You love that picture of the family. It would be perfect for the homepage of your website. But it just needs to be 100 pixels wider to fill in your top banner.

So you stretch it out to fit your page.

Your lovely picture of the nice family now looks like a bunch of painfully stretched Oompa-Loompas and the photo looks like it was taken by the first ever digital camera.

You figure, oh well…no one will notice.

Yes they will.

Do yourself a favor and resize photos properly. Don’t use them if they look stretched, pixelated, or mutilated. A sharp looking, properly sized, appropriate pictures build trust, increase conversion, and are guaranteed to make your site look professional.

3. You might need to up your game on your affiliate site if you are the landlord of an “Online Mall”

The online mall concept is an old one – and something that actually may have worked will in the late 90s.

But last time I checked there are no new episodes of Dawson’s Creek being made.

There is one real online mall and it is called Amazon.com. Your attempt to build your own little Amazon is doomed to fail…it’s like planting some bushes in your back yard and expecting for the Amazon Jungle to grow.

It’s not happening friend.

Truth is, the most successful affiliate sites are focused affiliate sites. They meet the needs of someone looking for something specific.

The scattergun approach does not work anymore.

You can blame that on the search engines.

People who find you trough the search engines (which will be most people), will already have searched for something specific. If I type in “Canon SD750 digital camera” and you give me a page that sells shoes, a teddy bear, flowers, sexy underpants, debt consolidation services and digital cameras, I’m hitting the back button.

Your website should be a specialty boutique, not a garage sale (that’s what Craigslist is for…and no, you are not going to create the next Craigslist).

4. You might need to up your game on your affiliate site if you are operating a banner farm

If your business model is to join EVERY affiliate program you can find and place banners from all them on one webpage, it IS time to up your game.

Why? Because you are a Banner Farmer.

Making someone look at a banner farm is like stabbing them in the eyes. Life is too short to spend any time staring at 100 ridiculous banner ads. You know it. I know it. And everyone else knows it.

So don’t do it.

I know cutting and pasting banner on your site is easy – but easy never made any affiliate who is worth a darn a bucket of money (no matter what that e-book you bought says).

5. You might need to up your game on your affiliate site if you think paying for a domain name or web hosting isn’t worth it.

This one is pretty straightforward.

If you are not willing to shell out less money that it costs to buy a case of beer for a domain name, you are not going to make it as an affiliate. Sure, there have been affiliates that made money from sending traffic directly to a seller, but it’s best to assume that you won’t be that affiliate.

Consider this a litmus test for affiliate success. If you think buying a domain is too expensive or if you just don’t want to take the time to learn how to buy a domain, you will fail in this business.

Not trying to be mean or anything, but 99.9999% of the time it’s true.

So that’s my list. If you think I’m wrong, let me know. If you think I’m right, let me know. If you are a pixilated, banner farming, online mall managing animated GIFer…UP YOUR GAME.