[By: Paul Remington]

1) Follow The Leaders
Stay in affiliate marketing for long enough and a familiar pattern starts to appear. The first thing that you notice is that the same names keep cropping up on other affiliate programs that you might have an interest in. This pattern continues if you sign up to the various news letters that these names promote, but the most revealing secrets are in the emails that they send to you because they contain the news of what product they are about to promote and why you should also consider promoting the same product.

2) Your Commissions
A good affiliate program should pay you commission upwards of 40% depending on the price of the product or service in question, it should also have a two tier system in place. This means that you get a percentage of profits earned from all affiliates who have signed up under you in the same affiliate program.

3)Membership Websites
These type of websites have gained rapid popularity and for good reason, they offer you the chance to earn almost a regular monthly wage from all people who sign up under you. The secret of membership websites is in the quality of the products and services offered which you would normally find to expensive to purchase individually, you get full access to the website so long as you pay the monthly fee which can range from anything from $10 to $100 plus a month.

4)Check Cookies
An often over-looked but very important point regarding Internet marketing, how long does your affiliate cookie last? If your not sure what a cookie is, It is basically a harmless code embedded in your browser every time you visit a website. The cookie tells the website owner information about you and your surfing habits, but what's really interesting is the length of time attached to each cookie. You may be asking yourself "how does this effect me" Well let's say as an example that you decide to promote broomsticks as your affiliate product and the website gives cookies for a one month period only

Each new person that you send to the broomstick website would have to make a purchase within a month, but no later, for you to earn a commission which believe me is a hard thing to do even with a website with great ad copy. So what you need to look out for is affiliate programs that offer cookies for a minimum period of three months which will increase your chances of making a sale by at least 40%

5)Customer Care
The customer care that I'm talking about here concerns you as an affiliate marketer. Any website which you decide to promote should be willing to bend over backwards to help you succeed. There should be pre written solo ads, emails, videos, etc. Everything that you need to sell your product or service if you do not get this, then you are promoting the wrong affiliate program.

This is the end of the article and I hope you find the above five tips useful and profitable in the future. Just remember that great reward does not come without great effort on your part, no matter how much hype you hear about the easy money that can be made on the Internet. If you continue to work hard you will be rewarded.