When you first get into affiliate marketing, the odds are good that you’re looking to create long-term income and are not simply looking for a quick influx of money. This means that you need to put in the time and focus required to turn your affiliate marketing into a career move and not just a hobby.

There’s a difference between the flash-in-the-pan affiliate and the long-term, successful affiliate. The difference is in the money they earn. If you’re only looking to get into marketing to sell a product or two, that’s all you’re going to do, and that’s if you’re very lucky. But if you approach it like a business, building your business up and taking care of your brand name and reaching out to customers, you have much better odds of finding long-term success.

Do you think Coca-Cola would be in business if they sold a nasty-tasting, inferior product? Of course not. We only know about Coke because they sell one of the best-tasting cola products in the world. They wanted to go high-class from the start. And this should be your mantra. You should be looking only at selling high-quality products that people really want. Your brand depends on it. Don’t fool around with generic products or products of a lesser quality.

Keywords and tagging and all those other search engine optimization tricks are great if you want your blogs and sites to be ranked well per their respective niche, but you still have to focus on writing for the reader. This means that your content needs to be optimized for your customers before it’s optimized for the search engines, and this means focusing intently on high-quality writing and design features that make your site look as professional as possible.

High-definition televisions, gaming systems and computers don’t really solve the common problems of customers. These luxury items are a lot tougher to sell for quite a few reasons, the biggest being that the economy is still struggling. What you need are products that actually do work as problem-solvers for people. Information products are always great. You can’t really put a price on great information. Green products are a good choice for you. Pick something that solves a legitimate problem you can identify.

You never want to steal people’s email addresses by purchasing mailing lists. Instead, you will have to work to build up your subscribers list. You will have to get your email addresses through organic means. It might take you longer this way, but it is for the sake of your brand’s longevity and overall reputation. You will need do things the right way. After people are on your list, however, make sure you keep them informed about what you’re doing.

Any affiliate marketer’s goal should always be the continued success of their affiliate business. If you are not getting into marketing for longevity, then there’s no use to get into marketing at all. Remember to apply what you’ve learned here to increase your odds of longevity.