• Domain business plan which has potential for each identified keyword/phrase and detailed site architecture design for long tail/vertical search
• Create and upload first couple hundred pages and go live – very important
• Submit to directories
• 6-8 months copy writing content pages to site design. No monetization effort until this point. -Patience pays
• Easy affiliate program sell due to well targeted known volume of niche traffic.
• Add-in unique content links/descriptions leading to newly uploaded well architectural pages selling pages.
• To continue copy writing until site architecture filled in. Add/adjust pages on par web log file search query analysis suggests additional/alternate keywords/phrases.
• Monitor, modify, and change affiliate accounts as required.- important role for monetization
  continue, repeat.

One main focus of Affiliate success is Link Development, Newsletter Subscriptions are also good traffic source.

Best practices in HTML/CSS and accessibility/usability.

Basic SEO work.

Real effort pays after page upload spent building non-SE traffic: the traffic origin ideal being one third each bookmarks, targeted links, Search engines/directories. Not there yet but some sites are getting close.

What I see consistently is that bookmark traffic converts twice as well as targeted links which convert four times targeted search which is eight times the long tail search terms. I have always found those ratios intriguing.

The best tool for affiliate programs can always be the free SEARCH ENGINE TRAFFIC.

But Some People follow the PPC (Pay Per Click) rule to promote affiliate programs. Pay per click results are those that come in the extreme right column of search engine results which are paid results.

Anyways, for me, natural search engine rankings give a real good traffic for any niche affiliate program site or blog.