The Internet is the most important information tool in the world today. It is a superhighway with literally tens of millions of people logged into it everyday. Indeed, the Internet has benefited mankind tremendously in the past couple of decades. It has made invaluable information and knowledge accessible to anyone anywhere.

With the Internet, the world has shrunk into just a click of the mouse. Everybody can communicate and reach out to anybody—cheaply. It was only a matter of time before entrepreneurs realize the full potential of the Internet in the world of business and money making. Prior to the Internet, a business needs physical or tangible merchandise to sell to consumers; but today, through affiliate programs, entities can make money out of websites in the Internet.

So you might ask what affiliate programs are and how do they work. Well, to fully appreciate the concept of affiliate programs, you have to think of it as some mutual relationship much like that of an Egyptian plover bird and a crocodile. The plover bird feeds on other organisms parasitic to the crocodile, while the crocodile provides intimidating protection against the bird’s predators.

Affiliate programs work the same way; it is basically a mutual cooperative venture between your website and another entity’s website that is already in the business of selling products and services over the Internet. In this venture, you direct your website visitors to your partner’s website; thereby, increasing the number of people becoming aware of your partner website’s products or services and effectively increasing the chances of people buying from your partner. As a reward, you are paid commissions. In short, you are performing as a marketing agent or referral arm for your partner website.

Affiliate programs are a great way to earn online. But conquering the world of affiliate programs needs patience and dedication. Finding the best affiliate program for you means knowing which affiliate program will give you more benefits and lesser disadvantages. Here are a few pointers to consider in finding the best affiliate program for you.

Research, Research, And More Research

If you pile up all the websites in the Internet offering affiliate programs, you might be able to construct the first stairway to the moon. And a chunk of these websites offer nothing but crap. It is therefore important to do a lot of researching about the affiliate programs you want to join. You can look for information over the Internet and by contacting other members of the affiliate program you are eyeing. It is always good to be a hundred percent sure than to be fooled by someone you have not even met.

Think Commissions

You are joining affiliate programs and agree to invest some of your time and efforts as a marketing agent of some online entrepreneur with the hope that you are to be paid with good commissions. Different affiliate programs widely vary in terms of the commissions they pay. Some programs pay higher commissions as an incentive for affiliates to work harder. There are also programs that do not pay well. Still, some other programs do not pay at all; so beware of cheating affiliate programs.

The Matter With Products Or Services

In the olden times of real world merchandising, every merchant or trader has a unique product or industry to sell. That was why they used to hate Jacks–of-all-trade. This philosophy also applies to online shops, and therefore the affiliate program you might wish to join.

An affiliate program website has a better chance of raking big money online—therefore, bigger commissions for you—if it offers a specialized product that targets a large population of potential users. So look for affiliate programs that sell a few specialized quality products, instead of a program that offers everything under the sun.

A Word About Experience

Experience is an invaluable gauge for a particular affiliate program’s performance and reputation. Make sure in your research that the affiliate program you intend to join is experienced in handling its business with its customers and its affiliates. More often than not, an experienced affiliate program provider is aware of current trends and what system should work or not.

An experienced program is an assurance in itself that it will not cheat its affiliates. An affiliate program is not like multi-level marketing where being first is always the best position; quite the contrary, long existing affiliate programs which you join very late in the game may prove to be your best choice.

Mario Churchill is a freelance author and has written over 200 articles on various subjects. For more information on the best affiliate program or to find a webmaster affiliate program checkout his recommended websites.

There are thousands of affiliate programs offering wide range of benefits to their affiliates. However, many of these programs and the claims they make are not to be trusted. Good affiliate programs provide tremendous earning opportunities, but they need to be evaluated to distinguish them from doubtful ones. There are several factors to consider before someone decides to join any affiliate program.

Products: Organizations which operate affiliate programs generally have some products to sell. These products can be in form of physical products, e-products or services. It is important to ascertain that the organization has some products to sell and that it recruits affiliates to help them in running their business. One should be very careful with any organization that has recruitment of affiliates as their main business. It is best to avoid such organizations because their affiliate structure is like a house of cards which can crumble at slightest impact.

