Studies had been made and shows that normal affiliates seems to make a sale with a percentage ratio of 0.5% - 1% (Sometime lower, depending on the products/service). With suitable advertising method and correct niche market, it is possible to increase the ratio to 5% - 10%. So what actually is advertising? Read on to realize how to use advertising to your advantage below.

Online advertising, also known as internet marketing, is a form of communication to apprise potential customer about your products and services, either by text or graphic base. Many of you already know what advertisement is, but many advertisements copy often short of 2 essential element. Without these 2 elements, putting your advertisement blindly in the internet/website is just a waste of time, as well as money.

First, you need to target your niche market. You must understand very well where are the most potential customer situated. Studies has also proven that placing advertisement in the right market with lesser traffic flow generates more revenue than those who advertise in a site where millions of non-relevant traffic flows everyday. Second, you need marketing techniques. There are many types of advertising and I will go through some of the popular ones below.

PPC (Pay-Per-Click). This type of advertising should be your top list of market techniques. There are basically 2 major companies in the PPC industries, Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing. How do they work? You might ask. PPC is one of the advertising methods where you bid for the keywords. Your desired keywords might have a higher or lower bidding depending on the popularity. Advertising in Google Adwords is more effective because Google is the number one search engine used by surfers, especially online consumers. You ads will appear on Google, Google Directory, Google Groups, Google's partner sites, etc. The procedure of advertising in Google Adwords is very easy as well.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization). SEO is the process of improving the amount and quality traffic to a web site from search engine. Usually, a site that has a better ranking will attract more searchers to the site through search engines.

There are a lot of e-books that teaches how to make use of SEO and improve your ranking in the search engines. Once you have optimized your pages for the search engines, you will start seeing huge traffic flowing to your site everyday.

Are there any 'SECRETS' in online marketing or advertising? For me, I would say YES! Many top affiliate have their own source of advertising. They often hide their 'secrets' so as to prevent the loss of revenue. Different products or services play very well with different advertising techniques. You will have to try and find out from your experiments. In this way, you will eventually discover the legend of internet marketing!

Lastly, never ever stop doing in this industry! If things do not work out in the way that you want it to be, adjust your marketing strategies. If it still fails, I would suggest changing to different affiliate program and try out something different. Sooner or later, you will find yourself on the track, without noticing.

Good Luck in promoting your affiliate programs!