Affiliate marketing is one of the simpler ways to make money online. However this wont happen if you dont take care of some pitfalls you are going to cross in your online career.

These pitfalls have all a common origin: some too smart guys are continuously trying to figure out how to earn more money by doing a lot less work. Guess what? They think you are going to help them reach their goal

If you run a quick online search for "work from home" or "making easy money", you'll instantly find millions of websites that share a common layout: a nice or ugly guy (depending on their marketing approach) with a big house, ten cars and a lot of money telling that if you sign up, youll have the same.

If you are going to follow these sirens, you wont make any money online. But they will (your money).

The only way you can earn a good and stable income is to put in the hard work it takes. And the first and most important step is to carefully check the affiliate program you intend to join.

Here is a simple 3 step approach that will avoid you many frustrations:

1. Search for the name of the affiliate program that you are interested in, adding the word scam to it; see what pops up and take your own conclusions.
2. Join some work from home forums, and don't be afraid to ask the right questions.
3. If a program doesn't tell you their compensation plan unless you sign up, watch out (i.e. dont sign up).

The last point is crucial: with any affiliate program, there should always be 100% free disclosure; but a lot of programs won't tell you what you'll be doing unless you buy a kit for a set price.

If a program asks you to pay money first or doesn't tell you what you are going to be doing, just avoid it.

These simple due diligence steps will help you to discriminate between regular and scam affiliate programs; this is the first but essential step to guarantee your affiliate marketing success.

Once you have filtered out the scam affiliate programs, your next target will be to best select between the true legitimate affiliate programs, such that your probability to make money is maximized. You can find info on How to Make Money With Affiliate Programs at my website.