Why do some people succeed at affiliate marketing while others fail? The reason? People new to internet marketing often make the same kinds of mistakes. Here are the top reasons why people fail at affiliate marketing, and how to avoid them. Spending the time to find out what they are will save you wasted time down the road. Knowing what not to do can be be the difference between lucrative profits or never making a dime in your affiliate marketing efforts.

1) Believing all they hype. Marketers will tell you that you can make $500 in twenty minutes. We all want to believe that there is a simple solution to making money online. The truth is that affiliate marketing requires more than the belief that you will succeed. The key word is marketing.; That means that you have to promote your affiliate links, but more importantly you must promote yourself, or at the very least your own website. Being able to make money promoting affiliate programs without a website is a myth. Now don't be discouraged, there is money to be made, and no you do not have to be a professional website designer. Creating your own website may be much easier than you think. In fact building a website can be down right easy. There are free sites where you can build your site by adding blocks of text, inserting pictures, or videos. Two examples are Squidoo and Hubpages. You will need to create quality content, and then promote your sites through off page SEO methods.

2) Failing to collect their visitors names and email addresses. If you are going to go through all the work of creating a site, writing content, and building backlinks to that site, then make the most of it and start building a list. You will need to use a auto-responder to do this. Your auto-responder program with create a form with the name and email address fields. Add that code to your website, and offer a incentive to your visitors to sign up for your list. You can find ebooks, videos, or software to give as a free gift for those who join your list at www.InformationNinja.com

3) Loosing focus. With all the information on the internet it is easy to become bogged down under the weight of too much it. It seems everywhere you go someone is trying to sell you the next greatest product. Instead of jumping from one scheme to the next, pick a program and stick with it. Develop a marketing plan and work on it every day. You will achieve your goals sooner by setting realistic goals and working at a steady pace. Buckling down and working hard might not seem very fun, but that's what has to be done. Success is not going to happen overnight, and most people are too short sighted to stay in for the long haul. If they don't see results immediately they become discouraged, try something else, or just give up completely.

4) Not studying their campaign's performance. Most affiliates merely check on how much they have earned per day, and if such an amount remains at low levels, they fail to make corresponding adjustments because, well, they don't know which aspects of their campaigns need improving. It is important to study every facet of our marketing strategies. How many visitors are we generating for our website? How many of them are unique? How many are returning? How much time do they spend in our pages? Where are they coming from? To where are they exiting? These are the questions that can be answered by an excellent visitor tracking software program, and these are the questions that could help us improve the performance of our marketing endeavors.

5) Using only one marketing Technique. There are many ways to get traffic to your website. Try a few of them, and learn which ones work the best. Article marketing is a popular viral marketing strategy that will build backlinks, but it is not the only one. Forum marketing is another excellent method. Both rely on creating content for people to read and including a link to your site. A press release about your website can create many links with little effort. Invest in educating yourself in SEO methods, as this will be the most important skill you will need to learn.

You have built your site, and you have set up a auto-responder so you can build your list. You are now ready to start promoting affiliate programs. So where do you start?

Clickbank offers a huge selection of information based affiliate programs. You can join for free, and pick what you want to promote. You will be given a affiliate URL for each product you choose. You get paid a commission when people make purchases through those URL's

Ewan Chia's Autopilot Profits has worked out really good for me. It is offered through clickbank. You can check out a special Autopilot Profits Bonus that I have put together for this product. In fact I recommend you set-up bonus pages of your own when you promote your affiliates. This way you get a edge over the competition, and stand out in the crowd.

Information Ninja has a affiliate program that offers 90% commission. I.N. is also a incredible source of information products with private label rights, giving you even more ways to make money online.