Because although it's become somewhat of a cliche these days, the truth is, "the money is in the list" - but that means YOUR list, not the list of the people whose products you're selling - at least not if you want to be successful.
Here's why. As an affiliate, your job is to find people who want to buy the products you're promoting, right? So to do that, you need to write an ad (or hire a copywriter to write it for you), and send people to a Website where they can buy the product.
BUT - there's a serious problem with using this method. Do you see what it is?
Anywhere from 60 to 95% of the people you send to the sales page probably aren't going to buy the first time.
1. Most people want to be certain that they're making the right decision, so they usually need to see or hear from you between 5 to 12 times before making a buying decision.
2. If you're paying for the ad and sending people to the seller's Website, the ones who don't buy disappear forever. (And neither you nor the seller will benefit.)
3. Of those who do buy, if you're only sending them to the sales page, YOU still lose them forever because you have no way of knowing who they are.
Here's the solution:
1. Write your ad and send prospects to a well-written squeeze page - YOUR squeeze page. (A squeeze page is a single page Website that has one purpose - to convince prospects to give you their contact information. Squeeze pages should be simple - no flash, no links, and if you use a graphic or photo, keep it simple and make sure it relates to the purpose of the page. How do you convince prospects to give you their contact information? By giving them information that is what they're expecting to find and that's useful to them.)
2. Offer them an incentive to give you their contact information. (This could be a free report, a free newsletter, an audio or video product - just make sure it's related to the niche or affiliate product.)
3. After they've opted in to your autoresponder, send them to your affiliate sales page.
4. Follow up with them on a regular basis - mixing good information, free bonuses from time to time and additional affiliate products.
Lather, rinse, repeat. (Once you're making money from your first affiliate product, move on to the next and then the next and the next.)
The best thing about this is that you can set most of it up on your autoresponder, so you turn it into a "system" and it runs "almost" on autopilot. (There is NO SUCH THING as a business that runs 100% on autopilot - and don't believe anyone who tells you differently.) Any business - real business - takes work and effort. But by setting this system up this way, your autoresponder does the majority of the work, and you will only need to do simple updates and make sure you keep fresh information flowing.
