Ask yourself these questions ! how long has the company been in business? Do they offer a free or a paid program? What kind of commission do they payout to their members? Do they offer training and is it free or does it cost money?.
These are some of the things that you need to look at before even considering going an affiliate program.
Remember most affiliate programs these days are free to join initially.
If your going to join a good affiliate program that should provide you of a way of tracking your sales and a place where you can go and look at your stats to see how many sales your getting off the affiliate link they provide.
Some affiliate programs pay for hits as well as commission on sales too.
Look into this when applying for a program and also look at the percentage of commission the company pays out.
Look for the ones that have a least 50% commission. One such company are click bank they pay a high commission.
While your looking at how much commission the program pays you, there is something else that you should be looking at and that is how much commission plus do they pay anything if you sponsor someone into the program do they pay for referrals?.
It is important to look into all the above before going and joining programs that promise you that your going to make money overnight try and look for programs that are free to join, this way if anything goes wrong you won't be out of pocket in the early stages of starting a program.
Be prepared to wait for commissions to happen when you join an affiliate program there is however going to be some things that you will have to pay for initially like your own web hosting so that you can promote programs on. This should not cost you a lot of money to start with.
There are loads of web hosting companies out there with good deals and great customer service to guide you though how to setup your account and how to make your own web pages etc:
Don't forget you will have a lot to learn in the initial stages of starting your affiliate program . So be patient with yourself and give it time to develop.
