So, you stumbled across this wonderful ebook packed with useful information or you signed up as a member at a site loaded with great tools, articles ... the works ... and now you're excited about joining their affiliate program and making some bucks telling everyone about it. Well, of course you are, BUT...

First you better take a close look at what's INSIDE. The vast majority of these things are what I would call ... well ... sneaky. They're based on the "authoritarian" philosophy, not the "cooperative" philosophy (full discussion here). In other words, they're based on USING their affiliates, rather than HELPING them. 

Why do I say that?

What you find inside is lots of LINKS ... links which direct YOUR customer to THEIR other products ... and there goes all your future profits from that customer into THEIR pocket.
Ouch!

A Good affiliate program, based on HELPING their affiliates, will provide some way for you to change those links to your own, assuming that you can ethically endorse all those other products as comfortably as the one you initially signed up for. 

I've called a few people on the carpet for this practice and some folks have addressed the problem with "brandable" ebooks, some by offering pricey "resale rights". Doing something similar with a member site poses a bigger challenge.

Always spend a little extra time evaluating what's going on with a program before you invest your time and energy in becoming an affiliate.  A lot of the stuff being sold out there is just a "sales letter" in disguise. The REAL money is being made from all those "secondary" offerings ... the links inside.

Some good questions to ask:

• Is there a way to brand it with your own links without spending a lot?
• Are you already an affiliate of some of those "other" programs?
• Are there programs being recommended that you don't feel good promoting?
• Is the information so unique that you're willing to "trade off" future sales rather than write your OWN book?