I make a better bat, you put my banner on your site, and if someone buys a bat after coming through your link, I pay you 25 percent of selling price. Killer idea, right?

That one sale won't be enough money to pay mortgage or even enough to take your kid to movies. And to make matters worse, how many of your site's visitors are going to buy my bat?

Once you get past first blush of affiliate programs, sparkle starts to fade. You quickly see if you make any money at all, it's going to be mere pocket change.

This is one of reasons affiliate programs have started getting a bad name. Small site owners feel they can't make serious money with them and affiliate program owners can't get members motivated to push program.

STOP FOOLING AROUND.

I don't mean to insult anyone. But let me force you and myself to face a cold fact. Putting an affiliate banner at bottom of your web page--crammed in there with four or five other affiliate banners--isn't going to sell anything.

Lots of sites approach affiliate problem by making themselves a one-stop-shop for loads of links to other sites. This doesn't work very well either. People come to Web to find sites that SPECIALIZE in something particular. They rarely buy from a site trying to be a jack of all trades.

THE SOLUTION.

Get yourself a web site that specializes in one particular subject. The narrower better. If I'm hunting all over Net for a site that tells me how to get heavy metal distortion from my little guitar amp, I jump for joy when I find your site telling me how to do it.

You could have a photo of you holding your Eric Claption guitart and leaning against your amp. You could have articles by you and other experts that tell step-by-step how to get same sonic crunch all my favorite bands use.

And incidentally, you could feature related products sold by GuitarCity (affiliate program) and more in-depth personal lessons from LearnGuitar (affiliate program).

This gives affiliates a way to tap into millions of dollars many of these big companies earn each and every day. And with all those thousands of low-priced, high-demand products on display, it shouldn't be hard to start making sales. Right?

Well, it's not that easy. Big shopping web sites like http://www.bestbuy.com and http://www.officemax.com have been offering attractive affiliate programs for years, but they are notoriously hard to make money on.

Here's why and how to turn this problem around. Soon you can be tapping into glitz and value of big corporate sites to earn affiliate cash they are truly capable of giving you.

Probably biggest problem is targeting people you send to site. Send just anyone to parent site's opening page and it's unlike that particular person will find something they REALLY want to buy. People get lost in their big sites. The chance a person will stumble over just what they want is pretty remote.

You can greatly increase your odds by creating your own web page that features a few specific products. Your page can link directly to pages featuring those products. This works for affiliate systems that track your customer no matter what page they click to. Some let you link directly to specific products. Others only send people to their opening page. For those, you can list recommended products on your site so customer knows what to look for when she gets to parent site.