As said in my introduction, my area of expertise is Site Optimization (Visual&Subliminal Marketing and Online Consumer Behavior) together with Marketing Strategies Development. I've seen at DP many threads asking about conversion... you have the traffic, you have the PR, you have it all... but still, you are not converting. I've been working for several years helping affiliates to convert, so far a 1 out of 15 conversion ratio for Duty Free products is not bad and would like to share with you some of the things I've been working on. Conversion has nothing to do with backlinks, with SEO or whatsoever. Of course that you need to have your site SE optimized but once you are done with it, here are the things you will have to pay attention to: 1) Product: Be sure you are promoting good quality products with a fair price or regular quality with a low price. Customers are not stupid (most of the time ) they tend to purchase online because of the lower costs so they don't always expect for the best quality. 2) Needs: the customer is searching for certain item because a) He/she needs it b) He/She thinks He/She needs it.In any case, you have to prove not only that they actually need the product but also that they need YOUR product. You have two ways to do so: Generate/Reinforce that need: Tell them all the things they will be able to do with that product. Time saving is always a great trigger and can be used almost everywhere. Being the first among friends to have it. Tax Free, etc Offer an opportunity: as said before, customers are not dumb, if they see a good opportunity, they will go for it and they will go with the best offer so be sure you are giving them a great offer (even if it's not) offer discounts, special deals, 1+1. Never, Never try to catch a customer with a "Next time purchase discount", (this will definitely help with retention but we are talking about conversion now) if you want to add it to the current discount... it's ok though. Do not use the word "cheap" (cheap means low quality) use instead the word "discounted". Shipping is a strong point as well, use it! 3) Trust: Many customers are reluctant to purchase online because of all this online frauds (Remember that most internet users don't even know how to delete their cookies) so at the smallest sign of scam, they will just leave your site. Try to avoid re-directions, from this site to that site, to the secure page and blah blah... too long, too suspicious. I know it's not easy to do, specially for affiliates promoting other sites but you can actually tailor your landing page to make it look similar to the final site, you can even ask your affiliate manager for templates or dedicated banners. 4) Design: Be sure your site/page is user friendly. Be sure the specific products are no more than 3 clicks away from your homepage. Combine the "Search" feature with an A-Z indexing and categories. Combine the colors of your design properly (you can use colorschemedesigner.com as a guide... but use mainly common sense )... Those are the basics for any site that wants to be really considered by customers... I still have a long, long list but I think it's enough reading for today , promise to add some other tips soon. Hope you enjoyed and was useful!