Let me ask you a question. Is your focus on getting referrals and sales, or on building loyal, repeat customers?

If you've mastered the PPC engines, you might be able to get away with taking the lazy man's approach to affiliate marketing and make some decent money. However, if your desire is to reap enormous profits, you?ve got to put in more work than that. You need to learn the difference between pushing a link and pushing content.

If you think about it, your business is really in content and education. Your sales come the commission paid on the merchant's products, but your product is education.

A great model to follow: a super scaled-down version of About.com. That is the quality and variety of content we're considering here. If you haven't visited that site lately, take a moment to familiarize yourself with it (http://www.about.com/). Notice how each topical section is tight and highly focused?

Also, pay attention to your reaction as you browse the site. You'll see an abundance of information, in fact, more than you can read in one sitting. Now, think about recreating this feel on your own site. What can you offer your visitors that leaves them feeling in control, interested and wanting more? What can you do to build a devoted audience that comes to you time and again for the information you provide to them?

This is very important. Offer your visitors enough information so that they feel they?re making their own informed choices in the buying process. Of course, you can still "pitch" to them in your newsletters ­ but content helps you sneak in through the back door of their unconscious resistance. It gets them on the same page with you.

Let's move it one step further. When you build a loyal audience, an audience absolutely in love with your site, you get repeat traffic and you get word of mouth referrals. You get links. Even the search engines are more likely to boost you in the rankings when you provide this level of informative content. Essentially, you build your site as an authoritative hub on a specific topic.

So the question is, how do you make it work?

Obviously, I'm not recommending that you try to build a site as large as About.com.

In fact, I don't recommend the general approach at all. You need to find a niche and acquire products for that niche ­ or, if you?re working in reverse, take a look at your existing affiliate programs and develop content around the products.

You can start with as few as 10 targeted articles. Try to add 2 to 3 new articles per month and let your content grow over time.

If you aren't a writer, you can source content from reprint article distribution sites or have content custom written for you by a ghostwriter.

What type of content should you post?  Remember that your job is to educate the consumer (and, of course, pre-sell them at the same time!). Therefore, you need articles which inform and entertain. Think about the information you would normally send to your subscriber list, and start posting that information on site.

Here?s a good example: Let's say you're an affiliate for an insurance company. Here are potential article titles you might have on site:

"Ten Steps to Choosing the Right Health Insurance"

"Insurance Nightmares: What do you do when your provider won't pay?"

"HMO?s and PPO?s: What?s the Difference?"

"How to File a Claim"

"You?re Out of Job: Should You File for Cobra?"

You could add additional tools to this as well, like a free calculator that compares a person's current insurance costs to that of the average insured consumer their age.

Opportunities for referral link placement abound in this model. You can push your own program, build revenue through Adsense clicks or place other strategic links which tie in well with article content.

The one thing you don't want to do is leave your visitors hanging without a personal touch from you. Content alone is a bit "cold" without personalization. Notice how About.com uses a community "guide" model? This is the role you'll take on with your visitors. So, you need to have an autoresponder set up to start collecting leads ­ build a base of subscribers.

In fact, it's not a bad idea to place a picture of yourself on site and devote your landing page to an introduction. This is an ideal place to nab potential subscribers. Let them know you?re there to guide them through the maze of content. Not everyone who visits your site will understand all of the information provided, but you can be there to speak personally to them through your newsletter and guide them on the journey.

Running a site on this scale can be a lot of work. It may not be the model for you if you prefer building mini affiliate sites. However, if you're devoted to a particular area of interest, this model can sustain you in profit for a long time to come.

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Jo Han Mok is a frequent guest and featured speaker at
Internet Marketing bootcamps and conferences on
subjects such as copywriting and Joint Venture
Marketing. Find out how he helped a 'techno-geek'
achieve financial freedom at:
==> http://www.PowerAffiliateMarketing.com