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Choosing the best affiliate program means that you are aware of what affiliate programs are and what their ultimate benefits and drawbacks are. To choose the best affiliate program, you will want to decide on one that has the most benefits with the least drawbacks. There are many affiliate programs available online, many of them which are not worth even reading about. Because of this fact, you will need to do your research, talk to other affiliate members, and be 100% sure about the type of affiliate program you are looking for. There are some really good programs available, you just need to be persistent, patient, and ask a lot of questions. The following suggestions will help you choose the best possible affiliate program for you.

* Commission
Of course, if you are joining an affiliate program you are doing so for the commissions. There are affiliate programs available online that offer great commissions to their affiliates in order to keep them active and working hard. Then there are other programs that do not pay well, do not keep up with referrals, and basically cheat the affiliate out of hard earned money. Make sure you know exactly what kind of program you are getting involved with and that you will make good money for your time and effort.

* Good Products
Another important aspect of the affiliate programs you are looking at are the products. You might see an affiliate program that has the equivalent of a mall with links to thousands of products. The thought might enter your head that more links equals more business, but in this scenario it is not necessarily true. Generally, the affiliate programs that recognize the most success sell one quality product that a large percentage of the population can use, need, afford, and will actually want. This is the best type of affiliate program to associate yourself with and what you should be looking for.

* Experience
Experience is also important when it comes to affiliate programs. You want to work for an affiliate program that is settled in the market, that knows how to handle the business it is involved in as well as its employees, and is concerned with treating workers fairly and rewarding them for hard work. An experienced affiliate program knows what works and what doesn’t, so don’t be tempted to sign up for a brand new affiliate program just because you want to be one of the first people to join… this might not work to your advantage. It is very important to always do your research before jumping in!

Everywhere you look you see affiliate program offers for
every product or service that you can think of. Some have
fully automated systems that sell high volumes of hard
products all over the world. In case you don’t know, “hard”
products are those that you can touch…unlike an ebook or
downloadable web template. Many affiliate programs have
several thousand affiliates and one or two of the bigger
companies have over one million affiliates.

What are the advantages of joining an affiliate program?

They provide a ready-made business. This is a very big plus
for those people who want to earn some kind of living off
the Internet but lack the knowledge or inclination to set up
a business by themselves.

Commissions and rewards are generally good, and the more
established programs offer a real chance of advancement to
higher and better-paid levels.

Other affiliates are usually on hand to offer practical
support.

What are the limitations?

You are restricted in your promotional activities due to the
fact that you do not actually own the affiliate site they
give you. You won’t be able to put such things as banners,
images, links, meta tags, etc. onto your page.
The URL of your affiliate page is often either too long or
contains such awkward things as question marks, which many
Search Engines will not index.

Any promotional ads or articles have probably already been
used by thousands of other people and consequently may have
lost its impact, making it more difficult to achieve sales
or referrals.

If the program you have joined has not yet established
itself (or in some cases even if it has), then you may
encounter problems with payments owed to you not being
honored. You also run the risk of low quality products or
sub-standard statistics that do not accurately record how
many referrals or sales you have made.

You may be required to purchase a minimum quantity of the
product on a regular basis before you start to qualify for
commissions or even before you can become an affiliate.
You may not get the technical or affiliate support you might
expect from the company. This may be due to inadequate
staffing, or the company’s negligence.

Other people in your downline do nothing to promote the
program.

At least four of the above limitations can be overcome with
a little time and effort. You could, for example, come up
with fresher ads to promote the program (provided this is
allowed).

If the company supplies the email addresses of people in
your downline, then you could offer to help the less active
members. Very often these people are passive not because
they are lazy or apathetic but merely because they don’t
know HOW to promote effectively! your guidance could mean
the difference between no sales or referrals and healthy
downlines and residual incomes.

As regards promoting your actual page, here are a couple of
little tricks that should overcome a number of
restrictions:

Cloak your Affiliate URL to stop hijackers Affiliate Masker
While this will not help you to get listed on the major
Search Engines, it will make your web page easier for
prospects to remember and type into their browser’s address
bar.

Go to your affiliate page. Place your mouse pointer anywhere
on the page and right click once. In the drop-down box
choose “View Source”. This will display the HTML for the
page. Save this to your hard drive as a HTML document using
the “Save As” function. Upload the page to your web site.
If you don’t have a web site then get some free web space
from one of these:

http://www.tripod.com/
http://www.fortunecity.com/
http://www.hypermart.net/index.gsp
http://www.coolchat.com/
http://www.crosswinds.net/
http://www.htmlpublishing.com/
http://www.freehomepages.com/
http://www.pageproducer.com/

Submit your ‘new’ page to the Search Engines. You are also
now able to place banner codes, links, images, testimonials,
in fact anything you want onto these pages, because you are
in control of the HTML. A word of caution, though. Don’t
change the actual HTML of your original affiliate page. Just
put the other stuff, like banners etc, around it.

Making this “mirror page” of your affiliate page will
dramatically improve your advertising options.