I think all Internet Marketers are somewhat also affiliates of another Internet Marketer, right? I've been on a list of some "gurus" and whenever I check my email, they mostly promote the same products!
my favorite affiliate programs are those that ones paid me all thru the years like clickbank, primaryads, thenewsroom, ourfreestuff, axill, adlandpro, herculist, text-link-ads, clixgalore. i've got threads here on this forum that has file attachments of screen shots of checks that I've received from them and it's a growing thread btw.
The so called guru's are just making money off of people like you and me. Or they had one succes story in the past and are still milking it. I guess you could call that a succesfull marketeer as well. But a big part of the real deal marketeers, the ones making loads with affiliate marketing will never be on any of these forums or in the public eye, let alone bringing out questionable products or marketing their affiliate products through email lists.
do these affiliate programs really work? I mean dun get me wrong but i heard there are lot of scams out there. I just maybe doesn't want to take the risk. ^_^
- Good programs track your sales accurately, pay you on time, have a decent number of return days, offer performance incentives, hire affiliate managers who do their job well, don't engage in shady business practices, have a site which converts well to begin with and sell only their own products on their landing pages.
- Bad programs underreport sales and overreport reversals, run their business in unethical ways, have affiliate managers who are impossible to reach, don't pay on time, run 3rd party ads which will make money for THEM but won't count as sales for you (i.e. running adsense on their landing pages)... just to name a few.