Affiliate Program Primer
All of this advice is also true for advertising, as affiliate programs are really just advertising with a different pay scheme.
To find out what your visitors are interested in you can ask them if you run a forum or survey. You can also monitor your site logs and look at what pages they view on your site and how they get there.
So the first step to affiliate program success is to understand what your visitors are looking for, and pick a program based on that. Don't choose a program based on which programs you feel are most related to your content, choose a program that will help your visitors reach their goals of the moment.
Affiliate Program Presentation
The second step is to present your affiliate program effectively. Many people will simply place a banner or button for an affiliate program on their site, and nothing more. Not surprisingly, this isn't the best way to go about things. Banners and other advertising units no longer perform very well, so it's important to present your affiliate links in a different way.
You can use plain text links anywhere on your site. If you put them near your content users will be more apt to read them. You can also make the affiliate program your content. If you offer reviews on books for instance you can prominently include a link to purchase the book you are reviewing. The more actual content associated with an affiliate link, the better it will perform.
Users have grown accustomed to advertisements, and have trained their eyes to skip over them. If you make your affiliate links look like advertisements, they won't get as much attention as they might if you formatted them like you do your standard content. So use descriptive links, and include reviews where possible. If you take the time to provide more information about your affiliate link, your visitor might take the time to click on it.
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