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Knowing whether or not the affiliate program you are wanting to promote is legitimate or not is always something you need to be able to recognize without getting to deeply involved with the company itself.

You risk your business reputation in bad companies if you don’t watch the companies that you promote as an affiliate marketer.

So I always do several things before I decide to promote a business or program online. Here are the steps I take before making any final decisions.

1. I “Google” the company. I check to make sure that company doesn’t have any “scam reports” written on them. But, you have to beware those that are using “SUCH AND SUCH SCAM” as a way to draw you into their affiliate sales pages. I absolutely think this is a travesty on the affiliate market. I think it’s wrong to pull someone into your affiliate squeeze page under false pretenses! It also gives the actual business owner a bad name. When you “Google” the company and find all these FAKE “scam” reports.
2. I always check their page rank and traffic reports in Alexa. If they are not getting good traffic already themselves what is wrong with their own marketing campaigns? If they are offering me free banners/ads/etc to promote their products and they’re not pulling good traffic in themselves then these marketing forms are not producing the results I’ll want to have as the affiliate.
3. I check and see if the actual business owner has a good/bad reputation. (Ex. I’ll look up people like Frank Kern and John Reese and Joe Vitale….. not just their company names.)
4. When I’m working with companies like PepperJam Network, The Biz Opp Network, Commission Junction or any of the “multi” Affiliate Networks, I always check out the individual company that I’m promoting.. It’s like a “background check” on the companies and/or product owners.
5. I check to see if they give me some good tools to use in promoting their program. One of the things I absolutely hate is when I am becoming an affiliate for someone and they don’t have any banners, ads or articles about their product…. to help me in my creative writing processes and banner advertising.
6. I also become a CUSTOMER, and buy the product or service I am marketing “for the most part” there are some marketers online that I’ve known for years that their products are worth me promoting so I’ll go ahead and promote them even if I don’t personally buy the product. I know their reputation is worth staking my reputation on!

My last suggestion is to always be care and do your homework. Make sure your reputation won’t get tarnished by the products you promote and also make sure the product/service fits into your message you want to get out to your customers.

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