Truth about Affiliate Programs
by Tara Sheyan

Affiliate programs are a great way to earn money regardless of what your ultimate goals are. Depending on your skills and abilities both as a webmaster and advertiser, your earnings can be simple pocket change or help you achieve financial independence.

Running or being part of affiliate programs can be an easy venture, but only so if you know enough about them. You may hear a lot of people saying that affiliate programs don't make you any money. Well, they've either been misinformed or never tried it themselves. Naturally, success depends on the amount of work and effort you put in as well as your knowledge.

Although it is possible to sign up for an affiliate program without a website, it's not the wisest decision. Buying traffic to your affiliate site can be time consuming, costly, and not very rewarding. Owning a website is very essential to an affiliate for a number of reasons, freedom being one of the most important. You make the final call without relying on anyone else to advertise your affiliate. How many sales will you have to generate before you can pay for all the advertising? Will you end up with a profit?

Just as it takes time and much commitment for a company owner to reach a point where he can enjoy the fruits of the labour, affiliate programs won't give you a good return if you haven't invested enough. I have seen many examples where individuals sign up for a affiliate program in the hopes of making thousands of dollars every month, but do very little to achieve this goal. Then they think to themselves: they have a website; they have banners up promoting the product; they even have an impressive amount of traffic. What's wrong? Why isn't anyone buying? Meanwhile, their website is all about sports on which they are pushing electronics equipment. Of course it won't work!

Oftentimes, the importance of relevancy is missed. The first most important step is to create an environment where the product or service that you are trying to sell is supported by the content on the site. Why? It's simple. The type of traffic your site receives is based on what your site offers. If you're thinking of selling electronics equipment, build your website around the wants and needs of a person that is most likely to be interested in buying such products; provide them with price comparisons, new gadgets on the market, the latest and greatest in technology, and so on. Exceed your expectations and give them enough to make them want to come back.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to earn a substantial amount of money from affiliate programs. You don't need a business degree nor need you be a highly skilled webmaster. Anyone can do it! Sure, a little bit of education has never hurt anyone, but some of the highest paid affiliates have had very little or nothing to do with this business. This should give you a good idea of where you stand.