Firstly, alot of would-be affiliates jump straight on over to clickbank.com and start promoting their program through Google Adwords PPC (pay per click), I’m mean, look how easy it is, and PPC is all the rage now, all you have to do is write a half decent ad, add your clickbank URL, bang in a few relevant keywords and off you go!…..until you…..CRASH AND BURN! 

There are so many factors to consider with ppc marketing to make it profitable, just slight changes to your campaign can make the difference of success and failure, and you can loose a stack of money in a heatbeat if you get it wrong, this isn’t the way to go for newbies, and don’t fall for those over hyped ebooks telling you how easy it is, most of them are just plain rubbish.

In an earlier post I talked about buying your own domain name and hosting, this is the best way to start as it is very easy to setup, even for a total novice, and after a little effort can bring you a steady stream of income.

The other advantage is that your marketing efforts that you do today can bring you a lifetime of traffic. Lets say you signed up for the latest “hot affiliate program” and promoted it through article marketing (I’ll cover that later!) but all of a sudden that program ain’t so “hot” or they close down the website you have spent all your time and money on promoting, what happens to all that traffic? You’ve plastered your affiliate link all over the web but they’ve closed down the site? Oh crap!…..Wouldn’t it have been better to promote your own domain and then redirect the traffic to your affiliate site?

You see in this type of situation you’re screwed, you would be sending traffic to a website that doesn’t exist, or an outdated product etc, however, if you had your own website you could redirect the traffic to another affiliate program in a matter of minutes.

Don’t worry if you don’t know a damn thing about HTML (can’t you tell I don’t? ), SEO, adsense, or getting listed in search engines etc, you don’t need to know, you can upload a wordpress blog that has a bunch of plugins, which are totally free, that will do it all for you, all you will have to do is add content an keep promoting driving traffic to your site.

You can have a website up and running and listed in search engines in a couple of days (or less) and not need to know about all the technical stuff. You’ve gotta love that!!

There’s the obvious stuff to look for like, how much commission do affiliates receive, how often and how are you going to be paid.

But you need to make sure there aren’t any leaks in the sites you are promoting, by leaks, I mean anything that would result in loss of sales or commissions for the traffic you send them.

Are there any ads promoting other companies? Can people only order online or is there a number they can ring? Is there a link clearly visible telling people can earn money by becoming an affiliate? These are all leaks that you need to watch for, if you’re promoting a site you’ve got to make sure you receive all the commission you deserve.

Is the product you’re promoting of top quality? Is the company reliable? Check up on them on google.com to make sure everything is ok with the company and its products.