One of the biggest problems facing affiliates is time management.  You want your time to be spent productively and profitably.  You can't afford any "alligator affiliate programs" which eat away at your time, with little or no results.  Take caution when you choose an affiliate program to promote.  Before spending time promoting an affiliate program, make sure it passes the smell test.

Here's a few tips to remember when choosing an affiliate program to promote.

1.  Know your demographic: 

This  is a no-brainer.  If your site is about insurance, you're not going to make many sales for baby cribs.  Ask your sites visitors to fill out a questionaire about themselves. The more  you know about your users, the better chance you have to refer them to valuable products and services they will want to buy

2.  Merchant's website: 

It's hard to get visitors to click on affiliate links.  If a 3% CTR is considered good, that  means 97% of your users are not clicking on your links.  So it goes without saying, if your users click through to the merchant,  you want to make darn sure the merchant's website can "close the sale."  Does the merchant site look amateur and haphazardly thrown together?  Is their copy interesting and informative to your potential buyers.  Most importantly, is the purchasing process simple, secure, and fast?  Make sure your merchant passes this test before sending referrals their way.

3.  Quality of products and services: 

Would you use the merchant's products and services?  If not, your site's visitors probably won't either.  Build trust with your sites visitors by only referring products which solve problems or prove to be valuable in some  way.  Not only will you get more sales referrals, your site's visitors will trust you more with future purchases as well.