When you are looking for affiliate program providers, you want to take into account what they offer their affiliates. Many just offer you the link, which might look like:
http://www.example.com/example/1300768
That is the last type of affiliate link you want. It shouts out that you are an affiliate, is long and unwieldy. You can get that altered, but the point is this: if they can only be bothered to give you a link with no help in marketing, then they are not really that concerned whether you presell the product or not. Big mistake.
Affiliate Program Providers Provide Tools to the Affiliates
The better ones provide you with banners, text ads, articles to put on your web site and email letters you can send to your list. Some even offer full web pages, not just for their range of products, but for each product. Banners do not work very well these days, but a tall banner can work well in the sidebar, especially for a blog.
Always consider what the merchant is offering and whether it will help when you sign up as an affiliate.
Obviously, you cannot scour the internet for affiliate program providers in every category you want to market, and you want to find which are the best ones. That is not difficult so long as you are marketing digital products like e-books and software and access to membership sites.
You just head over to Clickbank Marketplace and look through the categories to see which are the most popular products in a category. You do not really want to promote the top product, unless it has been launched that day, because so many internet marketing gurus will be marketing it. You will be outgunned.
However, you can do very well with products that are ranked in the top 30 for popularity in a big category. In smaller categories there may not be many products to choose from, but make sure it is selling well.
Also, to make money as an affiliate you need to consider products where the commission is over $20 or so as a rule, because you can afford to spend $10 to get one sale at this level.
Other places to find good affiliate program providers are Paydotcom, Commission Junction and Linkshare. They have services and physical products on their list mostly.
