I am guessing associates is same as a ffilistes ?? I use a couple affiliate programs on my site but so far havent made much money from it. Most people who purchase online go directly to the seller and bypass us middlemen so I dont put much worth into these programs, of course this is only MY experience.

RAT

There are many, many good affiliate programs out there.  You should pick one or two that are related to your web site.  A good place to find reliable affiliate programs is Commission Junction - http://www.cj.com - I've made a lot of money over the years using their programs.  CJ has been around for probably 10 years.  When I first started with them about 6 years ago, I wasn't making any sales, but I stuck with them, added new merchants, and now I see a sale of at least one product almost every day.  They continue to add new merchants weekly, so you're bound to find something related to your web site content.

Good point, Amy, and I do have the Lunarpages program on my sites.  Even if your site isn't related to web hosting, you can put a little Lunar Logo down in your footer and say something like Webhosting provided by Lunarpages.  You never know when someone might just be curious enough to click through and buy and account and you make the commission!

easycall and RAT (and anyone else with CJ): did they stick with you when you weren't making sales? They have a clause that they can kick you out of the program if you don't make a sale in any 6 month period. I signed up with them early because I wanted to learn how to set up such a program, get and create links, etc., but now I'm afraid if I don't make a sale through CJ in the next 3 months (which seems pretty likely), I'll get booted.

Some other things to watch for [Edit: in affiliate programs in general, not necessarily CJ's]:

Some (or most) affiliate programs don't pay you until your commissions reach a threshold level, and that threshold may be pretty high, high enough that you'll never realistically reach it. 

At least one affiliate program also resets your commissions to zero if you haven't reached the threshold in a specified time frame, basically charging you a service fee equal to whatever your commissions would have been.

----

I saw one affiliate yesterday that said, "please don't apply until you have at least 3000 visitors per month, because that's what it takes to be successful". Although on the face of it, that appears discouraging, I appreciated the time they spent determining that statistic and the fact that they provided it. It helps both them and you.

If I had it to do over, I'd wait on CJ until I knew I had sufficient traffic for it to make sense, but I had no idea at the time what kind of traffic I'd ever get, let alone what would constitute "sufficient".

If I can catch you in time, I don't see any reason to call their attention to it! If they're letting it go, I suggest doing the same!!  Maybe they just reserve the right to do that, but don't actually do it very often.

I think each of their advertisers has a different policy; it's not a general CJ policy.

It was Radio Shack where I saw that; not thru CJ.

But that brings something else to mind...

One way to find affiliates is to search for "affiliate program" or "associate program", and also visit sites of companies you're interested in. It looks like many companies have their own programs that aren't thru CJ or other big clearinghouses (or whatever they're called).

I found the paragraph about the "6 months"; it's in the section about Dormant Accounts:
https://www.cj.com/psa.jsp, but based on your experience, I feel less inclined to panic 3 months from now.