Can you make money online with affiliate programs?

I've previously mentioned Zac Johnson and his blog, Make Money with Super Affiliate Zac Johnson. I'm always interested in how people make money, so I'm glad Zac blogs about how he does it with affiliate programs, since I know very little about them. It actually took me a while to figure out that by "affiliate" programs, Zac didn't mean something as basic as Amazon Associates. No, he meant affiliate programs for a specific product that pay quite a large sum.

For example, he's currently pushing a product called "Ultra Green Tea Lean." For each lead, he receives $26. A "lead" is someone he refers who signs up for a 30-day free trial. You can read about his initial offer description and today's update.

To put that payment in perspective, Amazon Associates pays 4% to 8.5% for most products. Some select products give 10%. So if someone bought a $50 video game through my Amazon link, I would receive anywhere from $2 to $4.25, depending on how many items I sold that month. Even at 10%, I would have to sell $260 worth of products on Amazon to earn the $26 that Zac is earning for getting people to sign up for this free trial.

And yet, I'm not the least bit tempted to sign up for the Ultra Green Tea Lean affiliate program. Why? Because I wouldn't be comfortable trying to get people to sign up for the free trial. I happen to be very skeptical of supplements in general. And I don't think a green tea supplement is the key to losing weight. So I would have trouble sleeping at night if I were to ask CFO readers to sign up for this deal. Even if I created a new page that wasn't associated with CFO and no one knew who I was, I couldn't do it. I'm just not wired to do sales that way. And most of the lucrative affiliate programs seem to be pretty similar to this campaign, in the sense that it's for stuff I wouldn't want to recommend.

I don't mean this post to be a criticism of Zac for running with this affiliate program. In fact, I'm a little envious that he's brought in $4000 in less than two weeks from it. Obviously, this is something he's comfortable with, and as far as I know, he's not forcing anyone to sign up for the free trial. (That would undoubtedly violate the terms of the affiliate agreement.)

What I am saying is that these types of affiliate programs are not for me. I simply can't recommend or try to sell in any way something that I don't believe in or wouldn't try for myself.

What about you? Are you or would you want to be a super affiliate?

Making hundreds of thousands online: do you believe these numbers?

I don't doubt that some people have made astronomical amounts of money from online ventures, and I'm not talking about Bazos (Amazon's founder) or Case (AOL) or any of the other major companies. I'm talking about individuals like Darren Rowse (ProBlogger), Jeremy Schoemaker (Shoemoney), and John Chow (JohnChow.com). Rowse says he makes six figures per year. Schoemaker is famous in the blogging-for-money world for his $132,994.97 Google Adsense check. And Chow blogs about his monthly earnings, currently over the $30,000 (per month!) mark.

Another blog that I subscribe to is ZacJohnson.com, which discusses affiliate marketing. He was actually the inspiration for this post with his recent post showing him holding a $306,373.24 check from Yahoo!. The post title is "How I Made $860,538.38 PROFIT in 4 Months!" and offers some tips.

I also recently read a Shoemoney post about unnamed individuals making millions each month from affiliate marketing. I was flabbergasted and skeptical, but Marc (usually the skeptical one) said that he'd heard the same and believed it was possible, at least for a few.

I have to say, I don't think I'm one of those few. Mostly because I hate selling stuff. If I could find a product I really believed in, then I'd be happy to market the heck out of it. But that's yet to happen, which is why I simply point out some select bargains to you - things that I think will give you value for your money.

That said, I'd like to run my first poll (if you're reading this via RSS, please click through to the post and share your opinion). The question is simple:

Do you think it's possible for you (or anyone else) to make millions online?
	Yes, including me
	Yes, but not me
	No, these claims are ludicrous
	I hate polls
pollcode.com free polls

Win an iPod Nano

Being interested in money and blogging, I find blogs that were created specifically to make money to be an interesting breed. In fact, when I created CFO Reviews a few months ago, I thought I might eventually try to do something in that vein.

Money Blogger is a relative newcomer to the blogging-for-money game, having started in October. The author is holding a contest to spread the word about his blog, and all you have to do to enter is write a post about Money Blogger and the contest. The deadline is tomorrow. Money Blogger isn't making much money yet, but the author is sharing stats and ideas along the way, which makes for some interesting reading. I look forward to seeing if he can achieve his goal of making "real money" by the blog's one-year anniversary.

Note: If you're interested in blogs made to make money, some of the heavy hitters to check out are JohnChow.com, ProBlogger, and ShoeMoney.