Everyone has to start somewhere and affiliate marketing is no exception.

But what are the best affiliate marketing programs for beginners to join?

A lot of people suggest that you start with Clickbank.

They’ve been around for years, they pay out regularly and there’s a wide variety of products you can sell as an affiliate.

But…

There are several drawbacks.

They’ve always had a policy that you need to make sales from at least 5 different credit cards before they’ll release your first payment.

That’s partially an attempt to stop you buying from your own links and effectively getting a rebate on your purchases.

But with more people paying by PayPal that means it’s getting harder to get those different cards (as far as I’m aware, PayPal only counts as one payment method even if it’s different people using it).

Another quite big snag with Clickbank when you’re starting out is that if you don’t make a sale for 90 days then they’ll deduct $1 per day from your balance.

If that period extends to 180 days of no sales then – assuming you have any money left in your account balance – that figure rises to $5 per day.

That’s draconian and some people think it’s tantamount to theft.

But it definitely means that you can’t rely on Clickbank unless you know you can generate a reasonable number of affiliate sales most of the time.

Additionally, they have recently decided to implement a controversial thing that they call a “trust badge”. Essentially, it’s a piece of code that they are requiring all their vendors to put on their site that flags up the fact that the purchase will be made through Clickbank.

This is controversial because any change to a sales page – large or small – almost always affects results.

No-one knows ahead of time whether that change will be positive or negative or broadly neutral.

And the change will vary from site to site and even from product to product.

A while ago, they tried to include a link to their own shop (they call it a marketplace) in such a way that affiliates wouldn’t get commission if someone leaked out of the sales page and then subsequently bought a different product (it’s a very poor affiliate program that cuts affiliates out of the loop). That caused uproar in the internet marketing community and Clickbank have currently backed down. But the script that controls the trust badge is completely within Clickbank’s control which means it could get changed at any time with or without warning.

That’s causing a number of vendors to jump ship. That happens anyway with affiliate offers but my guess is the pace will accelerate and in turn that means if you were promoting a Clickbank product and the vendor moved to another company to process their sales then you’d be cut out of the equation.

In common with most affiliate programs, there’s no notification system when that happens so you need to check things occasionally yourself.

Fortunately there are other options

Two relative newcomers to the affiliate marketing arena are WarriorPlus and JVZoo.

They’re both skewed towards the internet marketing niche but do have products in other areas. At the time of writing, JVZoo probably has a wider range of products although personally I don’t like finding my way around their marketplace.

Both often offer instant commissions by PayPal but whether or not you get paid instantly or at some time in the future will depend on your track record with the company and (often) with the vendor as well.

If you’re put on delayed payment – which is quite likely as a beginner – then WarriorPlus is by far the better choice because they handle the delayed payments directly whereas with JVZoo it’s up to the individual merchant to send the delayed payment.

Whilst most of the vendors there are honest, not all are and you could end up generating sales but not getting commission. For that reason (having been burned by this), I personally don’t promote delayed commission products via JVZoo.

Whichever you choose, you’ll need to apply for each offer individually (although some merchants will forward-approve you for new offers once you start making sales).

You may get automatically approved – the chances of this increase as you graduate from being a beginner by getting more sales.

Or the vendor may manually approve you, usually within a few hours especially at the time of a product launch.

If you don’t get approved quickly, most vendors have a JV (joint venture) page where you can sign up to their partners list. That will often give you contact details such as a Facebook or Skype ID or an email address or a support page.

Don’t be too pushy but don’t be afraid to nudge your potential vendor if you aren’t approved within a day or so.

You can keep up to date with new launches (mainly internet marketing related) at MunchEye and JVNewsWatch.

Those – mixed in with more evergreen products – can get you started as an affiliate marketer.

As you progress from being a beginner to someone who’s getting more expert you can start to look around for other affiliate programs to join.

There are lots of them around, usually just a quick search away.

And if you’d like more help with affiliate marketing then take a look here.