An affiliate is simply an individual or business who signs up to promote someone else's product or service for a share of the profits. It's one of the most popular ways of starting an online business. It doesn't require you to have your own product, write sales letters, process orders, fulfill orders...or anything. You simply sign up for fr'e. Promote the link they give you and you're paid a commission based on how many sales on made.

There's only one problem with being an affiliate. The average affiliate loses money. The affiliate manager only pays them when they generate a sale. So the affiliate manager wins on the deal whether the advertising system they write up for their affiliates works well or not. The deck is stacked against the average affiliate. They only had a 1% chance of playing this game and winning.

Let's change the odds.

The big myth of online affiliate programs is that someone will "hand" you a good income. All you have to do is sign up for Fr'e, and it's like money in the bank. Most people realize this can't be true, but the affiliate program managers make it sound so easy sometimes.

The key to becoming a successful affiliate is to stack the deck in your favor. This will shock some people, but I'll say it anyway. The best way to succeed in an affiliate program is NOT to lead people to the product site. The best way isn't to build a mini-site that leads into the product site either.

The best way to make money in affiliate programs is to build an opt-in email list and then promote one affiliate product after another to your list.

Focus on building your list...and then selling the products you affiliate with. Then, you become the one in control. It's your list. If you want to promote Suzy's product, then you do it.

If Suzy doesn't pay you well enough, then you can promote someone else's product. You still OWN the list. You can change income streams, but you own the RIVER. Affiliate Manager's Dirty Little Secret:

Your web site (the one you promote) should be telling people the benefit's of joining your list. Then, after someone joins it, you can take them over to the "Lead" product affiliate program.

Sending out more emails to your list won't cost you any extra money! It used to be an old saying that he/she who has the gold makes the rules.

The Internet has changed that. Lots of companies with money can't earn a profit online. The new Internet marketing rule is...

He/She who owns the list makes the rules!