

Many merchants will probably give you a free website to assist your sales. If they do the first thing to do is to 'personalise' it. Make it yours.

Why?

Answer. Because hundreds, maybe thousands of other affiliate marketers will be using the same cloned website. Search engines penalise you and your credibility is damaged in the eyes of your human visitors. And you can't afford to annoy them as they rank your site which in turn finds you the traffic.

A blog can be used to create credibility, be a marketing tool and act as search engine 'bait'.

2. Don't use the marketing tools provided by your merchant. Again, you need to be unique and not be cloned along with the rest. You could write a creative report or e-book to give away on your landing page.

To find your source of materials for this just think what would appeal to you as a customer and create that.

The aim is to make it so appealing that your visitors would be willing to give you their name and email address for future follow up.

Of course you need to do this before passing them through to the merchant. You will have to be a little skilfull here - don't want to annoy anyone.

3. Once you have skilfully captured your visitors details you will now need to acquire a quality autoresponder company. This a company that will store your leads and give you an easy system of keeping in email contact with them.

This is powerful. You can build a list of hundreds even thousands. These are your future customers.

4. This all leads to traffic generation.

There does seem to be as many traffic generation techniques as there are people looking for traffic. And is probably the topic of another article (or two).

Now what I am going to say here is my personal opinion. I am going to give you some DON'TS.

Don't buy into or join safe lists.

Don't buy into or join traffic exchanges

With these you are merely joining thousands of people who are pitching their product to you. They are unlikely to be interested in what you have to offer. Plus they jam up your mail box.

And a final don't.

Don't be tempted to buy leads in. By all means use a service that will generate double opt in leads by advertising your specific niche using your material.

I'm talking about those people who are offering you thousands of leads. They are seldom got by legitimate means and resold many times. If you use these you will get into trouble for spamming. It could spell disaster for your business.

So there you have it. Four must use strategies for the affiliate marketer newbie. And not just for newbie affiliate marketers either. To your success.