I am constantly amazed by the barrage of advertisements from affiliate marketers utilizing standard affiliate pages to pitch their wares. The concept of joining a 'hot' affiliate program for an even 'hotter' selling product appears to make sense because marketers have an opportunity to get on a fast moving train.

'Look, everyone is selling so and so's new Product X so they must be raking it in'. Seems reasonable, right? No.

Unfortunately for most, even the best selling programs will create little, if any at all, new business or revenue for them. While the reasons for this are numerous, the most important aspect of this inability to market hot products relates to the crowd. 'The crowd' you say, John?

Yes, the crowd. Unless you differentiate in some way shape or form you are simply another in a long line of folks with the exact same site, pitching the exact same deal to as many people as you can. And those folks will see that same site time and time again, thus becoming immune to it.

So'what do you do? How do you differentiate? How do you stand out from the crowd and sell that product? There are many different ways you can accomplish this; and the good news is that by differentiating yourself you will improve your whole online business, not just sales of one particular product.

A few ideas for differentiation include (in no specific order)-

? Develop a persona (i.e.: Affiliate Review Guy, Captain Affiliate, you get the gist) and build a recommendation site around that persona. If you offer quality recommendations and get a solid reputation you can direct people to your offers from that site.

? Utilize a squeeze page and offer a bonus or a newsletter in return for opt-in information. Once you have that information you are in a position to communicate with that individual regarding products you promote. Just be certain you are offering value too and you're not just blasting ads every three seconds, or your opt-in will opt right back out.

? Contact the owner of the program and see if you can work out a special deal for your subscribers. The people that own the programs are regular people just like you and me and you'd be surprised at how easy it really is to communicate with them. Of course you'll want to make sure there is benefit for the owner but if it's a win-win you may find yourself being able to edge out your competition.

? Utilize a cross section of all of these strategies and you will really notice a difference in click thru's and sales. By having your own site and gathering subscribers via opt-in you will be able to build a steady affiliate business and not for just one program, either, but for several.

The point of all of this is to get creative, stand out, build relationships with your customers, and leverage those relationships to market your affiliate programs. Be sure that your creativity doesn't step outside the bounds of your affiliate program TOS but by taking extra steps to provide value to your customer and by separating yourself from all the other folks out there you will see your conversion rates change dramatically and you will develop a solid business foundation.