It's a fact that affiliate marketing is one of the quickest ways to get a web business up and running. After all, you don't need a website, you don't need a list and you can start advertising someone else's product just 5 minutes from now.

And the great thing is you really can make money by doing it. But the truth is, if you are making money from a particular product you're promoting in this fashion, you're almost certainly leaving money on the table.

To explain why, we need to look at your average affiliate marketing strategy:

-- Pick a product to promote with a high affiliate payout ($50 or more)

-- Set up a pay-per-click campaign to promote your affiliate link

That's it! Those two steps are what the vast majority of affiliate marketers do. And that's why 95% of all affiliate payouts are made to just 5% of the people doing the marketing... because those top 5% are doing far more to earn their commissions than just a simple PPC campaign.

You need to understand that if you're fortunate enough to be making money from the product you're promoting just by doing those 2 basic steps, then it's almost a racing certainty that you're missing out on a mass of additional income.

Let's look at how you could increase your commissions and future related sales on just one product you're already making money from:

1. Build a 'name squeeze' page to capture your prospect's name and email address. It's a fact that virtually all product sales are made after the customer's fifth visit to the website.

If you're not capturing your prospect's details, how are you going to make sure they go back to the sales page using your affiliate link? To greatly improve the chances of this you can set up a 7-series autoresponder to automatically send your lead additional information and reminders about the product they're interested in. This approach will keep the product fresh in their mind.

2. Build a website reviewing the product you're promoting, including a newsletter to catch your prospect's details. You can give full details about how the product will solve your prospect's problems, giving an impartial review of the features and benefits with some real-life results.

The newsletter will allow you to keep in touch with your prospects in the same way as the name squeeze page method.

3. Offer additional bonuses for buying through your affiliate link. This gives your prospect a reason to buy from you, especially if they know you're going to make a commission from the sale.

The important thing here is that your bonus products are related to the product you're selling. I mean, there's no point advertising a bonus book on 'how to make your parrot talk' if your initial product is about training dogs to perform tricks.

4. Create video tutorials on how to use the product you're promoting. This works especially well when you're promoting a software product. You can show people how to get started as quickly as possible without them having to read the manual.

The vast majority of people learn visually, so they're much more likely to use your videos than read the manual supplied with the software. You can even tie this in with option 3; give your prospect free training videos if they buy through your affiliate link.

5. Make your own product to cross-promote. It can be an add-on to the product you're promoting as an affiliate. Again, you could easily offer it for free or at a discounted price if they buy through your affiliate link.

6. Promote related products via email. This works by creating an 'A ' Grade list out of your newsletter and squeeze page sign-ups, i.e. the people who have actually gone on to buy the product you're promoting.

It's a known fact that people who have a proven track record of buying online are more likely to buy from you again. You can easily recommend to them a related product that will further enhance their original purchase, resulting in more affiliate commissions for you.

7. Tie all of the above together. You don't have to use just one of the methods above. Use all of them.

Create a name squeeze page, build a review website with newsletter, add some bonuses to your affiliate link, make some video tutorials, develop your own related product and promote other affiliate products via email to the lists you've built with your name squeeze page and newsletter.

But before you do any of this, make sure you're promoting a product that sells. After all, spending your time doing all of the above for a product that is poorly supported, doesn't work properly or has a high refund rate is going to be time wasted.