Affiliate marketing has gotten competitive over the last few years. Thousands of marketers have hopped on the bandwagon, hoping to make a quick buck. Fortunately, very few marketers really know what they're doing or are willing to do it. If you follow these 7 tips, you'll quickly put yourself in the top 1% of all affiliate marketers who actually make money.

Tip #1 – Test Multiple Affiliates

Most people only test one affiliate when they setup an affiliate campaign. Instead, to maximize your payout, it's important to test multiple affiliates.

Try selling physical products as well as informational products. Try CPA offers as well as pay per sale offers. In short, test to see what gives you the highest return.

Tip #2 – Build a List

It's been said again and again. The money is in the list.

If you don't build a list, 99% or more of all your visitors will simply leave your page without buying. However, if you get 30% of them to sign up for your email list, you can continue to market to them until they buy.

Even if they don't buy, you can sell them products from all kinds of other affiliates.

Tip #3 – Try Affiliate Mini Sites

Instead of trying to build a huge website marketing affiliate products, people often find that affiliate mini sites work very well.

A mini site is a small website used to increase conversions between your traffic and your offer. For example, if you bought a PPC ad and tried to funnel it straight to your affiliate link, chances are it won't convert.

However, if you forwarded the traffic over to just a one page website then over to the merchant's page, often times it will convert.

Tip #4 – Expand Your Traffic Sources

As the web develops, more and more traffic sources will surface. For example, most affiliate marketers are still stuck playing just the PPC game. On the other hand, marketers are making millions by marketing on Facebook or other social networking sites.

Get creative. Don't stop learning about and trying new sources of traffic.

Tip #5 – Don't Just Look at Payouts

Payout actually isn't the most important number. Conversions are important too, but it's not the most important number either.

The most important number is your Earnings Per Click, or EPC. For example, if you make $20 for every 100 visitors you send over, then your EPC is $0.20.

The higher your EPC is, the better your affiliates are performing. The EPC is the perfect gauge of how much money you're making and it takes into account both the payout and conversion rate.

Tip #6 – Look for Continuity or High End Products

You can get paid for selling a $20 product or you can get paid for selling a $2,000 product. Which would you rather put your work into?

You can do your affiliate work and get paid once, or you can do your work once and get paid many times. Which would you rather do?

Look for high ticket items or items with continuity to promote. It will pay off.

Tip #7 – Keep Testing

Never get complacent. The top marketers make all their money by continually testing and testing their products and offers.

Keep testing your ads, your landing pages, your offers, etc.

If you follow these seven tips, you'll quickly find yourself among the top 1% of all affiliate marketers who make money. Most marketers just don't put in the work to really make money in this business. If you do the work, you'll take home the paycheck.