In my opinion, one of the keys to being successful in affiliate marketing (or any online venture, really) is to pick a focused niche to work in. That way you can start getting really targeted traffic that will be interested in the products you’re offering. Don’t try to sell everything to everyone. It just doesn’t work, unfortunately.

I’m not sure how you’re currently buying traffic that is all fake, but whatever it is, stop The only kind of traffic really worth buying is highly-targeted PPC traffic like Google AdWords, and even then, you’ll only succeed with it if your keywords, ads, and website all work well together to target and sell motivated customers. Paying for traffic on keywords like “buy products” is a recipe for disaster. You need to be as specific as possible, and try to bring people to your site who are closer to the point of buying, instead of people who are just curious or doing research themselves.

I looked at your site and while it looks nice, it’s very general and has a bunch of extraneous stuff on it, like all the news, weather, etc. You don’t need to provide that kind of stuff to visitors- they have Yahoo and weather.com for that kind of thing. Your site needs to clearly explain to people what you have to offer them and why you’re a source they should trust. Don’t distract them with things that don’t reinforce that. Also, I would say that beyond that, you need to pick a specific product genre or theme. For example, your domain is stores4smartproducts. So maybe have the theme of “products for geeks” or “products that help people work smarter,” just to give a couple of examples. Right now, your mix of electronics, furniture, kitchen, etc, is way too broad and doesn’t make you look like an expert on any one thing.

Besides looking like an expert when you get specific on what kinds of products you promote, finding a niche will also help you rank better in search engines and may help you pick up more legitimate traffic from other sources, like social media or article directories. Once you’ve chosen your niche, you can start targeting the keywords on your pages to that niche, which search engines and other webmasters out there will like.

Sorry if that sounded like I was picking on you- many people do the same thing, and while being general seems like a good idea, it actually makes it harder to gain traction and traffic. This is something I think many people should consider. Best of luck, and please leave a comment letting us know how you’re doing in the future!

Affiliates don’t need to have their own website to promote products. The method you stated would work just fine.

Beau