Disadvantage: If you are new to internet marketing and affiliate programs you should know that the search engines, for example: Google, Yahoo or MSN, do not like duplicate content. The search engines will only index one website and ignore the rest, or worse, send the website to the sandbox.

The search engines love fresh and unique content and the problem with affiliate programs is that it is not unique. Since all the affiliates receive the same template of webpages, they all receive the same content and their ID is the only thing that is different.

Advantage: Affiliate programs build to duplicate and this is the idea behind them. You send new prospects to your affiliate link, they join the program and receive their own affiliate link, to the same page you have, and they try to duplicate you and your upline. If they do it well they will succeed. You are only successful if your affiliates are successful. This is why you want them to duplicate your steps.

Another disadvantage is that if the affiliate program you just joined is a popular one. It means that almost everybody else already saw it and is promoting it. Your potential prospects are used to seeing it as well and will skip it.

On the other hand, the advantage of a popular affiliate program is that some of the prospects see it so often and they decide to join it, because of its popularity.

Another advantage for affiliate programs is the fact that they have the best sales copy. The sales copy is written by a professional and its purpose is to get your prospect to join the program or buy the products you are selling.

Most affiliates don't know how to write a good sales copy, and they rely on the ones the affiliate program is providing.

The solution is very simple: Do not promote your affiliate link directly. Use internet marketing to promote your affiliate links and use only unique content to do so. Try blogging or article marketing, and write your own posts and articles. This will provide the unique content to the search engines, and you can use your blog to send your readers to your affiliate link.

Forums are another simple and free way to promote your affiliate program. By joining different forums in your niche and contributing to these forums you will be able to promote your affiliate program to other internet marketers and prospects, you will provide the search engines the unique content they are after and you will learn as well.

The conclusion is that it is perfectly OK to use duplicating when it comes to affiliate programs, and it is warmly recommended, as long as it works. However, there are different ways to use internet marketing for affiliate programs, and here you have to use your own unique content.