There is a lot of scam affiliate marketing stuff out there. Right now, I'm looking at just 3 affiliate programs, at eBay.com, Amazon.com, and Travelocity.com. They seem to have decent affiliate programs that I've signed up with, all for free, and they provide links and banner logos you can put on your web sites.
It seems clear so far, that it all boils down to developing a web site that can draw a lot of traffic, or draw enough visitors so that some small fraction of those visitors click on the affiliate links and some small fraction of those actually buy something after you've forwarded them to eBay or Amazon or Travelocity.
The only thing I've bought, so far, is the Build A Niche Store (BANS) software, at http://buildanichestore.com . I was sold and I plunked down $97 and started developing eBay affiliate web sites -- it's geared specifically to the eBay affiliate program.
Anway, I don't completely regret it yet, but it has been a LOT of work developing the sites, even with the BANS tool which is supposed to make it easier. I guess it does make it easier, but it's still a LOT of work to do it right. I'm starting to feel a little bit like I was scammed and tricked into buying it, but not completely. I guess they do make it pretty clear that it takes a lot of work, but I haven't really followed all their advice, which is my own fault. They do say that doing the up-front SEO keyword research is important -- I was too anxious to get started and went ahead and developed five web sites, and now I have five web sites that get hardly any traffic, and now I'm trying to figure out how to draw traffic to the sites I already developed -- sort of doing it backwards.
Anyway, I wouldn't recommend buying the BANS software. Not yet, anyway, until I find out how workable this SEO stuff is, being able to draw traffic to my BANS web sites.
There is one guy named Mark Hansen who is heavily involved with the BANS software, who genuinely seems to want to help people be successful with the BANS tool, and he writes a lot of helpful stuff on his main web site http://thenichestorebuilder.com .
The Amazon and Travelocity affiliate links that I got have just sort of been throw-ins, sort of like the Google AdSense ads but better. Again, it all depends on having a web site that draws a lot of traffic. It's hard to come up with interesting stuff that people would want to visit and read and link to. It's all about having good content. From what I've read so far, that is the number one thing required for effective SEO or SEM -- having good interesting content -- all the rest will follow. Otherwise, your SEO efforts only amount to trying to trick the search engines into thinking your web site is better than it is. If you have a good web site with good interesting content to begin with, then it's just a matter of making sure the search engines are aware of it as much as possible. The search engines are pretty good at telling the good web sites from the bad, all things being equal (or unless you throw a lot of money into paid searches using AdWords and stuff like that).
Anyway, that's where I'm at currently, still a rookie at this.
