Selling products for an affiliate merchant is one of the most common ways to make money with affiliate marketing. Sadly many people never selling anything. They ultimately end up wasting their time which is a shame both for them and the merchant as well.

Let's talk about three things you can do to make some sales and help avoid wasting your time doing affiliate marketing.

1. Use your products. It is amazing how many affiliate marketers have not used the products they are trying to sell.

One of the best things you can do is purchase your own products if you are new to this kind of way to make money. Once you have learned about it you will find that selling the product is easier.

When using the product jot down what you like about it and what you do not like. You will use this in the next step.

2. Review what you have learned. Sending your potential consumer directly to the affiliate sales page is a bad idea.

A better approach is writing review pages where you talk about the disadvantages and advantages of the product you will be promoting. This is where personally using the product is good.

Being honest in a review is actually a great sales tool. Nobody believes that everything is 100% perfect so it's okay to write things that you don't like about a product as well.

As an affiliate marketer you are given free websites to promote. You will want to start your own website and then link it to the sales pages on your review pages.

These used to be call pre sell pages. Today you really do not want to pre-sell your prospects as much as you want to just offer facts and opinions about the product you are reviewing.

Writing a good review page will help in pre selling. You can then link to your affiliate sales page with a text link or banner ad.

3. Create a follow up system. This is an important part of succeeding.

All you really need is an auto responder and a series of messages to follow up with your prospects. Many affiliate programs have a splash page or landing page for you to promote.

Putting your landing page sign up form on your review pages is a good thing to do. This is a way to get your prospects name and email address before sending them to your affiliate sales page.

You will find you waste less time on affiliate marketing sales if you use the products, review them, and create a future follow up system!