The first step is not to try and promote too much at any one time. You need to be able to give each affiliate program time to bring in some money for you, it won't happen overnight, not unless you already have a large email list to recommend items to. Choose each program carefully and stick to just two or three to begin with.

The next stage is to decide how you will promote the affiliate schemes you have chosen. Different methods may work better for each product, depending on what it is and the type of people who are likely to be interested in it. Think about how you will best be able to reach those people, as it will help to determine which marketing methods you need to use in each case.

Video marketing via sites such as YouTube has become increasingly popular in raising the profile of certain affiliate schemes; the old writing adage of show, don't tell has certainly proved beneficial here, as you can take advantage of being able to show your potential customers how a product looks and works before they buy it. It's probably the closest the internet will get to the experience of actually being able to pick something up and look at it before deciding whether or not to buy it.

It's important to remember that even when you have decided how you will promote each product, nothing is set in stone. Always be ready to try different things, you may be surprised at the results.

Any kind of affiliate marketing effort begins with knowing what you will earn from each sale. Let's say you're promoting a product that gives you twenty dollars for each successful sale you make. Let's also suppose that you're looking to make an extra $200 a month on top of your regular salary.

Now you don't need to make all that from one product, but if you did you'd need to sell ten items a month to make your $200. This is where affiliate marketing becomes a simple numbers game, and if you concentrate on the numbers you will find that your strategy becomes a lot easier to build and follow.

If your early efforts to reach the right audience for your product result in a 2% success rate of turning leads into sales, for example, you will be able to work out exactly how many leads you need to find in order to make your $200.

And by the same token you'll be able to see that it might be a lot easier than you think to start aiming for $400 a month, or $800, or a grand or more.

Or even a full time income.

If you keep in mind that all forms of selling are really just a numbers game, it takes the emotions out of the situation. This is a huge help on bad days when you don't sell a thing and begin to wonder what you're doing wrong.

When you focus on the numbers game strategy, you know that the selling percentage you have figured out is an average, and a bad day simply means that tomorrow will probably be filled with sales.

So you can see the importance of having a strategy to follow, not only in making sure you stay on track overall, but in squeezing the best out of your efforts and keeping your attitude positive, even when you have a bad day.