Affiliate programmes are springing up everywhere and cover every type of product or service imaginable. Some incorporate fully automated systems that sell high volumes of hard products all over the world. Many have several thousand affiliates and one or two of the bigger companies have over one million affiliates.

So what are the advantages of joining an affiliate programme?

* they provide a ready-made business. This is a very big plus for those people who want to earn some kind of living off the internet but lack the knowledge or inclination to set up a business by themselves

* commissions and rewards are generally good and the more established programmes offer a real chance of advancement to higher and better-paid levels.

* other affiliates are usually on hand to offer practical support

How about the limitations?

* you are restricted in your promotional activities due to the fact that you do not actually own the affiliate site they give you. I'm thinking here about not being able to put such things as banners, images, links, meta tags etc onto your page

* the URL of your affiliate page is often either too long or contains such awkward things as question marks, which many Search Engines will not index

* any promotional literature provided has probably already been used by thousands of other people and consequently may have lost its impact, making it more difficult to achieve sales or referrals

* if the programme you have joined has not yet established itself (or in some cases even if it has) then you may encounter problems with payments owed to you not being honoured, or low quality products, or sub-standard statistics that do not accurately record how many referrals or sales you have made etc

* you may also be required to purchase a minimum

* you may not get the technical or affiliate support you might expect from the company. This may be due to inadequate staffing, or perhaps the company just doesn't care about you!

* other people in your downline do nothing to promote the programme

* the programme itself ceases to exist overnight

At least four of the above limitations can be overcome with a little time and effort. You could, for example, come up with fresher ads to promote the programme (provided this is allowed).

You could shorten that over-long affiliate URL by using a free service like tinyurl.com

It might be a good idea to purchase any product you are promoting anyway. This would then enable you to review its strengths and weaknesses and would put you well ahead of the majority of affiliates who know nothing about the product they are promoting.

With your new found knowledge, you could build a site or page dedicated solely to the affiliate product. You could write a review and also produce articles related to the subject.

If the company supplies the email addresses of people in your downline then you could offer to help the less active members. Very often these people are passive not because they are lazy or apathetic but merely because they don't know HOW to promote effectively! Your guidance could mean the difference between no sales or referrals and healthy downlines and residual incomes.
About the Author

Robert Evans has been doing business online since October 2000. He currently writes a blog in the form of a free tutorial on the subject of how to build a profitable web site from scratch. http://www.market4profit.net/blog