Best Affiliate Programs  

If you are an affiliate marketer then make the most of your affiliate commissions by joining the best affiliate programs. That means join programs that feature quality products, pay the most commissions and provide lots of quality promotion tools.  

A Good affiliate program will also invest in their affiliates by helping affiliates promote their products.  They do this by providing quality affiliate materials, education on how to promote their products and of course, pay them what they deserve in a timely manner.

Before joining any affiliate marketing program pay close attention to the following tips and guidelines on finding affiliate programs that will help ensure your success. 

Below that are some of the best affiliate programs that meet those guidelines.  

Tips & Guidelines for Selecting the Right Affiliate Marketing Programs

To make sure the affiliate program is a reputable one, here's what to look for:

Make sure the affiliate Merchant has an Agreement
Don't sign up without an agreement. This keeps things honest between parties. Also in a dispute you have something to refer back to.

Be sure there is no exclusivity
Some merchant accounts require that you cannot partner with merchants selling similar products.  For example, I have a guitar affiliate site and I have several affiliate programs that I promote and one of the affiliate merchants I wanted to promote was guitarcenter, however if you read their affiliate agreement, #2 of their agreement states that they shall be the exclusive seller of Musical Instruments on your site. 

Be sure to read the terms and conditions carefully and make sure there is no exclusivity clause in the contract.  

How much is the Commission?
Some affiliate programs pay a flat fee for sales while some pay a percentage of the sale price. Be sure you understand the payout schedule and what you are entitled to. You don't want surprises in the end. Also, look for merchants that pay for leads. For example, some programs will pay a small amount for anyone you bring them that fills out a form. This is often seen on financial or credit card sites.  Doba, listed below is one such affiliate merchant.

Understand the payout schedule and minimum payment
Most merchant programs pay schedules are either weekly, bi-weekly, monthly or quarterly.  This may not matter to you but it's a good idea for you to know when you can expect your checks.  You might make a few hundred dollars in commissions but if it's a month or more before you receive it you could be a little disappointed.

What is the minimum payout?
If a program requires you to earn $100 before payout and you have only $75 in your earnings account, you won't be receiving a check from them until their next pay period, which could be another month or more.  Some programs allow you to choose how often you are paid.

Is there a 2-tier program?
A "two-tier" program offers two sources of income, first, a commission for bringing in business, a second for recommending new affiliates. Some programs pay a fee for each new affiliate that joins the program, while others pay a percentage of the 2nd tier affiliate earnings. Some pay in both situations.

Look for programs that use cookies.
Cookies allow your personal merchant URL to remain on a viewers computer for a specified amount of time such as 30-90 days, some remain as long as a year provided the owner does not delete cookies very often.  This is an important feature because if a viewer accesses a merchant's website through your URL and does not buy anything but goes back to the site at a later date and buys, you will earn the commission because your URL will still be on the viewer's computer through the use of a cookie.

Unfortunately, most security software today deletes cookies on users machines when they log off but that's ok, it's still worth having that feature because there are plenty of users that don't use security software or turn off their software's delete cookie option.  If you have the opportunity to keep a cookie on someone's machine I say, "go for it".

Are sales tools available?
This is really an important one.  The more sales tools an affiliate merchant offers, the easier it is for you to make a sale. A good internet affiliate marketing program will offer you tools in the form of sales letters, articles with embedded affiliate links, newsletter ads, sales letters or banners. You will want to thoroughly review all of these tools and use them creatively on your site. The more sales tools a merchant has, the better. 

How does their site Look?
Appearance of the site is important. If they are hard to navigate, checkout is difficult or they don't accept credit cards, this is a problem for you.  If there are third party advertisements everywhere and you see a lot of Adsense ads, don't bother!  This will only help the affiliate manager earn income from people you send to their site.

Talk to other affiliates.  Ask the affiliate manager to put you in touch with other affiliates so you can ask them how they like the program.

A good rule of thumb is if you like the site and the products, chances are others will too.  Don't endorse something you don't have confidence in yourself.  Find the best affiliate programs for your specific niche.

