Many people believe quite rightly, that there is no such thing as a free lunch, but the mistake they make is to extend this belief to any affiliate program that they wish to join.

The strong belief is that affiliate programs that cost you nothing to join or free affiliate programs are not of much value. And neither can somebody make any serious money from them.

This is of course not true. Actually, nothing can be further from the truth. This sort of belief about free affiliate programs demonstrates a total ignorance concerning what affiliate programs are all about. It also totally fails to appreciate the fact that the leading affiliate programs in the world are free, starting with one of the very first pioneer affiliate programs on the net, Amazon.com, dubbed the largest bookstore on earth. This web site became the giant it is today solely by riding on the back of its' affiliate program and affiliates.

This belief also completely fails to appreciate the fact that registering to join an affiliate program does not earn somebody any cash. It is the hard work and mostly SEO skills that goes into marketing the affiliate program and most notably referring traffic to it that makes the whole difference.

So a successful affiliate program for you is not based on how much you have to pay for the privilege to market it, rather it depends on one's marketing strategy and understanding of the products being marketed by the free affiliate program.