When my son was younger, he and I tackled a computer strategy game together. In the game, the player became the main character wandering through a strange land seeking a great reward. Along the way, he encountered both helpers and hinderers. Through these encounters, our hero found opportunities to increase his strength and cunning.

That describes affiliate marketing - a feat of strategy that can offer great rewards to those who are willing to put forth the effort to acquire strength and cunning.

Build and Protect Life Force
It's Game Over when your character runs out of life force. In our affiliate marketing game, life force is measured by the number of visitors to your website. Of primary importance to an affiliate marketer is creating ways to attract visitors.

Internet users are seeking information and entertainment. Build a site that offers one or both of these along with an element of uniqueness and you will have the potential for an abundance of life force.

Gain Strength
There's strength in numbers is certainly true in internet marketing. Find ways to place your link on other quality sites. Look for sites that are relevant to your own content. Those fellow website owners who will exchange links or write features about your site are important helpers in gaining strength.

Forums are a place where you can personally interact with other internet users. These interactions can result in more visitors to your site. Many forums allow you to post your link along with your signature. Networking through forums can help build links and service exchanges as well. Reading posts from other users can be a great source of wisdom.

Article databases create more opportunities for visitors to become aware of you and the information or entertainment that you have to offer. Allow these helpers to do your bidding and bring traffic to your site. 

Develop Cunning
Never stop learning. Subscribe to two or three affiliate marketing newsletters. You have mentors with lessons to teach, open your mind and receive.

Search engines can seem both friend and foe. It takes a lot of work to master the search engine. Words are the key. You must diligently seek out the words that bring you the most visitors and include them in the content of your site. The tricky part is that the perfect combination of words is constantly shifting as if you are building your structure on a sand dune. As the terrain changes, so must your site.

There are seers who can help you master the magic of the words - search suggestion tools. With these tools, you can assign value to the words that your site contains. Choose high-ranking key words and gracefully weave them into your content.

Reap Your Rewards
Join an affiliate program to find advertisers. I recommend LinkShare.com Select your ads carefully to cater toward your audience. Some sites do well with flashing banner ads, while others find text links to be more lucrative. Apply your cunning and study your ad campaigns continuously.

Pay per click programs are also available. The commissions are smaller than affiliate advertisers pay, but since visitors will click much more often than they will purchase the small amounts can add up quickly. Apply the key word strategies and your pages will display ads that pay higher rewards for each click.

It's a game! Enjoy each moment as you reach for the next level. Remember that strength and cunning take time and determination to develop. But, as they grow so will your chest of treasure.