One of the biggest mistakes I see affiliates making everyday is that their building a short-term business where they just make a small sale - one sale at a time. If they stop running ads today, their business would shut down! The strategy we're going to discuss now will allow any affiliate to build a long-term business. This strategy will allow you to upsell your visitors for expensive services. Even more importantly, by using this strategy you'll soon become recognized as an expert in your field and making money will be all the easier!

So what is this strategy?

You guessed it, it's building an opt-in list - a newsletter/Ezine.

By having an opt-in list you're building a customer base instead of just small sales! You can sell the same customer over and over without having any more advertising costs. You build a trust with your readers that allows them to be loyal in doing business through you affiliate link!

So, as an affiliate, how do you build an opt-in list?

How to Build the List

The simplest way I have found is to start deferring all of my traffic that I pay for to an opt-in page. After the person opts-in, have them land on a thank you page where you pre-sell them for the affiliate product.

So, you're probably already building traffic to your site - now, instead of sending that traffic directly to your affiliate link, send it to a page that has an opt-in.

How Should My Opt-In Page Look?

The next most popular question is how to make the opt-in page look. Believe it or not, there actually IS a strategy behind this. Your page MUST be small, short and to the point. This means that you should NOT have a long sales letter type page to get them to opt-in.

Your entire opt-in page should fit in one screen with NO scroll down bar. Have a strong headline, 5-6 bulleted benefits and then a nice big opt-in. You'll be amazed at how high the results can be?

Quick Ways To Generate Traffic

The point of this article is not to teach you how to drive traffic to your website, but here are 5 really quick techniques to use so you can test what you just learned.

1. Article Submissions - Submit articles around the web regarding your niche and have your biography link go to a opt-in page. You'll be amazed at how well this technique works in building a list.

2. Pay Per Click - The easiest way to immediately begin getting traffic. Send all of your paid traffic directly to the opt-in page, then have the person land on a page that pre-sells the product they were looking for. Make sure to test this, sometimes your conversions on the front-end can fall, but they increase over the long-run.

3. Ezine Ads - I have found Ezine ads a great way to quickly and cost effectively boost my list. Write an ad promising a "fr^^ ee membership or information" and send the traffic to an opt-in page.

4. Viral Marketing - This form of marketing takes some time to kick in but can be extremely effective! Other people will spread your message and your message will have links to your opt-in page.

5. Linking strategy - This option is a bit more work, so only use it once you have tested and know that you have a winner. Start trading links with related websites and you will see a great boost in traffic.

Conclusion

In conclusion, make sure you understand that you should be building a long-term affiliate business and not just something that makes you a few dollars on one sale. If you ever stop advertising, you want to be in position to still have a powerful business. Building a large opt-in list will also position you as the expert in your niche.

Finally, remember to make sure that your opt-in page fits on one computer screen and is small. Always test the page by quickly driving some traffic.