Affiliate programs can be easy to let slip away. After all, no one's checking up on you, and you aren't' making a serious investment, so why waste time for small change when you've got other things going on? This is a defeatist attitude. Maintaining your site and staying involved is key to making a profit with your program, and it doesn't have to be work intensive. I assure you that with just a little work, say an hour a week, you can turn your affiliate site from lame duck to cash machine. Here is a list of tips to help you stay on top.

Be functional. Make sure mechanics of your site are in top working order. Links can break down at any time for no reason, so test them weekly. It usually only takes a minute to fix, and you'd hate to lose a sale just because a link didn't work, wouldn't you?

I shouldn't have to write articles. I can get all good content I want from my affiliate programs."

That's usually true, but more often than not your visitors are after unique content. Writing your own articles can often be most powerful marketing weapon you use.

Believe it or not, your visitors actually want to read what you have to say at your site, not what other people have to say. They are looking for independent content that perhaps supports or refutes something they read on another site.

Besides, they may have already read all articles written by other people you feature at your site elsewhere on internet.

While it is perfectly reasonable and beneficial to feature "other peoples articles" at your site, you should also feature your own.

Here are 4 reasons why you should write some of your own articles:

1. It is unique content that distinguishes you from about 90% of all other affiliates. That's percentage of affiliates not writing articles!