It is an often quoted statistic that about 90% of affiliates make no money from affiliate programs.

The top 10% of affiliates make all the money. Some of these are super affiliates who make very large sums of money indeed.

What is the reason for the big difference between those who succeed and those who fail?

The following rules should be followed when choosing affilite programs:

1) Only promote products/sevices in a niche that is in demand and profitable.

2) Join programs where you earn at least 20% commissions on sales.

3) Only promote products that tie in with the theme of your web site. Unrelated products make a site look bad and sell poorly.

4) Concentrate on promoting programs that pay recurring or lifetime commissions. In other words, make a sale once and get paid indefinitely for any repeat sales to the same customer.

This is the big secret of the super affiliates. They put most of their efforts into promoting residual/lifetime affiliate programs. Gradually, like compound interest their profits mount up.

If you are not in a residual affiliate program and you get paid only once per sale, you will never get rich. You are wasting your time chasing one sale per customer and getting only one commission. Whereas the big affiliate earners put their effort into recruiting customers who will give them lifetime commissions on all the sales they make at any time in the future.