Totally Free Affiliate Website Program
When you first start out, you don’t have a lot of money to throw at your online business efforts. This means most people look for a totally free affiliate website program.
When it comes to online affiliate programs, this is somewhat of an odd idea. Why? Well, in the 10 years we have been involved in ecommerce, we have never seen a single affiliate or partner program that required a fee to joint that was…well, worth joining.
So, what are these affiliate programs you have to pay to join? They usually are some form of pyramid or MLM scheme. The goal of such programs is to make money off you in exchange for giving you the technique to get others to give you money in exchange for you teach them how to do it. Personally, we find such programs to be a waste of time and money, but to each their own.
That being said, there are other paid affiliate programs out there. Again, you should approach such programs with serious caution. They often are not so much affiliate programs as the primary way to make money for the business. They usually involve “training”. For a few hundred or thousand dollars, the company will “train” you to be an affiliate. They send you a nice thick booklet and you might even get to go to a meeting or two. After gong through training, you come to realize that what the company is really selling is the affiliate program. This is particularly true in financial fields, so be careful.
The key to understanding affiliate programs is to think about the offline world of business. Companies have to pay a ton of money for advertising and sales staff. As an online associate, you are relieving them of this financial burden. Given this fact, should you also have to pay them a fee? Of course not.
If you have any doubts about the merits of this article, consider the affiliate programs of every large, well-known company. Does Amazon require a fee to join their affiliate program? Overture? EBay? Google? NO! If the big guys don’t require it, don’t throw money at the small guys!