How to know to trust affiliate programs

[LogicFlux]

Hi. There are some in-house affiliate programs I want to join but I'm worried about giving out my personal info, social security number, etc. How can you tell if an in-house program is legit?

[s_e_s]

look for those that have good feedback and do not ask TOO much of your personal info

[C.Whyte]

All they should need is your SS# for the W8-BEN or W9 tax form... I would suggest not setting up a 'direct deposit' with your bank info until you have received a few checks and know they are legit.

Post the programs here and I'll tell you if you have anything to worry about.

[s_e_s]

what do you think about this program i've been working with?
the link can be seen as my homepage
is it legit?
be back with your answer

[GDI]

i am on one of them and it does not ask much information and it pays

i am on <url removed>

[bobkat]

I don't promote who ever and what ever.
for my petty cash money i use clickbank and maxbounty. I have account with cj and another one but i never did any with for them.
if you want to make real money you need to spend real money to make real money.
one of my affiliates pays <crap url removed>. But I had to buy a membership to be able to start.
No worries, the membership it has paid up already. and I am averaging $8-14K a mo.

[nicesurf]

How can you promote all your programs ? Can u share here ?

[meshleman3]

You can tell by looking at how many years they have had an affiliate business running and if they are an established company. They should have tons of positive feedback in the search engines too. If they have a lot of creatives then they are most likely legit because they wouldn't be spending a lot of their resourses on them if they didn't have affiliates working for them or good products to sell.

[Harveyj]

Originally Posted by meshleman3

You can tell by looking at how many years they have had an affiliate business running and if they are an established company. They should have tons of positive feedback in the search engines too. If they have a lot of creatives then they are most likely legit because they wouldn't be spending a lot of their resourses on them if they didn't have affiliates working for them or good products to sell.

Not meaning to cause a fuss, but I'm going to disagree with you on two points:

1) Age
Zango has been around in various iterations for YEARS. They seem to get embroiled in a new issue every year, and seem to screw their own affiliates every year. Yet people still fall for it all.
Hell, back in 2006, one of their PPI affiliate programs literally sent people to sites with kiddy porn with it's Yapbrowser!
http://digg.com/security/Warner_Bros...y_Porn_browser
http://www.vitalsecurity.org/2006/04...-andchild.html

2) Positive Feedback in Search Engines
A LOT of splogging goes on around affiliate networks, particularly ones owned by old hand affiliates. John Lemp got a number of "super duper uber affiliates" to blog about how great he ad ClickBooth were when **** hit the fan earlier this year. Some had the balls to actually say they were being paid to blog and didn't use Clickbooth.
However, this in turn got many of their readers to go on about how great Clickbooth was, even if they hadn't tried it.
Now, regardless as CB's quality as a network, they blatantly manipulated SERP results in a backhanded way by hiring people with 'celebrity' to give them the thumbs up.

On the flipside, a lot of creatives is often a good sign.
Also, if they don't have their own inhouse offers, then the legitimacy of the 3rd party offers they do have is a good indicator as well. Brand names and websites you know about, etc.
Inhouse offers, well, you just have to try it and see.