During my daily Internet escapades, a marketing buddy of mine pointed me in direction of a new press release that was announced on CNET on February 25th 2000.

I was so shocked when I read release, that my mind wandered off in countless directions, trying to grasp devastating effect that this could bring to world of e-commerce. "No, surely not" I said to myself.

I quickly realized that press release I just read could entail me losing over HALF of my monthly revenue.

It's true.

DEATH TO SOME AFFILIATE PROGRAMS could soon be reality. (Well, at least existing technologies that are used)

Amazon.com, leading Internet bookstore and e-commerce giant, applied for a patent to cover it's affiliate program technologies on June 27th 1997.

It seems as though Amazon.com got there first before any one, and started off affiliate craze. Unfortunately, they realized that their competitors would also employ similar affiliate tactics to increase sales. So they applied for a patent governing exclusive copyrights to technology that controls and operates affiliate software.

If enforced, it would mean that some companies would either have to apply for a license to continue using their affiliate programs, or would have to cease using them as a marketing method.

The bad news is they received their patent on Tuesday.

Not so fast there, Bucky. There's a lot more to making money with affiliate programs than that. If your best effort is going to be that banner, don't plan on retiring any day soon.

Just like everything else online, you'll get out of it what you put in. So if you want to make some serious cash with those programs you're joining, you need to promote them. There are a variety of methods you can use, but I'll discuss few that I know seem to work best.

My first suggestion to you is to join only programs that relate to theme of your website. Make sure it's a "good fit" with your site and that it pays out a "healthy" commission. Getting paid $2.00 in commission may not be worth work involved in promoting program. Try weaving URL's throughout your site or devoting a whole page to their topic. Don't just use banners; use alternatives like text links within your pages. Banners have become so saturated online that a lot of folks tend to ignore them, plus extra weight they add to your pages makes them load slowly.