By promoting products that are RELEVANT to your target audience and presenting those products in a meaningful way through pages of your ebooks, websites and ezines, you can build up a nice steady income with little effort.

Don't forget though, affiliate programs will only earn you money if you promote them right way.

Otherwise they're a complete waste of time and effort.

A perfect example of how NOT to make money through affiliate programs is by carrying banners from big web companies like Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking these companies.

However, you may as well try making money from selling used matchsticks as from carrying banner ads from companies like these on your website.

Why?

Well, firstly, most people are so familiar with these companies already, that chances of them clicking banner are next to nothing. You can expect at VERY LEAST to go through 1000 visitors before you get a single click!

There are programs for selling products of all kinds, programs for getting subscribers or free traffic, programs for promotion and just about every other kind of program you can think of. There are some good ones out there and you need to sift through rest to find them.

Some of things you can keep in mind when it comes to joining programs are:

Check out all programs thoroughly. Make sure program is set up so it will actually benefit you not just founder of program.

Ask more experienced netpreneurs for opinions. Visit message boards and join discussion lists to learn from others. People are very willing to help, share and advise you when you ask.

Choose a few exceptional programs to promote. Keep in mind that if you join too many programs it will be hard to actively promote all of them. Promoting a few very good programs will be much more effective.