It is a proven and uncontested fact that 5% of all affiliate marketers make 90% of the sales. Nobody disputes that so the questions are: (1) What does that 5% know that you don’t know and (2) What can you do to level the playing field?

The answer to the first question is: What that golden 5% of affiliate marketers know that you don’t know are the tips, tricks and tactics that give them the edge over the competition. They know them and they apply them liberally.

1. Successful affiliate marketers build their credibility by writing articles, submitting them to article banks and having them picked up and used by other website owners and ezine publishers. They get their name ‘out there’ so that they are recognized as an authority on a subject.
2. Successful affiliate marketers know to focus their energy on one small segment of a niche market at a time. They aren’t ‘all over the map’ promoting products and services in dozens of niches simultaneously.
3. The top affiliate marketers build a site to promote a product. The site is loaded with reviews, testimonials and articles that are all geared to pre-sell the product.
4. That super successful 5% of affiliate marketers promote on every available front. They do not limit their advertising to any one outlet. They may use PPC but they also advertise in related ezines, they post to forums and blogs and they write and market articles that are related to the product.
5. These golden boys (and girls) are very, very proficient at SEO. They do their homework and they use the very best keywords to their best advantage every single time.

The answer to the second question is that you can level the playing field by learning and then applying the same tips, tricks and tactics that the winning affiliate marketers use.

Yes, there are the winners and the losers in the affiliate marketing arena. You can be one of the big winners!

“Nothing stays the same” and “There’s nothing new under the sun” sound like contradictory statements, don’t they? They are contradictory statements but both are true….and they are true about everything including affiliate marketing.

Look at that first statement, “Nothing stays the same”. It’s certainly a true statement about something as fundamental as music. How did we get from ‘parlor music’ to ‘rock ‘n roll’?

We got there because people’s expectations for the music that they listened to changed.

The bland parlor music of one generation just simply wasn’t going to cut it with the next generation…..so music changed because ‘nothing stays the same’.

And yet music didn’t really change because ‘there is nothing new under the sun’.

Rock ‘n roll is made up of exactly the same notes and the same musical scales as the parlor music of old. The same notes are flats and sharps in rock ‘n roll as the ones in parlor music. Rock ‘n roll uses progressions just like parlor music. Both kinds of music are written on identical staffs. So what really changed were the expectations about music.

The same thing is true of affiliate marketing.

Nothing stays the same in affiliate marketing.

Back in the old days (last generation) of Web-1, before the big technology crash, affiliate marketing was a one-way street.

Affiliate marketers put up advertisements and sold products without much regard for the customers that they were selling to. Mass marketing emails were sent out by affiliate marketers every day of the week to every email address that could be harvested. Affiliate marketing has changed because ‘nothing stays the same’.

There’s nothing new under the sun about affiliate marketing either. The basic principle is still to sell products and services to customers and receive a commission for doing it. Today affiliate marketing is much more interactive, and relationship building has taken on new importance, but affiliate marketing is still affiliate marketing.

As affiliate marketers in today’s world we have to remember that: