Why would you want to create a mini affiliate site in the first place? Well, it sets you apart from the crowd. If you are promoting a product via an affiliate program, and you are using the same promotion material that the program offers, yoour ads will look EXACTLY like everyone elses, whose promoting the same product.

So, if your potential buyers have seen the ad already via other affiliates, and they didn't buy then, why would they buy from you instead?

Having your own mini affiliate site offers you huge benefits over those other affiliates who do not have their own site.

The first, and probably most important benefit is that you control the content that appears on your own web site. Rather than relying on the product sellers marketing material, you can create a content driven, interactive site that gets people talking about the product and keeping their interest. You could add things like discussion boards or forums, surveys and polls, and write your own content surrounding the product topic.

Secondly, you control how you promote your site. You could use pay-per-click campaigns such as Google Adwords and Overture campaigns. Some affiliate program owners will restrict you on trademarked terms, but outside of that, you have control.

You could write articles based on the topic of you affiliate product. Post these up on your site to keep your visitors there, and also distribute them around the internet to build exposure and publicity. (see http://www.trafficforwords.com for explanation of how to distribute your articles for maximum web site promotion).

Another great bonus is that, while your visitors are at your site, you have the option of collecting their contact details so that you can follow them up. Having your own opt-in list is absolutely essential if you are to maintain a healthy online income through affiliate programs.

Creating your mini affiliate site is not neccessarily a difficult task, but there are no guarantees that you will succeed either. You will need to work at making your offers so appealing that your visitors just have to make that purchase.

The reason you would create a mini affiliate site is to make your offer look more appealing than all the other affiliates promoting the same thing. In effect, you are disguising the offer by presenting it in a way that is more appealing to your potential buyers. By doing so, you are more likely to get the order than the next hopeful affiliate.

A great way to help you succeed along the way, is to make the offer your own. By that, I mean offer something that makes your presentation unique. Ok, so your prospects have probably seen the standard affiliate material for your product dozens of times already. They weren't impressed as they haven't bought the product yet. All the other affiliates are in the same boat because they're all using the same marketing copy.

Your mini affiliate site, however, looks different, because you have written your own content surrounding the product, and have given those prospects something new and fresh to look at. The next step is to add more to the offer. Give them a special bonus that they can't get elsewhere to entice them into buying. So now, not only does your offer look different, it actually IS different. So, even if they were on the brink of buying from one of your competing affiliates, they probably won't now because they want that extra bonus.

Building your web site and getting it all ready is now so easy. Much easier than it havs ever been before. Domain names are ridiculously low, and hosting can be obtained free, and without banners (see http://www.popurl.com/doteasy for details). This means that although you are spending money on creating your site, the outlay is so low, that the increase in commission from your affiliate product will far outweigh the costs.

Great places to buy domains are www.namecheap.com and www.godaddy.com. These two are highly recommended around the internet and offer very, very competitive pricing.

The absolute best way to start getting targeted traffic to your site is to use pay-per-click campaigns. You can practically pick which people you want to visit your site by selecting your keywords carefully and managing your campaigns rigidly. It also means that you can start getting traffic almost immediately. To get you started, I would recommend that you look at Google Adwords and an Overture campaign. These two search systems together should give you at least 75% of the traffic you can obtain.

If you would like to find a listing of all known pay-per-click search engines, visit http://www.payperclicksearchengines.com. A very valuable resource and you can pick up more advertising tips from there.

There's one tip with pay-per-click search engines that could save you a lot of money in wasted advertising and will probably even make you more money. It's simple really. When you're writing your headline for your ad, make it as specific as possible. For instance, if you're selling an ebook for $19.95 on gaining top search engine rankings, you could use a heading like this.

"$19.95 Ebook Shows You How To Get Top Search Engine Ranking"

or

"Top Search Engine Rankings For Only $19.95"

By being upfront about the price in your heading, you will avoid having to pay for clicks where people are searching for free resources. If they know the price is $19.95 before they even click, they will more than likely move on to the next ad. Not always, of course, but should hopefully reduce the occurrences.

There are more resources available for managing your pay-per-click campaigns, so I would suggest doing some research. If your campaigns are not setup properly or are not targeted enough, or even if they are targeting keywords that are too popular, your advertising budget could disappear very quickly. Be warned, and be careful.

You need to be aware of your conversion ratios, so you need to track your visitors and hits and monitor your sales via the affiliate program as often as possible. Once you know what your conversion ratios are, you will be in a better position to work out how much you can spend per click to make a healthy profit. Once you have the balance right, you can practically 'set it and forget it', and let the money roll in!