The organizations which have products to sell and market them thru affiliate programs cut down on the cost of advertising and distribution. This amounts to considerable savings which they share with their affiliates. If a new affiliate is already familiar with the products, this can be helpful but this is not a necessary pre-condition to join affiliate program. New affiliates can learn about the products quite fast.

Organization’s Track Record : It is not difficult to find out about the organization before joining it affiliate program. Search engines are one of the sources which can be used for this purpose. Verifying the testimonials presented by the organization is another source of information. The organization should have proven track record of operating their programs for several years successfully. If the organization is new or just starting, the person starting the program should be well known with good credibility. This is precaution against joining organizations which promise get-rich-quick scheme and then disappear.

Support Available to Affiliates : Most of the new affiliates joining any affiliate program are new to the field of marketing on the internet. They need guidance and support for promoting their business and earning money for themselves. It is in the interest of the organization to help their affiliates to succeed. These organizations are in their business for considerable longer time than the affiliates, are more knowledgeable about their market and about the ways of promoting their products. They are in best position to provide their affiliates with proper guidance. Many organizations have excellent support system by way of trainings, tutorials, articles, books, marketing plans, marketing tools, forums just to name a few. These are generally available from websites accessible to the affiliates.

Apart form the promotional material and information available from the website, personal guidance can be vital. A new affiliate may not be familiar with all the resources available and will look for mentoring at least in initial stages. It should be remembered by the affiliate that her success will add to the success of the organization, the organization is obliged to help her.

Payment : Another factor to consider is the mode and frequency of payment to the affiliates. The affiliate should make sure that this suits her. Just to give an example - many organizations make payments thru PayPal, but PayPal does not transmit money to all the countries. Such details should be checked before putting time and effort for any affiliate program.

Affiliate Structure : There are many different ways in which organizations build up their affiliate structure. Many organizations have single tier structure in which affiliate is only paid commission for sale. Other affiliate structures are 2-level or multi-level deep in which the affiliate earns also from the efforts of personally sponsored members. In turn, the affiliate is expected to help her sponsored members to earn for themselves. This is one great feature of multi-level marketing leading to leveraged earning. You can read my article on leveraged earning at this URL :

http://www.sanjay-j.com/artlever.html

There are still more variations in the structure. Some organizations allow a limited number of affiliates directly under each affiliate. There is no "ideal" affiliate structure. But it is important to have clarity in the structure and the affiliate should understand the structure.

Compensation Plan : There is lot of variation in compensation plans starting from simple commission to more elaborate plan in which affiliates additionally earn thru the efforts of their sponsored downline members and also from a common pool. I personally favor plans which have provision for leveraged earnings where teamwork really counts. Residual earning is another attractive feature of affiliate marketing which can build into sizeable income over a period of time. I am not against any compensation plan so long as it is understandable and appears reasonable. You have perhaps noticed that I have put this factor as the last consideration. However it is an important consideration after all other considerations are found acceptable.

Persistence Pays - It takes time to build up business with any affiliate program, no matter how good the program appears. After joining any affiliate program after thorough evaluation, one needs to stay with the program giving it time to build the earning. Get-rich-quick scheme do work some times but they are rare exception rather than the rule and cannot be depended upon.

This small slogan should be ingrained in the thinking when someone joins an affiliate program:

PERSISTENCE PAYS.

============================================ Sanjay Johari regularly contributes articles on small business to various ezines. Come to International Success Mentoring! Earn while you learn - join the longest running internet business opportunity, because it works. http://www.sanjay-j.com/empowerism.html

I have seen it a million times, especially from newer affiliates. They find two similar affiliate programs and immediately assume that the one that pays the highest commission is automatically the better affiliate program… not true! As an affiliate you need to look beyond the commission and evaluate the entire program. Yes, high commission are always nice to have but there are some things to look for that can make a high commission affiliate program practically worthless and a waste of your valuable time.

