You have decided you want to start earning some revenue from that website you have. You are beginning to see more traffic coming to your niche website due to your article marketing efforts. You have quality content in the form of articles and the article distribution service you chose is getting that content out to the right niche publishers. People are heading to your site to read even more about your niche topic.

Now, you want to earn income by offering products or services related to that niche. What are the best affiliate programs? Which ones will provide you the income you need to make your time, money and energy investments worthwhile? After all, you don't want to be doing article writing, article submissions and article promotions for naught. You don't want to spend money on advertising and website maintenance for no gain. You need a quality affiliate program. The following are ten things to look for in a good affiliate program.

1. Choose a reputable company from which to select affiliate products and services. Do your homework and investigate the company. Ask others who have dealt with, or who are currently dealing with the company, all about them. You don't want to sign-up with a company who has a shady reputation, inferior products and a corporate office that consists of a euchre table and a beanbag chair in the backroom of a flophouse.

2. Choose an affiliate program that offers products or services that are innovative, state-of-the-art and always upgraded. In other words, you don't want products that are not relevant to the current consumer marketplace. You don't want to sell old products that are part of a diminishing market with no future. You don't want to be selling typewriters in the age of PCs, as an extreme example.

3. Choose an affiliate program that offers products and services that are fairly priced and in a good price range. You offer your potential customers choice when you do this, and when you offer products and services that don't price gouge, your customers learn to trust you as an affiliate marketer.

4. Choose a product or service that you enjoy promoting. Simple enough: don't spend your valuable time involved with something you dislike or have no interest in at all.

5. Choose an affiliate product or service that's compatible with your website, blog and article content. If you engage in article writing and article marketing about skiing, have a ski information website and blog, then associate yourself with ski products. Sign-up as an affiliate with ski clothing companies, ski resorts that offer vacation packages or ski manufacturers. Make affiliate products or services a natural extension of your article writing content, blog content and website theme.

6. Choose an affiliate program that pays you at least once a month with as low a minimum payment as is reasonable. You will receive payment more often this way so you can have regular cash flow.

7. Choose an affiliate program that has a proactive affiliate manager who will guide, train and mentor you. If you are new to affiliate marketing, you'll need a good affiliate manager's expertise and knowledge. Even if you have some affiliate marketing experience, you need expert advice and information from a particular company's affiliate manager. Every affiliate program is different and it pays to tap into the resources a knowledgeable affiliate manager provides you.

8. Choose an affiliate program that allows you to track performance. Know where you stand and how you are doing to make marketing adjustments as is necessary to improve sales.

9. Choose an affiliate program that offers fair commissions. Don't invest time in article writing, article marketing and other promotional activities only to find out that sales generated from the site earn you a pittance. You want fair payment for the affiliate sales you generate for a company.

10. Choose an affiliate program that helps make your website attractive for promoting their products. Choose one that provides a variety of attractive banners and quality text links. Also, choose one that provides you code or easy-to-create code for your website. In addition, choose an affiliate program that provides you with quality, informative content. Use this content in your article writing for your article-marketing program and also use it to add informative content to your blog or website.

Take the time to use this checklist to select the right affiliate program for you. You'll also come up with other things to check out as you think more and more about what you want from an affiliate program. The above checklist is a good start. It will help you choose a quality affiliate program to bring you the sales revenue you desire.