Here are the top six affiliate marketing tips to help you figure out how to identify profitable affiliate marketing opportunities and avoid the ones that are a total waste of time and money.

Tip 1: Try The Product First

Have you found an affiliate product you’re interested in promoting?

We strongly urge you to try it yourself first.Then you’ll be able to offer an honest recommendation. Talk to other people who have purchased it as well. Make sure you are recommending a high-quality product from a company that is reputable enough to back up what they sell.

And check their customer service too. How do they treat you over the phone? Do they put you on hold for hours? Then you should be concerned that customers you refer to them will have similar experiences.

Tip 2: Hold Out For Generous Commissions

It’s perfectly reasonable for you to expect to be paid 20% to 50% of the profits on each product sold. If the company only offers 5% to 10%, keep on looking. You should only do business with affiliate companies that understand the “lifetime value” of new customers you refer, and appreciate your efforts enough to offer the commissions you deserve.

Tip 3: Look For A High Sales Conversion Ratio

Before you join a company’s affiliate program, make sure the company’s website is turning a reasonable number of visitors into sales. If their website doesn’t have a decent conversion rate, then all the effort you put into directing traffic to their site will be wasted.

Look for sites that have at least a 1% conversion ratio (in other words, 1 out of every 100 visitors makes a purchase). Check out their website and their salescopy to see if it makes YOU want to buy. After all, it’s your job to send them targeted traffic — but it’s their job to turn these prospects into paying customers.

Tip 4: Make Sure You’ll Get Credit For Every Sale

Before you join a company’s affiliate program, find out what kind of tracking software they use. Look for a program that uses reliable affiliate tracking software that tracks all of your sales.

You want to make sure that they track phone, fax, and snail-mail orders, as well as any that are made directly on the website. Many companies only track online orders — which means their affiliates don’t get credit for anywhere from 5% – 10% of the sales they help the company make!

Also, make sure the affiliate program you join uses “cookie tracking.” This ensures that you’ll be credited for the purchase made by people who don’t buy on their first time to the site, but return to buy something on a future visit.

Tip 5: Make Sure They Offer Sales Statistics in Real Time

When you join an affiliate program, the company should give you a special username and password that you can use to access your own personal affiliate sales information on their website whenever you want. These should be real-time statistics that allow you to see exactly how many sales you have made.

With real-time statistics, you can discover exactly how well different banners, text links, and recommendations are doing. For example, with a bit of testing, you might discover that a product review on your Reviews page doesn’t pull nearly as well as a personal recommendation on your blog.

That’s the kind of information you need to ensure that your affiliate marketing efforts are yielding maximum results.

Tip #6: Make Sure They Offer Resources to Help You Generate Sales

A good affiliate program will provide you with everything you need to be successful. They’ll provide you with traffic-generating banners, text links, and recommendation letter templates. They’ll tell you which techniques work well in which circumstances.

Because their success is linked with yours, the affiliate program you join should be ready, willing, and able to teach you everything you need to know to start earning excellent commissions.