The first thing that you should look at is see how much the merchants are charging for their products. Merchants that pay a high commission is usually passing it off in the product prices. By boosting their prices up they make up for paying their affiliates high commissions by trying to get the customers to pay the bill. If the price is to high the customer will leave the merchants site and search for another merchant with lower prices. So you can promote the higher commission merchant to your hearts content. But if the prices are just to high for the customers you are simply wasting your time and effort on a dead cause.

Now, if you go with the merchant that pays a slightly less commission but has much lower prices then the customer is going to buy from them instead of the other merchant, therefore, giving you more conversions which will make you alot more money in the long run.

Chet Brzezinski has been in the affiliate marketing and affiliate management industry since 1997. He owns two affiliate marketing related sites. One that offers affiliate program management & consulting services and the other affiliate program reviews, tips and resources.

Ok so you think you have found a good affiliate program to promote on your website or in your newsletter? There are some basic things you need to look out for before joining any affiliate program. Some of them may seem minor but those little petty things can cause you to lose hundreds of dollars in affiliate revenue.

Here are some of the basic things to watch out for when joining an affiliate program:

No Affiliate Manager Contact Information
If they don’t provide you with a way to contact them about their affiliate program then what are you going to do if you have a problem? Who are you going to email or call if your check doesn’t arrive?

Commission Is To Low
Do you really want to spend time on an affiliate program that pays a measely 2%? I see these programs all over. They pitch their affiliate program and make it sound like it is a privelidge to join their affiliate program and earn pennies per sale. I usually stay away from programs that offer less than 8% commission. I will go a little lower if the products sell good and there is a good profit.

Unreasonable Cookie Length
Make sure you find this in their terms or information pages. This is the amount of time that the customer that clicks through your link remains yours. The standard cookie length is 30 days. This means that if your visitor clicks your affiliate link then they have 30 days to buy for you to get credit. You really don’t want to promote an affiliate program that offers less than a 30 day cookie length.

Merchant Site Has Traffic Leaks
Probably the most common thing I see with affiliate programs. Mostly from newbie merchants that just got their affiliate program started. Most don’t realize what they are doing and usually will correct the problem once I explain to them how traffic leaks are hurting their business and their affiliate program. Traffic leaks are links on the affiliate program site that potential customers can click on and go to other sites… sites that the affiliate won’t get credit for if the visitor buys something. Leaks can consist of third-party banner ads, Google AdSense ads, popups, popunders, text links, etc…

No Phone Sale Tracking
With the internet market growing so rapidly every year this means more customers are shopping online. Alot of them will call the merchants 800 number to call in their order instead of submitting it online. Where does this leave you? The merchant gets the cash on the sale while you get stiffed. So when evaluating an affiliate program be sure to check to see if the merchant has measures set up to track phone orders for affiliates. It is simple to set up and it puts the affiliates ID number next to the phone number. So when customers call in they are asked for that number so they can manually credit the appropriate affiliate for the sale.

Chet Brzezinski has been in the affiliate marketing and affiliate management industry since 1997. He owns two affiliate marketing related sites. One that offers affiliate program management & consulting services and the other affiliate program reviews, tips and resources.

Are you looking for a profitable Affiliate Program?

When you start to examine the possibilies for your homebased business, it is easy to be overwhelmed with the sheer number of "opportunities" available. A search for "Affiliate Programs" in Yahoo alone, will yield over nine million matches!

As with anything worthwhile in life, starting a homebased business using affiliate programs, should not be done without doing some homework. Take your time and do some research, think about what it is you want to accomplish. Are you looking for a full-time business with "full-time" income, or is your goal to make some extra spending money? Set your Goals before you start and find a program that will help you meet them.

Use common sense when researching affiliate programs, remember the old saying, " Anything that seems to good to be true…..usually is". Look for programs that provide a wide variety of marketing tools and support, after all, if it is legitimate they have a vested interest in you success.

If your a newbie, don’t try to re-invent the wheel, there are many successful people involved with affiliate programs. Most of them are eager to share their secrets, their mentoring will save you alot of time and money, time and money you could apply to growing your new business. The vast majority of people who fail in affiliate programs, are the ones who fail to educate themselves on how to promote their new venture. Learn from those who have been there..done that!