Residual Income:  Whenever possible, look for products and services that provide residual income.  These will provide you with a consistent monthly check for as long as the service or product continues to be paid for each month. i.e. things like hosting services, magazine or newsletter paid subscriptions, email services, etc.

The Insider Secrets to Marketing Your Business on The Internet

This home study course has been a proven money maker and a big seller for me and many others. This #1 best-selling course sells for $217 and you get a generous $65 commission for every sale you refer – plus another $20 commission for every sale that your sub-affiliates refer.

The course is so easy to promote because it's not fluff.  It gives you real, useful content. It consists of 2 binders and 2 resource CDs that collectively contain 1,000+ pages of the exact information you need to start, promote, and grow a highly successful, extremely profitable Internet business.

This course along with Rosalind Gardener's 'Super Affiliate Handbook' is where I got started online.   Cory Rudl's Tips and techniques allowed me to create my homenotion site and taught me the small tricks and tips that helped me grow my business to what it is today.     (Thanks, Corey!)

I recommend this course both as a tool for learning how to increase your affiliate sales and as an affiliate product you can promote to earn sizeable commission checks!

You can sign up here for the Insider Secrets To Marketing Your Business on the Internet affiliate program   

SureFire Marketing

Category: Marketing

• 2-tier affiliate programs
• You earn ongoing (lifetime) commissions on every product sold for up to 10 years.

 Surefire Marketing markets top-quality, fast selling marketing products, including:

• Instant Sales Letters
• Instant Internet Profits
• 33 Days to Online Profits
• Autoresponder Magic
• Million Dollar Emails

Affiliate program is two-tier and pays 45% and 5% commissions on all orders of the various products.

Tracked by 10 year cookie and ID number. Also tracks fax and mail orders. Also, they offer a whole line of viral ebooks you can 'brand' with your affiliate ID. An excellent way to help produce sales and commission for you. 

Super Affiliate Handbook

Category: Affiliate Marketing

• 1-tier affiliate program
• 1 time affiliate commission

With the Super Affiliate Handbook you will earn a generous 50% commission.  This ebook guide regularly achieves conversion rates between 6 and 8% (depending upon traffic quality).

The affiliate program is managed by ClickBank which delivers affiliate checks every two weeks.  It also uses third-party software to cloak your affiliate links, so you don't have to worry about commission theft.

There are banners, text ads, links and articles to get you started right away.

Native Remedies

Category: Health & Beauty

• 2-tier affiliate program

Native Remedies offers high quality natural herbal remedies for your health, professionally formulated in therapeutic dosages by a leading clinical psychologist for her own patients over the last 12 years.

The affiliate program two-tiered structure pays 25% on the first tier and 5% on the second tier for the lifetime of the referral.

Sign up for the free Native Remedies affiliate program.

Aweber 

Category: Autoresponders

• 2-tier commissions
• Residual commissions from monthly subscriptions

AWeber Systems supplies powerful sequential autoresponders that automate and personalize customer follow-up.

It has a great and inexpensive service, with very good stats e-mailed monthly, as well as detailed stats provided online.

The two-tier program pays 20% and 10% residual commissions on all monthly service fees for as long as your referral is a customer. Tracks by affiliate links and uses a lifetime cookie. Your affiliate ID goes into the referral's profile in their customer database. Good clean site with easy navigation.

Sign up for the free Aweber affiliate program.

5 Pillar Program

Category: Marketing

• 2-tier commissions
• residual commissions
• lifetime commissions

The Five Pillar Program is the affiliate program of SiteSell, and owned by Ken Envoy,  a marketer of quality products for online businesses.

SiteSell uses lifetime cookies, an in-depth customer database and cross checking of customer details, making it one of the best tracked and most rewarding programs around.

SiteSell markets seven top-quality products:

• Make Your Site Sell!
• Make Your Knowledge Sell!
• Make Your Price Sell!
• Make Your Words Sell!
• Site Build It!
• Make Your Net Auction Sell!

