Even if you are the greatest affiliate marketer in the world, without a good affiliate marketing merchant you won’t make any money.

I am going to tell you how to choose a good merchant and offer to run with in order to minimize your chances of wasting time and money.

How to Test a New Merchant
The best way to test out a new merchant or offer is to run some PPC traffic to it for a week or two so that you can gauge whether the product or offer is converting well. This can save considerable time and energy that might otherwise be put in to an offer that is not going to make you money.

Things to look for as far as reliability goes include:

- Does the merchant pay on time?
- What payment formats do they offer?
- Are there any fees?

Other things to watch out for:

- Communication: they should reply promptly to your questions
- Commission rate and payment structure
- 2nd tier affiliate program (not a necessity but nice to have)

The key is to stay with the programs that you know are reliable, particularly in the beginning stages of your marketing efforts when money is tight.

What’s The Worst That Can Happen?

The worst thing that can ever happen when you are working with a merchant is that you don’t get paid.
It happens to the best of us, most of the time you just suck it up and move on. Focusing on negatives doesn’t get you far in this business. Fortunately these incidents are very rare indeed with the better known merchants and networks.

Finding the best affiliate marketing merchant is largely a matter of trial and error but thankfully you have the experience of others to go by as well, which can make your decisions that much easier and safer.