Affiliate Programs - the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

In this piece, I am going to share with one and all how to make affiliate commissions without spending too much time, or too much cash on advertising, pay-per-click options and the like.
What I say may be quite revolutionary for the traditional bread-and-butter types, but please bear with me.
Rather than push down your throat a zillion marketing strategies, I am going to teach you how to run your business on autopilot.
Conventional wisdom suggests that you look for profitable Clickbank programs.
I suggest otherwise.
Just forget about Clickbank and the rest, close your eyes, and ask yourself what it takes to become a successful affiliate.
Customers! That's right, customers make you rich, because even the top affiliate program shall lose its crown without customers honoring their promise.
So there you have it.
You must first try and track down potential customers for the product or service you intend to represent; that'll give you a better idea on whether or not a certain affiliate program is worthwhile.
This can be done, either manually or by installing some sort of customer tracking device.
More on this later.
Once that's underway, it is extremely important that you get an autoresponder, assuming you have a website to begin with.
This is a crucial step, because unless casual surfers turn into real customers, you won't be making any commission.
An autoresponder is indispensable, as it sends out periodic updates to a potential customer, perhaps also igniting his curiosity to visit your site and learn more.
And who knows, a curiosity click might well become a purchase.
Hence, a serious affiliate marketer would do well to install an autoresponder.
To sum it all up, there are only two steps to success.
First, you court the top affiliate programs by tracking down customers, and next, you try and turn every click into a sale.
Doing this, you take care of the good, the bad, and the ugly.
The rest, including promotion and marketing, are details.
It's the foundation that matters.
And without a solid base, you build a house of cards.
Of course, there is much, much more to affiliate marketing than autoresponders and customer trackers, but that's way beyond the scope of this essay which, in all fairness, is restricted to discovering the wonders of automating your e-biz, thanks to a plethora of innovative software programs.