While one can certainly view their business from this perspective, it puts you in mindset of 'pushing link', rather than building a relationship with potential customers.

Super successful affiliates understand that their job is not to sell, but to presell – and their real product is content.

Let's look at this from a customer's viewpoint to see why building a content-focused and interactive site is so powerful, and why this type of site can radically boost your commissions.

1. Shopping and Connecting

When average shopper goes online, he or she is likely to have a list of trusted sites already in mind. This is particularly true for certain classes of products in tangible goods marketplace.

However, there is a large pool of potential customers seeking information and doing research before they buy. These may be first-time internet shoppers – or they may fall into a special interest group and have a lot of comparision shopping to do before they make a decision.

These are customers you can draw to your site with quality content.

But I would like to recommend you go one step beyond just linking up some articles or putting up a newsletter. Instead, build a site that creates a sense of community.

In other words, provide a place where people can connect with their interests and with each other. Why?

Simple: Any site that creates a sense of support is going to generate trust, spawn word-of-mouth referrals and attract repeat visitors. Your site becomes a 'hub' or 'authority' on a subject, making it an ideal 'jumping off point' in buying process.

It's like shopping with friends. There's safety in numbers. There is also much more activity where ideas are shared freely. Not only that, a customer-focused, interactive site allows you to collect feedback and quickly adjust to needs of your target market.

2. Designing a Community

Setting up this type of site is no more difficult than setting up a static content site – it just requires a little more advanced planning.

What you need:

- Structured content - Message board system - Newsletter - Multiple related affiliate products

This affiliate site model relies on having multiple products to promote within your niche. For example, let's say you've chosen “The South Beach Diet” as your niche.

If it ever was that easy it certainly isn't any more, there's a lot of competition & intense bidding for keywords. There are big corporations bidding on anything that moves & paying tens of thousands of dollars every month for number one listings.

Just in case you weren't getting message. Google changed rules. Now Google will only list one ad for each domain name in any given set of results. If you've ever searched for something obscure and found three or four ads telling you it can be found on eBay you will understand why they did this. The result of this change is that you almost certainly now need your own website to succeed.

But never fear, there are still opportunities for little guy to earn big.

You just need a plan to maximise revenue from everything that you do and from every visitor that passes through your online real estate.

Here are my top five tips steps for maximising income from affiliate programs.

#1 Sell to a niche. I know you've heard that message a thousand times before. There are hundreds of guides to niche marketing online and you might be forgiven for thinking it's just latest big hype. But fact is if you choose a small market you can focus your product more precisely on your target market. If you get this right more of your visitors will think that your recommendation was written just for them and for their situation. The result? More of your visitors will buy.

#2 Always collect contact details from your visitors, if they don't buy today many will buy tomorrow or day after. If you have a responsive mailing list, you have an asset that can earn you money on demand. All lists start small and small lists can earn big money.