What Are the Best Affiliate Programs?

I have some good news, and some bad news. The good news is that there are many good affiliate programs out there. The bad news is that you will have a hard time identifying which are the best. Everyone has to decide for themselves which program they know and like enough to promote on a continuous basis.

When it comes to the best affiliate programs for me, I have considered a couple of things. First, who is my target audience? (And I had to make sure it was not me, a trap that most people fall into). Since most people using the internet are females between 20 and 50 (I read this some place not too long ago). I decided to pick them as my target market and design my site around them.

My second consideration was what this group is buying on the internet. What I discovered was that they were shopping for all kinds of things on eBay, Amazon, and Overstock.com Upon further research I noticed that this group had a lot of stay at home moms who were interested in earning extra money for various reasons and were heavy into surveys, data entry, and typing jobs. I spread my research further using information that I gathered from search engines and other websites concentrating in this arena. Here I saw a lot of duplication and not necessary things that I would be comfortable with associating myself.

I started to do some thinking on my own and reasoned that if most people use the internet for information, then maybe I should provide some information. So, I have an eBook on how to make money on the internet as a free offer on my website. I also set up a FREE Newsletter where I offer marketing tips on a continuous basis so that I can stay in touch with my customers.

Looking at the web site with what I had up to this point, left some room for creative thinking. My thought was that if these ladies were going to work and shop on my site I should give them some things to shop that are not readily available in every neighborhood shopping strip or mall. So I picked the Playboy store and Fredericks of Hollywood as a special attraction. The Dollar store, Golfsmith, and Entrepreneur Magazine were thrown in because of their brand value. And that is it.