This is the Part 2 in our series on helping beginners become an affiliate marketing guru: What to look for when choosing an affiliate marketing company.

In a recent post, i discussed how most affiliate marketing blogs and ebooks tell you to buy and set up 5 or more sites then spend $$$ to promote the affiliates products.

So we decided to start a 30 day trial experiment.

AdsenseAddict likes to help beginners make money online and understand most newcomers to affiliate marketing do not have the funds let alone the time to accomplish this at the beginning. So we have come up with a 30 day experiment where we are only using FREE methods to promote our affiliates products.

Choosing an Affiliate Marketing Network

In this post i will not be comparing affiliate marketing companies and saying one is better than the other. nor will i be saying use text links (like adsense) instead of banners or 125 x 125 logos. These are just my views after two weeks research.

Choosing an affiliate network to work with is not an easy one. There are many affiliate networks to choose from and it is hard to know which are the best without first trying them.

To be honest, the best affiliate program for your site depends on which site you run. It is probably best to pick an affiliate product or service which your visitors would be interested in. Also you need to decide on which type of program you would like use as not all affiliate companies offer these services.

Some examples of the programs available are:

pay per click - you get paid when a visitor clicks a link, usually this is only a few cents per click

pay per sale - you receive a commision when a visitor makes a purchase from the affiliate site. Look for a company that uses a cookie duration of a minimum 21 days. So if a visitor does not make a purchase on the first or second visit, but makes a purchase say a week later, you still receive the commision.

pay per lead - you are paid a set amount for each visitor you send to the merchant’s site that performs an action, such as joining their program, signing up for their newsletter, filling out a survey, etc.

pay per impression - pay per impression affiliate programs pay you for every ‘view’ that an advertisement on your site receives. The rates pay per impression programs generally pay are on a CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions) basis.

Opinions vary greatly on which affiliate companies and methods work. After reading affiliate forum posts and blogs, you will see both positive and negative comments posted. But be careful about placing to much trust in these views as you never know the source or reasons behind such comments.

Take the make money online niche, you tend to see the same products or services advertised on a lot of sites. Does this mean the product sells or are the blogs just following the crowd? bahhh bahhhh

The thing i have found with affiliate marketing is that no one solution works. I think the only thing i did find out is that you have to experiment!

If you would like to join our free 30 day experiment to make money online with affiliate marketing and need a decent affiliate network, try the following sites:

adtoll.com

neverblueads.com

pepperjamnetwork.com

Qassia.com - a new way to advertise your site (beta at the moment but available free under referral)

Why these four?

Because i said so OK (only joking, it is all part of our plan)

Seriously, these companies offer the services that we felt was the easiest to use, have decent payouts and also had the following criteria: Referral program, Private Ads, Banner advertising and Email campaigns.

We are using these companies as examples only. It does not really matter what network companies you use in my 30 day trial as long as you are confident with the products or services, as next post i will explain how to set up sites and how to advertise your merchants products for free.

Please be sure to check back for the next part in our series on affialte marketing or subscribe to our RSS feed.