Once you decide on the program(s) that is right for you, dedicate yourself to learning and understanding what it is you are promoting. If you are totally new to affiliate programs, it may be a little confusing at the start, but if you take advantage of all of the available resources, you WILL be successful.

Here’s To Your success,

John Tillotson - New York

Copyright(c)2005 John Tillotson

Ordinary people are making Exraordinary money WORKING FROM HOME on the Internet! Sign up for FREE Email course; visit http://www.Future-Independence.com

The idea of using affiliate programs is to produce extra income and in the process attain total financial freedom. More and more people from all over the world are looking for a real winner.

The problem is, affiliate programs are sprouting up all over the place and there’s just too many of them to keep up with. This makes the choice of the best one or ones to signup for a frustrating and time consuming process.

Before you signup for any affiliate program, I advise you to run through this check list:

1. Think about the product:

Is it a product that you would use regularly and freely recommend to your friends? Is it lower priced and more convenient to use than similar products/services available elsewhere? Finally, what about delivery. How much of a time interval is involved from when your customer orders until they receive the product/service?

2. Find out as much about the operation as you possibly can:

Beware of chain letters, pyramid scams, and exorbitant claims relative to distributor profits. Be sure to find out exactly what you will be getting in return for your initial signup fee.

3. Find out about the companies financial backing and corporate officers:

Are they in it as full-time professional sales people? Be sure to understand/know how the company keeps track of all the incoming orders and when as well as how you will be paid.

In essence, before deciding to become involved in an affiliate program and expect to make a profit, it is essential that you understand:

It is a selling proposition. You will be required to do atleast some advertising.

You must have a product/service that appeals to most people. In other words, information or services that will enable people to fulfill their basic wants and/or needs.

You need assistance, instruction and help, in not only selling the product/service but in how to find new customers on an ongoing basis. Once you have decided to try your hand at affiliate programs and you have become affiliated with a company that has a product/service you feel will appeal to most people. The next thing is to determine how YOU want to sell it.

Remember the amount of time you spend in actually trying to sell the product will determine the amount of money you will make.

It’s up to you to decide just how much time you will spend with your extra income producing project.

Picking a winning affiliate program can be exasperating because there are so many to choose from, but the ordeal can be a lot more profitable if you will ask yourself the questions I have outlined for you here.

About The Author

Signup for Business-As-Always Ezine and get 2 ebooks free plus info. on 2 excellent affiliate programs that have residual income!

http://www.business-as-always.com/ezine

The BIG QUESTION on everyone’s mind is…

Can you make money on-line through affiliate programs?

The Answer is YES and YES and YES!

It is totally possible to make money on-line, there are all kinds of articles and stories about people who have been successful making money through affiliate programs. A great example is Affiliate Super Star Rosalind Gardner who makes over $ 400,000 a year. You can read a review of Rosalind’s successes at http://www.bestaffiliateproducts.com/rosalind-gardner.html

There are also lots of "little guys" doing well selling affiliate products.

It has nothing to do with getting in on the ground floor in a particular program. It has nothing to do with having loads of money to market your program. Yes, you do need to have to have a marketing budget, but that is just the cost of doing business.

What it boils down to is knowing what to look for in an Affiliate Program.

More specifically, you look at programs which provide:

1. Products/Services that are in demand. This is pretty obvious, right? If you don’t have a market for your products/services then you aren’t going to make any money. Now, you did your research already and found that your niche idea does have a demand…so what you are doing is looking for products/services to weave into your niche site.

The best product or service to weave in, of course, is one that you have used personally. Nothing works better than giving a personal recommendation. If you can, weave in testimonials from others who have used the same product or service. That way, there is more than one voice and that goes a long way to helping a customer make a well informed buying decision.

2. Look at the Commission Structure. The BEST commission structure is one that pays you on a recurring basis. Monthly income is the best way to go but, depending on your niche, might not always be an option for you. If that’s the case then do a little investigative work and check out competitor commission structures, and then, go for the one that pays you the most for a one time sale.

