95% of new websites go out of business the first year. Nine times out of ten it's due to a lack of traffic.

Many new Internet affiliate marketers start believing, from some of the promises made by less-than-scrupulous gurus that all you need to do is put up a website with an affiliate link on it and you begin to make money almost immediately.

Big time guru webmasters and Internet marketers sometimes can do this. Most new affiliate markets and webmasters cannot.

A website works, in most ways, like an actual store in the real brick and mortar world. No matter how beautifully the store is formatted, unless people come through the front door, you won't be making any money from sales. You need customers coming in to the business or you don't eat.

For your business website or any website for that matter to have a chance to succeed in the cut-throat world of affiliate marketing, it must have visitors coming to it - The more the better.

90% of online traffic comes directly through search engine referrals. People search for what they want and if you did your SEO or PPC job right your website gets a chance to show up in the search results, with probably a million others, but the higher on the search results your website ranks, the more visitors your store (website) will have. This is how you stay in business, by making sure your website shows up in these online searches. That is almost impossible for a new internet marketer to do quickly without help or tutorials, and even then it is more difficult than winning the kentuck derby on a warthog. At least thats how it will seem to the new affiliate marketer.

Google is the search engine leader clearly and by leaps and bounds, no doubt whatsoever. Yahoo! and Microsoft are next strongest but even together account for less than 32% of the traffic going to websites. Most people search google. Google is a brand like band-aids, google means search no matter where you search. Your websites goal should be on getting listed as high as possible on the main search engine results pages, especially with Google. The goal is to get listed on the first page of search engines for your main keywords.

If you sell affiliate productK you want to show up in the search results of anyone on earth searching for productK or looking for information about affiliate productx or any other searches for products similar to affiliate productK. This takes a bunch of research, of course, but the "rich" internet marketers seem to have a secret way that they do this research. Secret may be too strong of a word for these methods because sooner later, if you are serious and dedicated, you will learn these tricks and secrets, but to the new marketers and webmasters "secret" is the perfect word. But that aside, you must get listed.

The only sure way to get listed in the search results in a high first page position is through paid search advertising (pay per click) - Google Adwords or Yahoo! Search. You can place ads for your product based on keywords by bidding an amount you are willing to pay each time a searcher clicks though your ad and is sent to your website. This gives a HUGE advantage to the more able to spend big money Internet marketer, the more money you pay, the higher your position, though there are a number of other factors involved based on the search engine's policies. On less frequently searched keywords, you might pay 25 cents per click. On high volume keywords, the top bid could be as much as $30 or more per click. 90% of new webmasters and Internet marketers make or break themselves attempting to negotiated the cut-throat world of pay=per-click PPC for short. There are many articles and programs with strategies and tips on pay-per-click, Here is a list of the top 10 affiliate marketing programs that are about or contain pay-per-click strategies.

When you run an AdWords ad, you'll get a certain percentage of ones that click through. Of those that click through to visit your site, a certain percentage will convert, that is, act on your offer and buy what you're selling. Conversion ratios often run around 1%. So, if you want to make a commission for a sale, you might need 100 around visitors. To get those 100 visitors, you need about 5000 impressions. How quickly your ad gets that many impressions depends on how many searches are made for the keyword each day. Be sure to work through the numbers and verify that there's enough traffic overall to meet your goals and that the cost is going to leave you some profit. Internet marketing is not easy.

The free alternative or supplement is Search Engine Optimization. SEO(for short) is a multi-faceted practice where the purpose is to get your site listed high on the search engine first results pages for free. The free listings are known as the "organic" or "natural" search results. The search engines decide where you get listed based on their evaluation of how relevant your website is to the keyword being searched for. This is the best way to get traffic and sales most new webmasters and marketers. It is also a very time consuming and trial and error based endeavor. The truth is that no matter how you wind up getting customers or visitors to you affiliate website SEO will eventually become the most important factor. That is unless you can land a link on an Internet giant.

If you don't plan to spend a ton of money on advertising, SEO is your only option .

If you have the money to spend and want to learn all the tips, tricks and strategies of Internet affiliate marketers sans a huge portion of the trial and error that the less affluent have to go through, you can try the most expensive marketing program.

Those are the usual ways to succeed at Internet affiliate marketing. I wish I would have read this article the day after I started.