4. Referral Length - You should also check out how long after you referred a customer that you still get credit. With advanced tracking systems in place, companies can keep track of customers for a long time after they first were referred. Some companies promise that they will still give you credit for a year after you first referred a customer. Since many customers don't buy on first visit to a site, this can also be a great perk.

5. Lifetime/Residual Income - This is actually a very important aspect to consider. Many companies that charge a monthly fee for their services will pay you a percentage every month as long as they keep customer. For example, hosting company I use, Host4Profit, charges $24.99/month for its hosting services. They pay their affiliates an even $10/month for every referral. This gradually builds up into a steady, sizeable income.

6. Reoccurring Commissions - You can also find programs that will pay you a commission for every purchase that a customer you referred makes. For example, if i refer Joe Surfer to a site, they will pay me for every purchase that he makes, not just initial purchase. The length of time varies, sometimes you can get reoccurring commissions for a month, a year, or maybe forever.

Pick More Programs

If you can make a lot of money with a couple of products, wouldn't it make sense to increase your income by just joining more programs? It sounds good, but it has major flaws. Your income depends heavily on traffic that your site receives, and you are only going to be able to convert a certain percentage of visitors to buyers of any of your affiliate programs. Too many programs dilute your conversion rate of visitors to buyers, and actually has other negative effects.

If you join too many programs, you won't have time to promote any one or few of them effectively. To be a successful affiliate, you do need to spend time marketing your programs. Instead of picking every program on Internet, you are much better off picking a few good paying programs, and spending a lot of time marketing them.

Message 1: This should be a message to thank customer for buying your product and should make a small mention of how affiliate product can help them.

Message 2: This should give customer a special unadvertised bonus to further earn there trust. Plus you should mention affiliate product again. Even better would be to make bonus a report or ebook and work affiliate link into it.

Message 3: Create a special offer that your customer can only get through your affiliate link. Make sure you offer something that is as valuable if not more valuable then affiliate product. Write good sales copy explaining benefits of both your bonus and affiliate product.

Message 4: Add on yet another bonus for them to order through you affiliate link. Again write good sales copy for this bonus and continue to stress benefits of affiliate product. Dont worry about repeating yourself, repetition sells. The more times you expose your prospect to affiliate product more likely they are to buy.

Message 5: This should be batch email sent to entire customer list periodically send an offer to this customer list that is both time and people sensitive. For example: For 50 people only, if you order affiliate product in next 24 hours you will get xzy bonus. Make sure you stick to these limits or else your offers won't be taken seriously.

This system is especially effective with affiliate programs that pay recurring or lifetime commissions. To see this system step by step in action go to: http://www.twistedmarketing.com/example.html