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Affiliate Programs| Article #98 : AFFILIATE PROGRAMS – PART 1

If you comb the Internet, you'll find that the vast majority of programs that you will find are affiliate programs. There are more of these than you can shake a stick at. The questions that come to mind are, why so many? Are they all good? Can you make money with any of them? Which ones are the best? Which ones are the worst? How can you tell if an affiliate program is any good? How can you tell if one is even on the level? The number of questions that can be asked about affiliate programs are endless. The answers can sometimes be more confusing than the questions themselves. Well, hopefully in this multi part series on affiliate programs, you'll have all the answers that you need, or at least most of them.

So, what exactly IS an affiliate program? Well, technically, an affiliate program is one that you join yourself and make your money promoting the program itself. The program may take the form of an actual product. For example, you can become a member of Sharesale.com and promote their many products. That is an affiliate program where you don't necessarily promote the program but what they sell. And then there are affiliate programs like Success University where you promote the program itself. Is one better than the other? Well, we'll try to answer that question a little later on.

Some affiliate programs are free to join like Sharesale.com. In their case you simply sign up as an affiliate. You then look through their catalogue of items and promote the ones you want with whatever promotional methods you decide to use. Other affiliate programs are free to join but you don't make money with them unless you upgrade to paid membership. The reason for this is because you are only paid for other people you bring in IF you are a paid member yourself. Success University is an example of this kind of program.

Affiliate programs have many ways in which you can get paid. Some, like Sharesale.com pay you a flat commission for each product you sell. Since many of these programs have more than one product and they usually all sell for different prices, what you actually get paid depends on the product you sell. Other programs pay you a set commission for each member you bring in. Others pay a variable commission based on what level you are in the membership chain. Other programs may even pay you for the efforts of those that you brought in yourself.

One thing you have to be careful about with affiliate programs is that many of them have minimums before you can get paid. For example, with Sharesale.com you have to have $50 in commissions earned before they will cut you a check. This can be tough since many of their products are less than $50 in commissions, which means you have to make multiple sales before you can get paid.

So far we've only scratched the surface of affiliate programs. We'll go into more detail in our next installment

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