3. Promote more than one product/service. Now this can get a little dicey for you because you don’t want to confuse your customer but, you also want to have a few options available for making a sale. Let me explain this a little better for you, by explaining what I would do using the Golf example I referred to earlier in this course.

The niche site that I suggested I would build around the "golf" niche was ‘used golf equipment’. I said that I would have had some sort of a membership board where people could post their buy/sell items. That membership site would, of course, be my own product, so that means I would get 100% of the money generated by it.

I also said I could incorporate some form of comparison chart for buying used versus new golf equipment. That way if, say a specific club was selling at $150 used and maybe $185 new, then the customer would be able to decide… new versus old. I would still make the commission on the new item. See where I am going with that???

Ok, now…in addition to the golf products, I would also want to have posted some good content on my web site, as to what to look for when buying used equipment etc. I would post articles that related specifically to my niche. I would then go and apply to the Google Adsense Program and would post little ads on the article pages. If a customer came and decided to clickoff into some other site, then at least I would see a commission from the click. I may then even decide to join Amazon.com or some other online book club and pick a few good golf books to recommend.

So…one niche site and I have created 4 income streams for myself. That is what I mean by promoting more than one product or service. Essentially what you are doing is giving yourself a good well-rounded product mix.

You can specialize if you want to. For example, I know of someone who is going to build a niche site around a specific coffee machine that they feel is going to take off. The machine is made from one specific company, which is ok. So they build a site around that machine, then they go a step further and weave in the coffee that you need to buy in order to use the machine. No other company’s product/service is involved, just the one specific one.

See where I am going with this? and just how powerful affiliate programs can be…IF you know how to use them in the right manner.

Ok, so let’s recap what we need to look for when deciding to participate in Affiliate Programs.

1. YOU WANT programs with products/services that are IN DEMAND.

2. YOU WANT programs that pay you MONTHLY COMMISSIONS if you can have the right affiliate product. Or, at the very least, you want to shop around and find the products with the best commission rate out there.

3. YOU WANT an arsenal of programs that link or tie into one another to give you MULTIPLE INCOME STREAMS.

That is what to look for in an Affiliate Program. Now, let’s cover how to find an affiliate program for your niche.

The more obvious way to do this is to go directly to the web site of the merchant who you want to work with, and see if they offer an affiliate program. If they don’t … don’t worry, we have a few other places to check out. We’ll find an affiliate program for you.

There are three main sites that you can use, and it just so happened we covered them yesterday in "Tools of the Niche Trade." To save you having to go back over your notes, here they are again:

1. Commission Junction http://www.cj.com

CJ is THE affiliate program directory for both physical and downloadable products. They have hundreds of merchants listed within their directory. They have also joined forces with BeFree, another affiliate directory. You can sign up for the CJ site, and then on the CJ home page you will see BFAST.

Sign up for both and then, once you are in your account, you can link them both so you get the BEST of both sites. ALL affiliates are listed, as well as their commission structures. They also provide you with banners, ads and links that you can weave into your site.

2. Clix Galore http://www.clixgalore.com/AffSelectProgram.aspx?AdvProgID=26

clixGalore has about 3500 affiliate merchants listed within their directory. From Mickey Mouse watches to Health and Nutritional Products, and everything in between.

It also is a no cost directory to join, and like CJ, they too provide you with marketing materials to incorporate into your web site.

3. ClickBank http://www.clickbank.com

ClickBank is yet another affiliate directory. It is the most popular affilate directory for downloadable products. Actually they only handle downloadable affiliate products.

Here you can make anywhere from 10% - 75% commissions on products or services you sell. Acceptable affiliate commissions today range from 25% to 55%.

The neat thing about ClickBank is that their products are listed by popularity. So, it makes your job a little easier. You can go right for the related product/service that is making the good sales.

Of course these directories will help you find the right merchant program to weave into your site in order to make money, BUT…do your homework! Find the one that is going to pay you top commissions.

Use the information you just read and apply it to ALL your niche sites and you can’t go wrong!

This article is an excerpt from my 7-Day Niche Madness eCourse. It costs you nothing to sign up for it at Best Affiliate Products.

