Reading countless emails for pennies is not only way to waste time *not* earning decent money online. Here are a few more things to avoid.

1) Joining *too many* affiliate programs

There are lots of good affiliate programs out there, with many excellent products and services to promote. Many people earn a healthy full-time or supplemental income doing nothing but promoting affiliate programs. So why do most people fail to make any real money at it? Because they join practically every affiliate program they come across, and then dilute their efforts by trying to promote them all, or become paralyzed by sheer number of choices and don't work any (or most) of them.

The cure: limit yourself to no more than a handful of programs, at least to start. Of those, pick one to start with. Focus your efforts on promoting that product or service until you begin to see results -- sales, signups, whatever produces income in that program. Then repeat process with next program you chose, and then next, and so on. Pretty soon, you're an affiliate earning machine! (Forgive me.)

2) Using "canned" ads

Practically every affiliate program comes with a supply of pre- written ads for affiliates to use, and practically every affiliate uses them. The result? Repeated viewing of same ads over and over again causes potential prospects to become immune to offering. Heck, they become so immune to them that after a while they don't even see them. (And to be honest, some of canned ads are so *bad* that even on first viewing, potential prospects don't respond to them anyway.) You can waste your time posting them, but few people will waste *their* time reading them.

The cure: write your own ads. (Forget "I can't write" excuse. If you can talk, you can write - period. Get over it.) There are plenty of resources online to teach you how to write effective ads, and many of them are free. Another free way to learn to write ads is to read and study ads written by pros. (Most advertisers and copywriters keep a "swipe file" of profit- pulling ads written by others. They don't copy them, but simply refer to them when they are in need of ideas or inspiration.)

How to write ads is beyond scope of this article, so I'll just say this: Be bold, be different, and be honest. And then test, test, and test some more. And if you really, really, really can't do it yourself, then hire someone to do it for you. You're in business, right? So invest a little in your success. (Note: some affiliate programs require you to submit your original ads to them for approval before running them, so check your affiliate agreement first.)

3) Promoting "company" or "replicated" web pages.

Most programs provide their affiliates with their own company web page or affiliate url to promote. And most (unsuccessful) affiliates rush to promote these urls to their safelists (ugh) and post these company web pages on hit exchanges like No More Hits, StartBlaze and like. And just as with canned ads, web surfers see these same pages over and over so often that they become immune to them. Yup, BuildReferrals again. CashEvolution. MoneyMailer. Again and again, ad-nauseum. Look, company-supplied web pages have their place, but advertising isn't it, so stop wasting your time humping them.