But if you're like most affiliates out there and you make this one huge mistake, you will be dead in the water before you even get started.

So, what is the single biggest mistake most affiliates make? Not having a means to collect people's personal information such as first name and email address.

This is the lifeline of your business if you want to stand a chance in making it in this very competitive business know as affiliate marketing.

There are several different ways to capture a person's name and email address and the best way is through a "Squeeze Page". There's more than one way to skin a cat so I'm going to show you the flow chart or blueprint that I have used pretty successfully.

Using this method I have managed to collect subscribers using pay-per-click advertising through Google Adwords. Now you must be very careful here if you don't know what you're doing as you can lose your shirt in a heartbeat. I'm not going to get into this because it would take a 200 page book to explain pay-per-click.

First I designed a simple squeeze page where I'm offering a 5-day video course in exchange for their first name and primary email address. After they enter their information and click on my "Claim Your FREE Videos" button they are immediately directed to a thank you page.

This is an extremely important step you don't want to leave out, as it will increase your verified opt-in rate immensely. That is of course if you are using double opt-in which I highly recommend because it will save you on spam complaints.

On this thank you page I of course first thank them for subscribing to my video course, then go into great detail explaining how to go to their email right NOW and verify that I have permission to send them emails. I have screen shots of exactly what the email will look like and drew a big red circle around the confirmation link they must click on before I can send them their videos.

Immediately after clicking on the confirmation link I send them an email with a link to download their first video. But I don't stop there. I also send them to a sales page where they can purchase Private Label Rights to the videos plus a couple software packages.

Now if they make a purchase they are sent to a download page, after their payment has been processed of course. On this download page I give clear instructions on how to download each file. I also tell them what to expect on their bill, explain exactly what rights they have for each product such as Master Resale or Private Label Resale rights, and contact information in case they have any problems downloading files. And trust me on this they will have problems.

The point I'm trying to make here is that if you explain exactly what they have to do every step of the way it will dramatically increase both your opt-in rate and your sales.

I have managed enough sales using this simple method to offset the advertising costs and still make a little extra to re-invest in my affiliate marketing business.

Now this doesn't include all the emails I can send to my subscribers for years to come, promoting other affiliate products through my autoresponder. That is all gravy.

Now this is only one of the ways I use my squeeze pages to collect names and email addresses. There are many variations of this and you'll just have to figure out what works best for you.

So the bottom line here is, if you're an affiliate marketer never send anyone directly to the merchant's salespage. Always make sure they go through your squeeze page first, otherwise you'll be spending all your time and money building somebody else's affiliate marketing business.