Clearly there are two angles on this, take the viewpoint of the program host and certainly there can be gains. As for the affiliate marketers themselves, it's become a really tough proposition to make money.

Here's why -

As a program host (the merchant, who uses an affiliate program to market his/her website), an affiliate program can be inexpensive to operate and can still be a good source of traffic. Naturally that depends on how you approach it. There are still program providers that can charge you $5,000 or more for setup, and take a hefty percentage of every sale generated by their 'network' of affiliates. But if you find yourself a sensible affiliate program provider, or even choose to go it alone, it can be inexpensive and effective. We offer affiliate program setup and integration for under $1000. For that you get the software (you own it, you'll never pay fees or percentages of your sales revenue), and full integration into your website. We can even manage it for you and help recruit affiliates.

As an affiliate marketer, typically around 99% of people who try it will never make a paycheck. You need to be marketing savvy and you need to work hard at it. I would always recommend joining an affiliate program that has a product which appeals to repeat-order customers and where the software is setup to pay you on all repeat orders. That way you start to make residual income from the program and are paid beyond your first order.

If you're contemplating using an affiliate program to improve your web traffic, check out our services using the navigation on the left - With our new Affiliate Program Integration Service, we're bringing the benefit of our expertise to you at a price you can afford. Other companies, and we've had personal experience of this, lease the software to you, then when you have an established affiliate network, they TRIPLE your monthly fees!

We sell you the software and install it on your web server, you own the software and we'll never ask you for another penny.