If I had to sum up the way to become a success in affiliate marketing in two words, these would be it: trust and authority. Visitors to your website expect to find good information about the topics they are researching. If you’re able to provide good content and valuable information to them, you will automatically be perceived as an authority in the subject… and gain their trust.

The key to affiliate marketing success is learning this simple statement:

“People do NOT buy from an affiliate site, they buy directly from YOU!

If you create good will in your visitors, they will trust you and from that trust is where sales are really made. Are you beginning to see the true importance of your website? Your trust is on the line!

Not everyone follows this rule, but my suggestion is that when you are thinking about what programs to join and what products to endorse is… only tell people about products you trust and use. That way, you can really tell them about the product on a first-hand experience.

If you don’t do it this way, you could be advertising a really cheesy product that doesn’t work. Do this and your image will go down the tubes and the trust that you have built will be lost. I’m pretty sure you know that trust is something that you can only earn once.

A good advertorial site “focuses” on building trust, giving out good information and talking about great products. And it does it in a me-to-you, no-hype, straight-forward manner. If you grasp and understand this concept, you’ve won half of the affiliate battle! Here it goes again (just in case you skimmed over it the first time): People don’t buy from an affiliate site, the buy from you!

Advertorials don’t look like they were coming from an outside source – like a banner ad (which is why banner advertising doesn’t work as much as it used to). Banners and outside sources *sell* and people don’t like being sold… at least not from a site like yours. If they feel like they are being sold, they will click the back button and you’ll have lost them forever.

Now, I’m not saying that banners are bad. They do work when used tastefully and in a site that gives honest-to-goodness valuable content to its readers. Heck, there are a few banners on this blog!

An advertorial is not a salesletter, don’t fall into this trap either. A good advertorial provides good information that encourages your visitors on something that you feel a real passion for. You want to fit the affiliate program (the ad) into the context of what you’re doing. If you don’t, you’re going to sound just like every other affiliate site out there… the ones that don’t make any money! And you don’t want your site in this category do you?

There is a good rule of thumb for balancing your advertorial website: The 80-20 rule. This means that the content of your website should be at least 80% of valuable information and just 20% (or less) of sales content. This is not an exact rule, but if you follow it, your site will never be out of balance and fall into the ugly-online-mall category.