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You will no doubt make many mistakes in your affiliate marketing career. One thing you do not need is help from your affiliate merchant in adding to that.

I have found over the years that not all affiliate programs are created equal. Surprisingly to me there are many affiliate programs that do not do a very good job of representing their product in a way that will benefit the affiliate marketer the most.

Here are a handful of mistakes I see affiliate programs make. You may want to think twice before joining a program like this.

1. Building the affiliate merchant's list first. This is become somewhat of a pet peeve of mine as I see affiliate merchants building large lists at the expense of their affiliates.

Most of them will tell you that they will continue to follow up with the subscribers and to promote your affiliate ID number. However, when a new product is launched the merchant is going to contact those affiliates and you are not going to get credit for the sale.

If you are promoting a program that sells a product the emphasis by the merchant should be put on making the sale, not building their list first. Before you join any affiliate program you can take a look at the sales pace to see where that merchant is putting their priorities.

2. Build your own website first. This is a way to avoid the mistake we just read about.

If you are going to promote a product where the merchant wants to build their list, build your list first. The way to do that is to promote your own landing page and have subscribers go into your autoresponder before passing them through to the affiliate sales page.

In reality this is a better approach to doing affiliate marketing anyway. Building an email list is an excellent asset that allows you to make money online in many ways in the future.

3. Greed by the merchant. You can get a pretty good idea how the merchant values their affiliates by how much they are willing to pay.

Some affiliate merchants are greedy. They would prefer to keep more money for themselves. The smart ones do not do this.

They understand that the best affiliate marketers are greedy. If you develop into a super affiliate you can always contact any merchant and negotiate a better rate. The smart merchants are willing to pay more to both their regular affiliates and super affiliates.

4. Lack of marketing materials. There is no need as an affiliate for you to have an overabundance of affiliate marketing materials.

However, today there are many ways to promote on the Internet. The best affiliate programs will provide banners of various sizes, pre-written email marketing messages, landing pages for you to promote, and videos that can be customized for video marketing.

There really are a lot of excellent affiliate merchants you can join today. Be cautious of the merchant who is making mistakes that can hurt you as an affiliate before joining any program. To make money online with affiliate programs you want to join the right merchants from the start.