[dotcom-directions]

My advice to anyone considering affiliates as a source of income is to find another day job! Affiliates programs are never what they are cracked up to be. The first question that I ask my student when the topic of affiliates comes up is “why a perfect stranger would be interested in making you rich?” What do you think?
Normally an affiliate program will sell the anxious and vulnerable consumer all this good stuff about how you can make over $2000.00 a day, some even get a bit more extreme and say, MILLIONS a week!. “So not true” typically an affiliate will have prerequisites that you must meet prior to becoming a member of their exclusive organization. The pre-qualifiers usually involve you the consumer:

1.) Purchasing a domain and website that meets the affiliate’s standards and has enough hosting space to display their products.

2.) Once the site is approved it is the consumer’s responsibility to drive traffic to their approved site.

Sounds easy enough, yeah it does, however in those two easy steps you the consumer have spent over $500 to $1500 preparing a website for a total stranger. Not only have you spent your own money, now you’re about to spend your time and more money marketing the affiliates products, just-a-hoping that you can get enough people to your website/strangers website to GET RICH! The only one who ultimately gets rich is the Affiliate because they have you and maybe 20,000 more vulnerable consumers following a Casino dream. With that being said, do you still think you’re going to get rich being an affiliate?

[Christopher Martin]

From discussions from my friends, affiliate programs do work but you have to be really careful about the density of the product. For instance, if the company/person you are working for already has a large affiliate base then you will have a hard time trying to promote their product because more people have already set-up shop before you have. There are ways around this though such as social networking and forum signatures.

My friends have told me that they have beaten many competitors for higher sales from simply being active on a few social networking sites (twitter, myspace, facebook) and from being active on various forums related to the subject.

[diknox00]

I have to disagree with the fundamental premise of your post,

“why a perfect stranger would be interested in making you rich?"

The more relevant question should be why wouldnt a business owner be interested in paying you to help them get more sales.

Since 1996 companies like eBay and Amazon have had affiliate programs that have made them and their affiliates quite a bit of money. While its true that most affiliate programs will never make you reach, you can still earn decent money.

Additionally, if you spend $500 to $1500 preparing a website to sell affiliate products you are probably an idiot and therefore will not succeed no matter how hard you try. A site to promote affiliate products can be done for as little as $0...how do I know? I've done it previously, check out CardAmerica.net and FinanceMyCar.net.

[HarveyJ]

dotcom-directions post seems to be predicated on being an affiliate for an GRQ / MMO ebook type of affiliate program... also known as every 3rd product on Clickbank.

Real affiliate marketing is basically being a sub-contractor to an advertising company. The affiliates that get rich doing it are the ones that are innovative, or know how to exploit vulnerabilities in the system.

[diknox00]

Well said HarveyJ