A few pointers to keep in mind before signing up as an affiliate:

1. Take stock of situation. Or as "Gurus" call it, make a SWOT analysis of your site. This will present your website in a very plain and subtle way. Through this you would know where your website's strength lies in.

2. Scout for right product for you. This is common sense, but let me reiterate this fact. Always sign up for products you think will fit in with your website's theme. You would not want to be a web host and sign up as an affiliate, selling another web host who promises to give you a 50% commission. Now that would be very silly to do. The bottom line is that sign up for services that will "Add Value" to services provided by your website.

3. The Affiliate Terms & Conditions.

This is saddest part of affiliate marketing. In my experience, I used to come across at least 2 cases of misunderstood affiliates who feel they are cheated out in deal. Always ensure that you read terms & conditions carefully and clarify with company incase you have any further queries.

4. Prepare your site. Another major problem in affiliate marketing is tracking. Always ensure that you have some tools and logs to monitor traffic on your site and if possible outgoing links, clicks, etc. Let’s face it, no matter how big a company is, setting up perfect affiliate tracking tools is something which I have not come across so far. So there will always be a situation where in you will have to lose out on a conversion. Make sure that you have your back covered with tools so that your case will have credibility.

Remember, a company would never want to deny an affiliate, especially if affiliate is really genuine. Why? I’m sure you know reasons.

5. Affiliate Networks or Direct Affiliate? Now that you have all details with you, next question is whether to sign up with an affiliate network of to sign up directly as company's affiliate. There are a few things to consider here. I would not restrain you from signing up with either of entities as both have their pros and cons.

a) If you are looking at a reasonably good tracking system and hassle free set up, then Affiliate Networks would be right place for you.

b) If you are not quite sure of products you want to sell, but you want to set up some affiliate banners, then affiliate networks is best place to sign up.

c) If you think you can handle terms & condition put forth by company and if you are fairly adept in setting up a foolproof system on your site then sign up with company directly. It will also help you negotiate a custom deal which will offer you much higher payouts as compared to signing up with networks.

Keep in mind that affiliate networks are nothing but sites just like yours who sign up as a master affiliate. By setting up their infrastructure, tracking, etc they allow various other people to sign up through them. What happens in this case is that affiliate networks are master affiliates, while you become sub affiliate. So what this means is that extra commission earned by networks for sales you bring, a part of it is used towards providing you with better service. And there are a few networks which also charge you a certain fee for transactions. But do not think that signing up directly will be a better deal. Because although this will provide you with direct interact with company and in most cases, with account manager, you will have to be 100% of your tracking and other problems that might arise.

So if you are ready to make some serious money and efforts towards marketing a product, then go ahead, there is no better way to do it than through affiliate marketing and no, I am not talking about Google AdSense here.

John Benjamin works as a freelance consultant for Internet Marketing. His website has various articles listed at http://www.promindsinc.com

3. The psyche of an affiliate.

Most companies write of affiliates who do not generate any sales in first quarter of signing up. This is a dead situation as both parties would have lost interested. However, a little retrospection into this will show something else. Most affiliates who sign up do not know technical details for setting up banners, etc. Instead of having a generic FAQ page, customization is keyword here.

Companies will need to monitor affiliate's path on site and contact them accordingly. For example a person who signs up as an affiliate and then logs into system, clicks on banner links and then logs off. If this happens way too often, (and im talking of not more than 2 times) there is something seriously wrong. If a company can take this opportunity and provide support to affiliate, trust me, you have one person who is going to be all praise for you.

4. Custom deals.

Another most common fact is that companies provide custom commissions only to affiliates who bring in higher volumes of sales. While many people do know that a company would not limit itself to commission type it displays on site, company also needs to approach affiliate and negotiate a custom deal that will be appropriate for affiliate. Most often it happens that companies tend to either overquote or underquote deal. Perhaps a little more research into market and affiliate himself would provide a better insight.

5. Special promotions.

Now, I would not call these anything special, far from being called a promotion. For most companies, a special promotion would mean giving affiliate an extra amount for a set number of sales brought to company in a specified timeframe. What is use for having a special promotion when your infrastructure is still same?

It would take anywhere between 2 to 3 quarters before a company can consider offering you a special promotion. Apart from usual custom of offering extra commissions or increase discounts, it would be a better idea to actually gather information from affiliate. If a company assigns an account manager for an affiliate, 2 to 3 quarters time is more than sufficient for account manager to be able to guage requirements of their affiliate. Companies will have to move out from usual and experiment more in terms of likes and dislikes of affiliate so that it would fit well into system and at same time not lose focus from affiliate.

While most companies always rely on same roadmap towards having a successful affiliate program, this sector needs companies to experiment with new ideas and innovative campaigns to give a facelift to affiliate programs.

John Benjamin works as a freelance consultant for Internet marketing and has his website at http://www.promindsinc.com/