Affiliate Marketing Secrets

Do articles need to rank high at Search Engines to have around 600 views or
submit at main articles directories also generate traffic?
Articles have been proven high producing top marketers. Every article has around 600 views. How to select keywords or simply use main keywords of a niche?

I would like to know which of the following business models is the most effective in the affiliate marketing. My affiliate program gives me a choice of business models and I can choose only one.
Loyalty/Rewards
Select this option if your primary business model is based on loyalty or rewards. For example, your site offers points, donations, or other rewards for purchasing at selected merchants. Loyalty/Reward sites give something back to the consumer in exchange for purchasing through the publisher’s site. A percentage of the advertiser commission is used to pay a reward to the end user. Rewards come in many forms including cash, airline miles, credit card points, or a percent of sale given to an organization.
Coupons/Deals
Select this option if your primary business model is based on offering coupons and deals to your customers.
General Shopping
Select this option if your primary business model is shopping. Shopping sites can be thought of as a virtual mall. The consumer can shop for various products and brands without ever having to leave the site. This type of publisher is not focused specifically on coupons and deals.
Search
Select this option if your primary business model is based on search. Search publishers promote advertisers via search engine marketing (natural or paid).
Price Comparison
Select this option if your primary business model is based on price comparison. Comparison shopping sites sell items where some comparison is made before the purchase. Many times the publisher will have direct product links of the same product from different advertisers.
Content/Niche
Select this option if your primary business model is based on content, such as news stories, media, music, or video. Content sites focus on a specific area of interest. This type of site is normally not a shopping site but users go to the site because they are interested in relevant content on site. Content sites that do well with performance-based marketing blend their area of expertise with product recommendations.
Social Shopping
Select this option if your primary business model is based on social shopping. Social shopping sites usually combine shopping with user recommendations, reviews, lists, and other social network features.
User Generated
Select this option if your primary business model is based on user-generated content such as communities, forums, and social networks.
Other
Select this option if your primary business model does not fall under any of the other categories.
Thanks

I’ve been trying to do a backlink search for one of the competitor sites (www.girlygames247.com) in the niche im targeting.
Here is my problem when I try searching for the backlinks of the domain
Search Query: (linkdomain:www.girlygames247.com)
http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/search?p=www.girlygames247.com&bwm=i&bwmo=d&bwmf=s
Its showing all the backlinks of that site.
But when I try to remove a site from the backlinks
Search Query: (linkdomain:www.girlygames247.com -site:philippinesfoodrecipes.blogspot.co…
http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=Avq29YfqIuy3JXdRD4oHoVubvZx4?vc=&fp_ip=ph&p=linkdomain%3Awww.girlygames247.com+-site%3Aphilippinesfoodrecipes.blogspot.com&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8&fr=yfp-t-701
I am getting an error. I’ve been doing this in the past and it gives me the results I want but now its not.
Anyone help me please.

I bought a domain name a few months back and forwarded it to a affiliate product.
Now I want to host that domain and build a site.
Does anyone know if a cached version may harm my ability to rank or is can this be done with no slapping?

I have a 3-month old site (my first) with which I directly sell my own product (as a vendor) through Clickbank. However I have just seen that a search on Google for any of my keywords now only brings up a certain affiliates hoplink in place of my site. The meta description is mine and the SE results/rankings match those in my Google Webmaster Tools so it definitely should be my direct site link coming up and not an affiliate.
My official site is http://www.teachenglishabroadguide.com
The result that comes up is
http://www.teachenglishabroadguide.com/?hop=andrewghay
A search for “teach english abroad guide” will show this on the first page.
On yahoo it looks fine.
Can anybody tell me if this is some dirty black hat trick by the affiliate and what I should do to get my link back (preferably without losing my rankings)?
I’d be very grateful for any help.

So I am considering building a profitable niche site, I did do some keyword search, I am wondering what is the criteria for a good niche, 1000 exact searches, 10000 exact searches or others ? Can you suggest a way that I can find a good niche? Thanks.