To become a successful affiliate marketing entrepreneur you need treat your Internet venture as a real business and one way to start is by forgetting completely about affiliate promotion strategies that recommend to use all your marketing efforts to bring traffic to the merchant or vendor.

Successful marketers know that to build a strong long term Internet business that can produce an steady income for years to come is by optimizing your authority and credibility.

This is the reason I title this article "Don't Promote The Merchant", because for you to really build a wealthy venture you need to promote yourself, your company's name and marketing message (unique selling proposition) or both. Is all about exposing a brand in a ethical way so it build credibility and strong authority in your niche, if you do this you will be in the path of becoming a super affiliate.

Why you shouldn't promote the merchant directly

A lot of gurus will recommend you to send all the traffic you can to your referral link, specially if you don't have any money to invest. The truth is that with all the new online tools available now you can start your own successful affiliate business and build your web authority all for free. Just think for a minute what would happen to your earnings if the vendor suddenly goes out of business, or decide to discontinue the product, or discontinue the affiliate program without notice, or just change the offering and start giving away the product to build a list of prospects for a second product that will be promoted only by joint venture partners, this last one I think is a sneaky way to still commissions from associates, I personally recommend you to stay away from merchants that use this type of techniques. Imaging you spend all that time and money building link and traffic for you referral link and you will not get paid for your efforts, but the vendor still build their business from the traffic you are sending.

Here is what happen if you spend all your marketing and advertising on promoting the merchant or affiliate program:

1. You will have low sales conversion rates.
2. You have no brand or authority.
3. You aren't building a long term business.
4. And you are leaving a lot of money on the table.

The Super Affiliate Way

Smart entrepreneurs know that the secret of successful affiliate marketing is in developing a Internet business action plan that everyday will take you closer to your goals. Also, you need to use tested online promotion strategies that will help you promote yourself as a brand, will increase your online credibility, and will help you become an authority in your market. Here are a few free and low cost affiliate marketing tips to help you start:

1. Use articles to show your expertise and build credibility.
2. Use a blog as your main content management site and to build a fan base.
3. Syndicate your content by submitting your RSS feeds to directories.
4. Be an active user of social media and web 2.0 services.
5. Use niche forums to share good tips, but don't waste your time on them.
6. Submit press releases to boost your credibility and traffic.
7. Build your own list of opt-ins for leads and long term relationship.