You’ve started your website and you’ve finally got regular visitors. Now you want to setup a few affiliate banners and links on your website to start making a little extra money. Here are the top 6 signs you should avoid joining an affiliate program. If you’ve already joined affiliate program with these suspicious signs, it’s not to late to stop and switch to another affiliate program too.

1. They do not list their contact information readily on their website.

If you cannot contact them easily, how will you insure that you get your payments? Make sure to find their contact details and even try to contact them just to see if they respond. Keep notes on their contact details also, as they might change them or remove them from their website in the future. This is also a great way to get a feel for how they will treat the visitors that you send their way.

2. Their website does not look professional

To make sales, the service or product you are promoting must have a professional website with excellent sales copy. You can’t sell their service or product if everybody leaves before they even find out what they have to offer. If you are unsure if a website is professional, ask a few friends to check out the new website you found and see what they have to say about it.

3. Would you even purchase their products?

Don’t sign up for an affiliate program promoting a service or product you yourself would not even purchase because it does not seem trustworthy. Sometimes as a webmaster we don’t necessarily buy all services and products we personally find useful, but can see that other people may find it useful. For various reasons, if you would not purchase a service or product from them because the website does not seem reputable, than don’t join their affiliate program.

4. Multiple products with separate affiliate programs

They sell multiple products either on the same website or on separate websites, but only offer an affiliate program for one product or have to sign up for multiple affiliate programs. I call this the bait and switch affiliate program. They have their affiliates attract visitors to one product but have links to other products or websites that do not offer any commission. So essentially you will be sending them links and more often than not, they may purchase something else and you won’t get credited.

5. You must pay them to be part of their affiliate program

There are some products that do offer you the opportunity to resell their product if you purchase resell rights — these are reseller programs and are different than affiliate programs. Affiliate programs that claim you can only join their program for a fee and will include a lot of bonuses to make up for the fee, are probably just trying to make a quick buck off of you. They are making money off their affiliates and have no intention of actually gaining any profits from the services or products you are promoting.

6. Nobody has ever heard of them and there is no record of another affiliate getting paid

You’ll be taking a big risk if nobody has ever heard of the affiliate program or you do not know the owner of the affiliate program directly. ClickBank, Comission Junction, and various other affiliate marketplaces allow you to see how much the affiliate program is earning other affiliates. If you are new to affiliate marketing, sticking to these companies is a safe bet to always get paid.

Most require you to enter your personal information in order to get paid, so it is in your best interest to research each affiliate program before you join. Visit a few popular webmaster forums to inquire with other webmasters about affiliate programs you are interested in. This will help you get more information and see how well others are succeeding with the program. Stay clear of the suspicious affiliate programs and if you have been duped by one, make sure to tell other webmasters so they do not fall into the same trap.

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