Affiliate programs and ability to generate residual income utilizing them are the hottest and one of the most searched for items on Internet right now. It is true that anyone can build their entire home based business and make money online doing nothing more that promote variable affiliate programs. And yet over 90% of people who start in this path fail! Lets look at reasons why and how to avoid it using only tools freely available.

I will not go over obvious thing that you should pick affiliate programs that closely aligns to what you know or addresses your target audience. What Im interested in is to how properly present them to make people actually buy into offers you suggest, increase your conversion rates and as such increase you net profits.

So you have build your website and expecting that people will flock to you and start buying like crazy think again. Most people on Internet browse in search of information and unless you have content or product that interest them you are out of luck. Content is the king so finding an affiliate program that gives you many options for promotion including free and tested sample content is very important. Dont try to sell offer information that people are searching for and make it easily available to them and once they come to trust you, make a suggestion that will be more readily accepted than outright sale pitch. Second part is to get your content presented in proper way so it will be found by search engines and hopefully reach the top positions for your target keywords.

I will assume that you already have signed up with good affiliate program that presents you with all the needed tools and proceed to the description of how to present it optimized for search engines and make it easily searchable. There is as many opinions about doing it as there are people who work in this field. I will not attempt to write a new SEO course here just share some basics that I know work. To make the best of it create many content pages each one optimized for a different keyword combinations. Not only it will help your search engine rank but will give you more chances to make you suggestion and convert your visitors into customers.

1. Find right keyword combination. This is the focal point of the page and finding what people are looking for in your category is crucial to your success. Think about what keyword combinations would you use to search for whatever it is you are trying to promote, ask your friends and family what would they use to search for. Once you have your possible keywords combinations go to the free tool that will help you analyze your keywords and will tell you different combinations that other people actually use and get 2 or 3 combinations that fit your needs. I use Overture keyword suggestion tool available here http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/. Use search engines (Google, Yahoo and MSN) to search for your chosen keywords. Take a look at the couple, three top pages found for YOUR keywords and analyze their page title, page content, meta tags if they have them. Get ideas how to present your page to compete against them, find what you like and what you dont like and use it to your advantage. Your goal is to create a Content Page that will be not only competing against them but also offering something they dont have, something that will separate your page and make it stand on its own.

2. Create a new page for promoting your newly found keywords and include the most searched for combination into the name of the page. Use the - symbol between keywords, it will make page more attractive to search engines and easy to read in search results.

3. Optimize you page Title, Meta Description and Meta keywords tags to include the primary keyword combination on first place as well as other combinations you have found using keyword suggestion tool.

4. Fill the page with content that is relevant to keywords you have chosen and make sure you specifically included them into your content. Use your imagination to do it as well as sample content from Affiliate Program I have mentioned above. Search engines might actually penalize you if content of the page doesnt include your chosen keywords.

5. Include you affiliate program recommendation on this content page.

Steps above are fairly simple and as any SEO pro will tell you probably not enough to get the highest rankings but what they will accomplish is create a Content Page that is easily found by search engines and your future customers. The best part of it is that people arrived to your page in search of information they have searched for and have a lot more open mind to your suggestion than customer who clicked on paid ad to arrive to your page. They are presold customers because they have found you and if your content page has information or product they need a lot more likely to buy into your suggestion.

Affiliate Marketing is not about quantity but quality of presentation. Giving people what they need and search for generates quality traffic volume of presold customers who arrive to your site with mind open to your suggestions and offers. Ignoring or following these simple but tried and true process is what separates successful and failed affiliates.