The Five Pillar Program two-tier program pays between 15%-30% commissions on the first tier and up to 20% on the second.

SiteSell's quality products and great service keep customers coming back for more. This is a top earner. Highly recommended.  Sign up for the sitesell free affiliate program.

Secrets To Their Success

Category: Marketing

• 2-tier commissions
• Residual commissions

Secrets to Their Success is a monthly publication produced by The Internet Marketing Center, owned by Derek Gehl. It pays residual commissions. Each month it provides two detailed case studies of small Internet businesses that make an extremely large profit.

Your commission structure:

$6 per sale - Paid monthly for recurring subscription
$25 per sale - Paid one time for non-recurring six month subscription
$50 per sale - Paid one time for non-recurring one year subscription

Sub-Affiliate commission - If your sub-affiliate makes a sale you receive:

$1 per sale - Paid monthly for recurring subscription
$5 per sale - Paid one time for non-recurring six month subscription
$10 per sale - Paid one time for non-recurring one year subscription

Tracked by cookie, IP, and you affiliate ID goes in your referral's profile in their database.

Audio Generator

Category: Marketing

• Residual Commissions

AudioGenerator is an audio recording and hosting service that automatically converts all of your audio messages into a single line of code that gets uploaded to any website. This remarkable breakthrough in Internet marketing technology instantly injects the power of the human voice into your websites and emails … even if you have no technological skills whatsoever.

AudioGenerator will pay you 33% (That's $120 per year) per referral and we'll keep paying you for as long as the referral stays a customer -- so the actual amount you will earn per referral is unlimited. We pay monthly ($10 per month per customer) starting immediately after the customer signs up.

Tracked by 180 day cookie then affiliate ID goes into customer profile in the database.

ScamFree Zone
Category: Marketing

• 2 tier affiliate

The ScamFree Zone is the perfect resource for anyone interested in learning about internet marketing. They offer a whole host of original material, lots of experts waiting to help for free and an active forum.

Affiliates earn residual commission of 50% on monthly membership fees which equates to $14.98 per member per month. This is a two-tier program paying 10% on second tier membership sales. Affiliates also earn 50% first tier and 10% second tier sales.

Products include

• Internet Success Blueprint,
• Internet Success Diamonds,
• Internet Success Spider,
• Internet Success Interviews and Yahoo Exposed.

Monthly payments by check or PayPal. Tracked by 3 year cookie and CGI-script. 

2 tier affiliate program

An easy to understand library of educational resources that takes the mystery out of the internet and your PC.  Their goal is to help individuals master the internet and their PC by explaining it in easy to understand terms and examples.

Commissions on Newbie Club Products will be paid at the rate of 35% on the First Tier and 10% on the Second Tier. Also they offer excellent materials for affiliates

This is a great affiliate program because each time a visitor clicks on your affiliate URL, a new web site is dynamically created with your code embedded in each page. This means that each purchase made by your visitor is credited to you. Cookies are also used to ensure that all subsequent visits by that person are directed to your unique web site.  Visitors are tracked for life. 

• Residual commissions
• Lifetime commissions

Doba is the quality and popular wholesale product source for those who sell on auction sites, from their web stores, or even offline stores. Doba offers access to over 250,000 drop ship products, but also offers convenient ways to find the exact product you want and the information needed to sell that product through your auction or web store.

Affiliates earn $5 for each free trial referred plus residual commission of 10% on all membership sales and renewals for the lifetime of the referral. 

Sign up for the free Doba affiliate program.
  

2ofakind

Category: Dating

Residual Commissions

The 2ofaKind Internet matchmaking service matches people with others that have the same personality traits.

Affiliates earn 55% per customer order plus 55% per re-order for the life of the customer. If the affiliate link appears on your home page you get a 5% bonus (i.e. you make 60% per order plus 60% per re-order)

Doesn't use cookies, so referral must sign up on their first visit for you to earn commissions.  Affiliate ID is included as a permanent part of the client database, ensuring lifetime commission.