When people find out what I do, I get a constant barrage of questions about how they can get in on the game too. I'm not stingy with my answers. I have no problem helping others. But, with so many different affiliate programs out there, which one do I recommend? Obviously I don't have time to teach everyone else how to make money online, but there are many packages that can teach you how to make money as an affiliate marketer. 

Most people need to start somewhere and a learning package, that teaches you how to get started, is the best solution. The problem is, with such a wide range in quality with these programs, choosing one that actually works becomes difficult. To start let's just talk about what an affiliate marketing training program is and is not.

First, a package, that teaches you how to make money online as an affiliate, is NOT a get rich quick scheme. Many of these sites shout it out loudly that you will be making fifty grand per month in just two months. Although it's possible, it's also highly unlikely; so don't go into this looking to get rich tomorrow.

Second, NOT everyone needs an affiliate marketing training package. If you already own a web site that gets 3 to 5 thousand visitors a day then you can just sign up for one of the affiliate networks and start advertising products. 

Third, affiliate marketing IS an excellent way to make money without ever having to worry about product, inventory, or logistics. An affiliate learning package will teach you how to get started with your online business and if you learn it well it really can teach you how to leave that day-job behind. 

Fourth, if you don't take the time to choose the right learning package then you're never going to make anything anyway. These markets are constantly changing and you need to choose a program that fits with today. Doing anything else will just be a waste of your hard-earned cash.

To help you out, along with a few newer marketers, we worked to evaluate the top-five affiliate training programs on the Internet today. We based our evaluations on the following criteria. 

• Affiliate Money - Obviously our main goal with any affiliate program is to make money. The main criteria we used was how much money we could make with the program in a one month period. 
• Complexity - We want our affiliate programs to be simple to implement. Those that required high levels of technical knowledge ranked much lower. 
• How-to Advice - From the last criteria we ranked programs that walked us step-by-step through the process of earning money online much higher than those that didn't. 
• Completeness - If the program recommended things like AdWords, did it actually teach how to setup the AdWords account?
• Ease of Learning and Time to Implement - A good affiliate program should be simple to learn and take only a short amount of time to get running. Most people starting out with affiliate marketing can deal with an hour a day, and a good program shouldn't take longer than that to implement or monitor.
• Ease of Use - All of the above criteria were grouped into the rating ease-of-use. We want our affiliate programs to be so easy that even an idiot could make money with them. 
• Cost Involved - The best affiliate programs teach you how to make money without putting a bunch of your own money on the line. The programs that made our top five only required a web site (less than $20), and one didn't even require that. 
• Overall Rating - From all of the criteria we gave each program an overall rating.