They keep thinking that there must be an easier way to make money online, and they are right! There is! The major problem with affiliate marketing, or any kind of website marketing in fact, is how to get traffic to your web site. Not just any traffic, but traffic that is interested in the affiliate product you are selling. You have a wonderful web page, providing a fabulous review of the product and doing a great job of pre-selling, with a link directly to the merchant's sales page, but you cannot get anybody to visit it.

Have you thought about combining article marketing with affiliate marketing? Write a few articles about the product you are selling. If you are selling an ebook on lighthouses, you could write an article about how lighthouses work, another on their development and another on the loneliness of the lighthouse keeper, and so on. Optimize it for the keyword lighthouses, and other keywords connected to it and make sure that your articles are well written.

Design a good bio or resource box, including a statement such as "For more information on lighthouses check out my web page xxxxxxxx, where you will find more interesting information and a free newsletter on the subject". Provide a link directly to your website. Now, this is where it gets interesting. You can use the articles to build up an email list by sending readers to a squeeze page, containing an opt-in form, and offering a free gift or your newsletter in exchange for a first name and email address.