Fred Farah copyright 2004

Best Affiliate Products and Niche Market Strategies
Subscribe to Niche Market Strategies Newsletter
And Niche Madness 7-day email course at: Best Affiliate Products

So you’ve decided you want to become an Internet Marketer, huh? Will you sell someone else’s products or sell your own?

If you choose to sell someone else’s products, how will you know what to look for? After all, this is a new venture for you.

Or maybe it’s not. Maybe you have been trying out some affiliate programs which have not brought you any money, or, worse, have not paid you for the affiliate traffic you have sent them.

If you are the new person, or the person who is floundering in Internet Marketing, this article will offer you some simple tips for choosing an affiliate program.

This article doesn’t cover getting traffic to your site, which is another huge piece of the puzzle, and will be covered in a later article, but let’s just start with choosing affiliate programs.

#1. You should find affiliate programs that:

a) are relatively easy to set up (code is either created for you or easy to create)

b) will pay you well. This depends on your definition of what being paid well means, but generally, for most beginners, and some novices, if you can see yourself being able to make more than $250/month, the program is at least worth looking at

c) give you products which people actually use. There are lots of products in the market which will sell, but do you really want to be selling pet rocks? If you do, please don’t take offense. Most legitimate affiliate advice sites won’t feature affiliate programs that are exclusively selling something like 8-Track players and tapes. While there are probably collectors out there who would love an 8-track player and cassettes, the fact is that the market is done with 8-tracks. The point is, there should be a genuine need for, or interest in, what you are selling/reselling.

So you find a program which meets the above criteria. Now what? Do a Google search on the company. Find out what people are saying about them. You may have to dig a bit, but the combined experience of the professionals (and not-so-professionals) who develop and contribute to the Internet on a regular basis is, collectively, the best source of advice you will find on making money, or affiliate programs, anywhere.

If you want advice on some great affiliate programs, you can visit sites which have already reviewed the information about companies and present it to you in a straightforward way. If you are ready to find some great affiliate programs, then you will be able to find categories of affiliate programs on these sites, which will generally represent the type of products you would like to sell.

Search engines love content, and so do your site visitors. Content is one of the most important aspects of getting people to your web site, and helping them to see the value in what you’re selling. You should strive to choose programs with products which are related to your web site.

In other words, if you have a site which features information about the Toyota Camry, you’re going to be pretty hard pressed to be able to get your page content matched up so that you could sell, say… baby rattles.

Find affiliate programs which relate to what you already do, and then promote those products.

Finally, see if you can find someone to actually talk to (ok, email would be okay) who has received regular checks or payments from marketing products. We think that this is, perhaps, the most important part of any affiliate program, because the main reason you promote their products is to receive a check for your efforts.

So there you have it, some simple tips for choosing great affiliate programs! Hope this helps you to reach your income goals, and also helps you to develop a long-term plan for on and off-line financial and personal success.

About The Author

Jonathan Kraft has been an online marketer for many years. He is a massage therapist, web designer, legal services broker, has been a high school teacher, and is an all around nice guy. He works with a team of people on www.affiliateadvice.us, where you can check out some great affiliate programs that meet all the above criteria.

Affiliate programs are commonly misunderstood, in order to understand affiliate programs lets start with terminology. For clarification purposes, an affiliate is defined as any "referrer" or website that promotes a product in an effort to earn revenue. A merchant is defined as someone who owns a product and is sharing revenues with an affiliate based on the affiliate’s performance. Affiliate programs can drive targeted traffic to your website.

There are 3 basic affiliate programs, though only the first two are commonly used.

Pay Per Click - this is when an affiliate is compensated for sending traffic to the merchant. (AdSense is an example of PPC affiliate program)

Pay Per Sale - this is when the affiliate is compensated by the merchant if the referral generates a sale or purchase.

Pay Per Lead - this is when the merchant agrees to pay for a qualified (or sometimes unqualified lead), which is very uncommon because it is subjective and up to the merchant.

