Studies have shown that a majority of internet marketers online have either previously been involved, or are still involved in affiliate marketing. While this may sound heartening to new internet marketers out there thinking that it is still “okay" to engage in affiliate marketing, what many may not be aware is the success rate of these affiliate marketers.

The numbers vary depending on where you carry out your research and which authority sites you get your information from. Unfortunately, the majority of forums or websites do not accurately paint a realistic picture on the success rates of affiliate marketers. Often, you will find more information on what are the latest affiliate marketing programs, as well as affiliate marketing tools or resource sites. In addition, there are numerous sites providing tips on the so called detailed steps to ensure your success in your affiliate marketing campaigns. While some of these sites may provide valuable advice and tips, affiliate marketers should note that on the flip side, you may very often get “ill advice" as well.

What do we mean by “ill advice"?

Here’s an analogy: Affiliate Marketer “Joe" is looking into how to boost his affiliate income and decides to do a quick search online. He finds a few promising sites and decides to look up on one of them. This particular site introduces to him the idea of affiliate marketing and what potential affiliate products he can consider promoting from this particular site. But before being allowed to receive his own affiliate link, Joe needs to purchase the product first (as a sign that he believes in the product. Sounds reasonable, otherwise it won’t be convincing should he try to promote this same product to his potential site visitors) and agrees to it. Armed with this new product and his very own affiliate link, he follows the step by step procedures in the manual (or on the affiliate site) and is informed that he can promote his product through Google Adwords, article sites, email list, and some so called viral marketing tools, and so on and so forth. Joe follows through diligently and takes about a week to complete the whole regime and waits for the results to come in. Guess what? Nothing happens except for a few visitors who have clicked on his Google Adwords (costing him in clicks) but no sales. Sounds like a good ROI? What went wrong?

Affiliate marketers should be familiar with the above scenario and it is exactly because of such disappointing results that most marketers hardly find success in affiliate marketing and ultimately give up the whole idea and go away complaining about it.

But for those who have found success in affiliate marketing (ie, achieving a high ROI), they will tell you that the methods they have used aren’t very much different to the above that Joe has actually used. So what is it that the successful affiliate marketers have used that has returned them a completely different outcome compared to Joe’s?

Here’s a clue: the choice of media used. It will deliver a whole lot of different set of results in your affiliate marketing effort.