Our business development manager mark wrote this up the other day, and I think that any of our new affiliates will find it useful.

Affiliate Marketing

If you are looking to get advertisement for your website there are several things you need to look for and find while on your search. In this post I will talk about the pros and cons of using advertisements from  performance marketing affiliate networks.                                                                                                   First is what kind of network is this, performance marketing affiliate network CPA(cost per action or acquisition),  CPL(cost per lead), or CPS(cost per sale). If this is the kind of ads that a affiliate network has and promotes then there are several pros and cons for you and the network that has the offers.
First the pros, which are very similar and related for you and the affiliate network after all you have the same goal, generate revenue. Performance marketing offers are a easier to  track and prevent against fraud, for you and the affiliate network which both of these are advantages to you, as an affiliate or publisher. Any offer you run from any network you want there to be a pretty good quality control policy in place to protect you now and in the future. If the affiliate network has good Q.C. policies they will be able to protect your website if you have CPS based shopping offers from fraudsters and thieves who may have stolen bank account or credit card information and attempting to get free products. Also the affiliate network will be able to catch fraud affiliates that are entering fraud information, fairly easily because all leads and information entered is verified. If this issue gets out of hand and you are generating good traffic and the network pulls the offer you lose money and this could seriously affect you. These are good reasons to consider an offer from an performance based affiliate network.
Now the cons, you have to make sure you find a legit affiliate network. This is as difficult to do as it is for an affiliate network to find legit affiliates such as yourself. Alot of performance based affiliate networks pay anywhere from net 15 to net 60 depending on the amount of traffic you generate, how long you have been an affiliate and if they own any of there offers. If they get all of there offers from other networks, then they have to wait for the advertiser to pay the network they got the offer from and then your affiliate network has to get paid, then you. The time frame that you get paid from a network does not make them good or bad, but waiting is a con. There are affiliate networks out there that don’t pay regularly or at all, the best way to find the bad networks is to read blogs and forums. Not all of the blogs or forums will spell out the good ones, but the bad ones will be and all the reasons why.
So in the end you have to do your own research and read blogs, talk to affiliates and affiliate networks and base your choice and decisions off this just like you would when looking for employment or an expensive electronic product .