Becoming an affiliate entrepreneur is empowering and fun, but you also want to sign up with the best affiliates to meet all your goals – including your income goals. So which one is the right one for you?

For one thing, the best affiliates all have the following things in common:

• A clear terms of service (TOS) agreement that spells out your responsibilities. There should be no doubt about the agreement between yourself and the affiliate you choose.

• They check out well with the Better Business Bureau.

• A product or service that people actually need is offered. If the affiliates you’re looking at are all about recruitment, they’re illegal pyramid schemes.

• Support is provided so both you and the affiliate you choose can thrive. This means that they offer content you can use on your Web site as well as having someone on hand to answer your questions and help you with technical glitches.

Internet affiliates programs make money for your business whether you’re a merchant or a member of one of the many, many that exist today.

How do affiliates programs support your business?

• For one thing, if you are a merchant member you’re not paying for traditional advertising, which may or may not work for your business. As a merchant partner, you pay only for the measurable success of your programs’ members. When your members convince their readers to visit your site and take action, then and only then do you pay your members.

• Further, as a merchant you have a great deal of flexibility in becoming a partner. You can invest the time and money to start your own program, or you can contract with any of the many existing affiliate program networks. It all depends on what will work best for you.

• Successful affiliate programs not only increase your sales, but also increase your company’s overall profile – which, of course, leads to more sales. They contribute to the existing Internet “conversations” about products and services, thus making sure that your point of view is part of the conversation.

The advent of the Internet has created a new, inexpensive, and relatively easy way to market yourself online — Web site affiliates. Whether you choose to be a Web site affiliate or to use them as part of your marketing plan, you can be successful as long as you follow the proven methods for affiliate success.

As a merchant, affiliates give you an edge over traditional advertising since you’re only paying for direct results – sales or contact information delivered to your company’s Web site directly from your affiliates.

As a blogger, or person with existing products or services, becoming an affiliate allows you to make money from something you’re already doing. Being an affiliate also lets you market your own company by adding complementary content to your site, thus driving traffic to your site to satisfy both your affiliate marketing and independent business purposes.

Here are more of the advantages for affiliate merchants:

• Web site affiliates require less up front investment from you than traditional advertising.

Looking for profitable affiliates? Like any hunter worth his boots, you don’t have to see the prey to know you are on the right track: You can read the signs. With affiliates, you look for evidence of profitability without seeing the affiliates’ spreadsheet.

If you are on the hunt for a profitable affiliate, look below for the clues that will help guide you.

Profitable Affiliate Clue #1: A Long-Standing Affiliate Program

If the affiliate has a long history, they must be generating enough revenue. Companies that don’t, don’t survive – for obvious reasons.

You can look up the domain name of the affiliate to see when it was registered, look for references to the affiliate that site dates and times, and of course check their “About Us” section on the website, which often will tell you how long the affiliate has been around.

Profitable Affiliate Clue #2: It Makes Sense