By Terry Dean

Sounds like a dream, doesn't it?

You sign up for a free program to sell someone else's product. They give you all the ads, all the tools, and even tell you where to advertise.

To many people, this dream only ends up being a nightmare.

They spend money to advertise the program. They make a little profit back, but it's not enough to cover their expenses. They try again and the same thing happens.

So they join another program. The cycle continues as they spend, spend, and spend some more. They rarely get the amount of money they spend back into their pocket in commissions.

You may have been in this cycle yourself.

It's frustrating to experience this. You've heard the stories about affiliates earning one thousand, five thousand, or even twenty thousand dollars per month.

You know you can do it, but experience keeps telling you it doesn't work.

Guess what?

Those affiliates earning the BIG MONEY in affiliate programs have an enormous Unfair Advantage over you.

They have an advantage thousands of dollars in advertising isn't going to overcome. Spending day after day placing free classified ads won't overcome this secret advantage either.

Luckily, their advantages are available to you...if you choose to take advantage of them.

Below are the three most common unfair advantages which virtually GUARANTEE you big affiliate checks from any good associate program.

Unfair Advantage #1: Relationship with Thousands of Opt-In Email Subscribers

Affiliate program managers search the web for large opt-in list publishers and offer them commission deals not available to the average public. They do this because they know these publishers produce a majority of the profits in any affiliate program.

I used to call this having a large opt-in email list, but that's not the whole picture anymore. Who cares if you have 50,000 subscribers if none of them are reading the emails you send out.

It's much more important to have 5,000 people who are dedicated to reading every word you publish than 10 times that many just hitting the delete key.

So this advantage is about having a relationship with thousands of prospects. You accomplish this by building an opt-in list and publishing good content (with touches of your personality) consistently.

If you currently don't have this advantage, then you should change your strategy today. Focus any ads you place on BUILDING your own list. Then advertise the affiliate programs to your list. Follow this method INSTEAD of advertising the affiliate program directly.

Unfair Advantage #2: High Traffic Web Sites

Actually, the advantage isn't just about having high traffic. It only occurs once you build consistently high FREE traffic to your web site.

The recent trend in marketing is to produce mini-sites which are simply sales letters. This is a strategy I personally use quite often. The mistake many people are making is thinking this is the ONLY strategy which works.

Many sites have been successful at putting up content pages and then building reciprocal link campaigns. They submit to Google and get ranked on directories such as Yahoo. They use recommend-a-site tools to get their site recommended to others.

Another strategy often used is to create a viral traffic system. This could be an ebook or software program you create with the intention of others passing it around for you. It could be articles you write which are published in ezines or on web sites.

It could also be a software program running on your site such as free autoresponders, free email, banner exchanges, pop-up traffic exchanges, start page exchanges, etc.

All of these techniques are used to generate free traffic to the host site. If you're getting a large amount of free targeted traffic, then it becomes much easier to be a top affiliate in any program.

Unfair Advantage #3: eBook Publishing Business

Become a top affiliate by writing your own ebook.

After ezine publishers, my next highest earning group of affiliates comes from other publishers. They wrote an ebook and included links to the affiliate programs as recommendations.

It becomes a frontend and backend marketing strategy. Let's say they're selling the ebook for $19.95. If they place an ad and just sell enough copies to break even, they're OK.

People who read the ebook will click on some of the links recommended and end up buying the affiliate products. They have now earned a profit through these "backend" links.

Often they'll earn a profit selling their ebook. Then they earn even more money from the backend affiliate links. Quickly they start earning a profit and receiving 10 or more affiliate checks per month.

They earn these multiple streams of incomes while only selling their one ebook product.

The Top Affiliates Have An Unfair Advantage...

They may have an unfair advantage over you, but they don't have to. You just have to quit playing the losing game of spending time or money on advertising an affiliate program directly. Turn the tables and create your own unfair advantage...so you can become the top affiliate in all the programs you're in.