Should I Join Lots of Affiliate Programs or a Select Few?

A dilemma for many affiliate marketers is whether to go for quality or quantity in signing up for affiliate programs. On one hand, the more products you promote, the more potential income streams you have. On the other, signing up for just a few good programs allows you to concentrate more effort on promoting them.

For most affiliates, it's best to find a happy medium. Signing up for every program coming and going will just leave you terribly confused. But it is good to have several different things to promote. It keeps you from sounding like a broken record, trying to sell the same products over and over again (especially if you're promoting on a niche site or blog). And as long as you keep the numbers manageable, you'll be able to get to know your products well enough to recommend them with confidence.

Even if you're going the pay per click route, it's best not to sign up for too many programs. You'll have to spend some time writing ads and tracking your results for each one, and that's more time consuming than you might think. But you'll probably be able to handle more programs this way than you would if you were focusing exclusively on content-based promotion methods.