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You probably already know that joining an Affiliate Program is a great way to start earning a sizeable income on the Internet without many of the hassles that come with running your own business.

All you do is refer someone else's product or service, and then get paid a "referral fee" for every sale that is made. (You are assigned a special URL that tracks all of the visitors you send to their web site and all of the sales that you generate.)

It's extremely easy to do because you just post a link, a banner, or a short recommendation letter on your web site -- or perhaps recommend the product or service in your newsletter or e-zine -- and then collect a percentage of the profits when a sale is made!

You don't ever worry about…

Ø Collecting the money
Ø Packaging the product
Ø Shipping the product
Ø Customer service

… or anything else for that matter! You just do the promotion and collect your referral fee from the resulting sales!

That's why joining an affiliate program can be a great way to…

A) Start your very own online business without the usual hassles and expense of product development and fulfillment.

B) Capitalize on the lifetime value of customers you may have from an existing e-business by sending them "backend" offers of affiliate products and services.

C) Earn 250% more sales than you would promoting your own product by making a "friendly recommendation" as opposed to pushing your own product or service.

… and that's just for starters! The truth is, joining affiliate programs can be extremely profitable… if you know what you're doing, that is!

Avoid The Deadly Mistakes That Most Affiliates Make!

Rule #1: Go for quality!

Remember that any recommendation you make will reflect directly on you. If you recommend a good quality product or service that is reasonably priced, your customers will continue to trust you and be interested in future recommendations that you make. If your customers have a bad experience with a product or service that you recommend, however, they will likely hesitate to act on any new offers you
send them.

So be sure that you do your homework before recommending anything to your customers. Try the product or service yourself. Talk to other people who have bought it. Make sure that you are recommending a high quality product that comes from a company who offers great customer service and
who is reputable enough to back up what they sell with a strong guarantee.

Don't ever promote something that's going to hurt your reputation!

Rule #2: Look for a program that offers top commissions.

It is perfectly reasonable for you to expect to be paid 20% to 50% of the profits on each product sold -- 5% to 10% is really low. Ultimately, you should look for companies who understand the "lifetime value" of new customers you send them, and who appreciate your efforts enough to compensate you generously.

For example, here at the Internet Marketing Center, we pay over 60% of our net profits to our affiliates, so they earn $65 for every course sold through their link to our site. This means that after we've covered such costs as printing and packaging the course, customer service, credit card accounts, hosting fees and other expenses, we actually pay our affiliates over 60% of our net profits.

Why are we willing to pay such high commissions? Because we recognize the lifetime value of each new customer our affiliates send us. Only consider joining programs that offer a similar level of respect for
their affiliates.

Rule #3: Make sure they have a high sales conversion ratio.

When joining an Affiliate Program, make sure that the site is turning a reasonable number of visitors into sales. If they're not, your efforts directing traffic to their web site will be completely wasted.

Look for sites that have at least a 1% conversion ratio (i.e. 1 out of every 100 visitors buy). Check out their web site and their sales copy to see if it "makes you want to buy." After all, while it's your job to send them targeted traffic, it's their job to turn these prospects into paying customers.

Rule #4: Match the product or service to the theme of your site.

If you sell golf clubs, then you shouldn't choose affiliate products like weight loss pills to promote on your web site. Your customers see you as a golf expert -- not a weight loss expert. So it makes sense that while they will be very interested to learn what brand of golf bag or golf balls you recommend, you are going to lose their trust and respect if you start trying to recommend weight loss products to them.

Find out what your target market is looking for and then choose affiliate products that meet their needs while complementing your own product or service.

Rule #5: Be sure that you're getting credit for all of your sales.

Find out what kind of tracking software the Affiliate Program that you're interested in joining uses. You want to go with a company that uses quality affiliate tracking software that is reliable and tracks ALL of your sales.

Why I emphasize "all" is because you want to make sure they track online, phone, fax, and snail mail orders. Many companies only track online orders, and this means that you will never get credit for anywhere from 5 - 10% of your affiliate sales!

Also, make sure the Affiliate Program you join uses "cookie tracking" because this helps to ensure that you will be credited for the sales of people who don't buy the first time they visit, but come back later to
make a purchase.

Rule #6: Look for programs that allow you to access all of your sales statistics in Real Time.

Real Time statistics are important because they allow you to see how different banners, text links, and recommendations are doing. For example, on your site you might discover after some testing that a banner on your resource page doesn't pull nearly as well as a personal recommendation under your newsletter subscription box. So you can adjust which banners and text links you use, and where they are placed, based on what you learn from your Real Time sales statistics.

Rule #7: Look for a program that teaches you the "best" techniques.

A good Affiliate Program will provide you with everything you need to be successful. They'll provide you with traffic-generating banners, text links, and recommendation letter templates. And they'll also tell you which techniques work well in which circumstances.

Because their success is linked with yours, the Affiliate Program you join should be ready, willing, and able to teach you everything you need to know to start earning excellent commissions.

***MOST IMPORTANT RULE***

Avoid falling victim to the "Flea Market Syndrome"!

It's absolutely critical that you don't allow Affiliate Programs to clutter up your main site or the main goal of your page. Don't go crazy and start promoting 10 or 15 different affiliate products on your site, thinking that if you can make a lot of money by joining 1 affiliate program, you'll make even more money by joining 10. Your site will end up looking like a giant flea market!

You'll come across as unprofessional because it will look like you are trying to make a quick buck rather than do your visitors a "favor" by recommending one or two really quality products. The most profitable way to approach Affiliate Programs is to choose one really good quality product and promote it to the best of your abilities.

This is the approach that top affiliates in our program are using to earn commission checks of $4,000 to $8,000+ each month! Now granted, these affiliates have high traffic sites; however, this same technique is earning our "average" affiliates $1,000 to $2,500 every month! That's how powerful focusing your energy on promoting one product can be!

And of course, once you've maximized your profits with one affiliate product, you can choose another and start the process all over again. Don’t choose 10 programs and try to promote them all at once. This doesn't work. More is NOT always better! You will devalue your site and destroy your credibility by coming across as "greedy" rather than "helpful."

Remember that just because one vitamin a day is good for you, it doesn't mean that 5 or 10 are even better! If you promote too many Affiliate Programs on your site, you'll end up confusing your visitors because your web site will lack focus. They'll be overwhelmed and just click away… and you won't end up making any money at all! So remember to stay targeted!

Final Note: If you're interested in participating in the Internet Marketing Center's own profitable Affiliate Program (rated as one of the Top 10 affiliate programs on the Web by AssociatePrograms.com and AffiliatesDiretory.com), click here now for more information.