Effective, ethical affiliate marketing is the combination of two things, traffic and trust. Sure, there are some other aspects to the game but if you can get down the traffic and the trust, you’ll never have a problem making sales.

Some of you know how to build traffic well. Some of you don’t. Some of you are naturals at building trust and being trustworthy. Some of you will have to work at that.

If you’re going to become an effective and ethical affiliate marketer, you’re going to have to learn to be solid at both.

Ethics and Affiliate Marketing

The AM world is full of unethical scammers. Commit to yourself now to not become one of them. Just the other day I wrote about some fraudulent marketing that I’ve been seeing ads for on Facebook. I bet those guys are making bank right now. They could be in jail next week. That probably won’t ever happen, but why would you want to live wondering if you’re going to get caught lying?

To me there’s no satisfaction in taking money again and again from loser ‘get rick quickers’ and that’s what most scammers do. They prey on the same people that spend every last dime buying lottery tickets and that has no appeal to me. What does appeal to me is making legitimate sales of solid products from legitimate companies.

I don’t find it harder to make affiliate sales this way, in fact I find it to be a lot easier. I don’t have to go spend a bunch of money on traffic to make affiliate sales, in fact most of the time the traffic finds me. That’s right – the trust I develop on my sites leads not only to affiliate sales, but also to more traffic. The traffic can be purchased as well, but that’s an option and certainly isn’t a necessity.

Two Distinctly Different Attempts at Selling

To understand clearly how to make affiliate sales, I want you to think deeply about two different ways people try to make sales.

#1 – The Describer

• The visitor lands on the page
• The page describes the affiliate product that’s trying to be sold
• The visitor is shown positive testimonials
• The visitor is invited to purchase

#2 – The Nurturer

• The visitor lands on the page
• The visitor is immediately taught a true concept that helps them to see that their problem can be solved
• The visitor is then invited to learn more by downloading a free, legitimate, and helpful resource
• The helpful resource provides the visitor with true education about the problem they are trying to solve
• The visitor is then provided with examples of how the product is used to solve their problem, by email
• The visitor is then provided with your positive testimonial, and other positive testimonials
• The visitor is asked to purchase and is provided with additional instruction upon purchasing the product

To you, how do these two different approaches relate to traffic and trust?