Affiliate websites tend to provide information, entertainment, and content services to their customers. The online merchants sell products, goods and services online. These are programs permitting affiliates to earn money based on the visitors to your site who click through to another’s website. Some pay a token amount for the click through and others provide a percentage of sales when a visitor "clicks through" to your site and buys a product or service on the other party’s site. This could represent a value added service to your visitors.

Affiliate programs allow you to pay and track incentives from other websites that send web surfers, leads or paying customers to your website. Commissions based on purchases made by traffic sent from the referring website can be paid. Besides a commission, an affiliate can receive a flat fee, or other incentives for all valid transactions it refers that generate a sale or lead.

Be careful that the affiliate’s web page is not cluttered with banner ads that may crowd out your link, or that be annoying to customers. Affiliate programs enable affiliates to leverage their traffic and customer base in order to profit from e-commerce while merchants benefit from increased exposure and sales.

Commonly traffic to merchant sites is measured and affiliates can clearly see conversion rates. Meaning, they track the percentage of people they are referring, and how much of it results in earned revenue. If the affiliate finds a very low conversion, they will find a better way to monetize that traffic, quite possibly with a competing merchant product.

In order to be a successful affiliate, the affiliate site needs to either have tons of traffic or target a specific audience, frequently one untapped by the merchant. It has been my experience, the closer the affiliate site content resembles the merchant products, the higher the likelihood of a good conversion rate.

Once you are committed to the idea of affiliates, the next step is to determine the kind of tracking system you are going to use. Sales can be tracked by HTML code, which is placed in a shopping cart or on the ‘order confirmation’/'thank you’ page, and cookies, which are created after the customers click on a banner ad. Cookie killers have been a problem for the affiliate industry. Software vendors have an advantage over other merchants in that new technologies allow software developers to better control compensation. Vendors can ‘wrap’ their software insuring that their affiliates are compensated for referrals, even if the customer downloads a trial version prior to purchasing. Buy now buttons in the software have affiliate ids imbedded in the download. Combined tracking systems have more success than those that rely on a single tracking technology.

In order to develop a successful affiliate network, merchants must realize that affiliates spend ad dollars on site, and product promotion. If the affiliate is not compensated fairly they will not remain in the merchants network. The bottom line is that affiliate relationships are partnerships, when both sides feel the situation is fair and equitable the relationship will be a success.

About the Author:

Sharon Housley manages marketing for NotePage, Inc. http://www.notepage.net a company specializing in alphanumeric paging, SMS and wireless messaging software solutions. Other sites by Sharon can be found at http://www.feedforall.com, http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com and http://www.small-business-software.net

sharon@notepage.net

This is very important, because your reputation is on stake here! Joining the wrong affiliate programs will only hurt your online business.

First of all, it is almost impossible for you to collect adequate informations on those merchant companies. You certainly can’t investigate them thoroughly. Hence, you will never be able to predict their successes or failures.

That’s why you must not stress on one single merchant only within your niche.

Pick a couple of the best quality products to promote. Still, you can do some critical researches to reduce risk.

OK, now let’s see how we can pick the goods from the bads. Here are some factors that influences the dependability of an affiliate program. The more of these factors are present in a certain program, the more reasons you get to sign up to the program.

Let’s see…

1. Great quality products. This is a must. How could you promote something you are not proud of?

2. Good affiliate sites.

3. Good comissions. Normally, solid merchants offer more than 25% of comissions.

4. Free to join.

5. Great Supports. Solid merchants usually train their affiliates through training calls, newsletters and other mediums. They also shows your real-time stats and earnings, send you an email whenever a sale is made.

6. Long-term cookie to lock on the visitors to your site. This way you still can make sales if your visitors return to your site months later.

7. Monthly payment with realistic minimum.

8. Two-tier comissions. Some merchants give you comissions on your referrals’ sales. Meaning… if you refer someone to become an affiiate, you can earn comission everytime he makes a sale.

So do some researches before you sign up!

Copyright 2005 Farid Aziz.

Farid Aziz is the author of "How to Make Money Onine with Your Hobby". Visit http://Internet-Marketer.blogspot.com to grab your FREE copy of "Internet-Business-In-A-Box", a kit worth US$ 497.00.