There is no gainsaying that affiliate marketing is the easiest means to make tons of residual income online, but for these to be achieved, certain rules of the game need to be grasped. This includes applying multiple traffic methods, experimenting on your landing pages, search engine optimization (SEO), etc. They are explained as follows:

1. Apply Multiple Traffic Methods:

Capitalizing on traffic from one source is not healthy for affiliate marketing. It is rather more ideal to utilize more than one source of traffic to promote a site since the various traffic techniques will serve to compensate for possible dwindling performance of any of the traffic sources. There are lots of free traffic techniques as well as paid ones and, even the free ones are no less effective than the paid ones. So even if you pay for traffic, it will equally do your affiliate marketing a world of good to apply free traffic techniques such as article and video marketing: these techniques will guarantee you steady passive income.

2. Experiment On Your Landing Pages:

Though driving traffic to a website is very important to success in an affiliate program, however, any effort made to generate traffic will become a waste if visitors are not converted to buying customers; as a means of achieving this, a split-test of landing pages need to be performed to know what landing pages convert better. Experience has shown that significant improvement in sales can be achieved by effecting simple changes such as text and background color. A split-test only entails a simple task of setting up a script for that purpose.

3. Search Engine Optimization (SEO):

A very important technique for a successful affiliate marketing is "search engine optimization." This entails some simple tasks that can make your website to rank high on search engines. Search Engine Optimization strategy produces a long-term effect on traffic to a website i.e. it continues to draw traffic to a site for a long time. Ranking high on search engines can be achieved through link building or press releases on weekly or monthly basis; consolidating on search engine optimization is necessary in order not to give room for your competitors to overtake your website ranking on search engines.

4. Outsourcing Complex Tasks:

A great way to handle intricate aspects of your affiliate marketing is through the act of outsourcing; this involves passing on some complex tasks to an expert to handle. Sometimes, it is more cost effective to do outsourcing since it will free up more time for you to concentrate on more important tasks. Some of the rather tedious operations that one should consider outsourcing are: video creation, landing page creation, social media marketing etc.

5. Get Your Site To Load Faster:

One important factor that makes a site more profitable is its ability to load fast, and since more success can be achieved by sending traffic to a landing page, it is therefore necessary to improve your site's (landing page) performance by optimizing its load time. The faster a page can load, the more chances it stands to make more money and also achieve high ranking on search engines. If your site was created using WordPress, check out WP-Cache. This plug-in speeds up load time of your page.

6. Expand Your Income Streams:

While it seems ideal to start affiliate marketing with the promotion of a single product until it starts bringing in steady income, it is however not out of place to consider adding more affiliate programs as time progresses. This is because it is risky to continue promoting only one product, since the product may eventually cease to be profitable, or the product merchant may discontinue with the product. Therefore the only way to guarantee stable income from affiliate program is by promoting at least two or more products.

7. Use Social Media/Web 2.0:

Social Media/Web 2.0 is another great way to increase your affiliate program earning potential; this is because these platforms are known to attract a sizable amount of visitors daily. For instance, within its shorter period of existence, a site like Facebook has succeeded in toppling popular site like Yahoo in terms of attracting traffic. This makes sites like Facebook and Twitter very important for traffic generation which can also boost affiliate earnings.

8. Find And Promote High Commission Paying Products:

As an affiliate marketer who is already earning money in a particular niche, you can further improve significantly on your earning potential by finding and promoting products in that niche that converts as well, and pays better than your current product. Another way to earn more commission is to simply request your product merchant to increase your commission per sale, and depending on the figure of sales you generate, you can stand a good chance of getting a favorable response.

9. Use Keywords To Get Targeted Traffic:

It is not just enough to drive swarms of visitors to your site if they all end up not responding to your offer. In order to draw traffic that is targeted and more responsive to your offer, the right technique to employ is keyword research. Proper keyword research ensures that you find the right keywords with which to optimize your site for a more targeted traffic. Facility such as Google Keyword Suggestion Tool comes in handy in this regard.