Want to become a Google millionaire? Ready to unleash the secrets of the super-affiliates? Want to discover how to dominate any affiliate niche? Wrong website, my friend.

It’s no secret that affiliate marketing is blighted by spammy, scammy ‘get rick quick’ rubbish. The hysterical sales letters are endlessly entertaining, but reinforce the myth that affiliate marketing is a magic moneytron that guarantees a gauche yacht, a trophy wife and a mansion in the Hollywood Hills.

You’ve probably heard self-styled gurus bragging about the ‘super-affiliate lifestyle‘ - think P. Diddy on a budget, if not - but none of them will tell you the biggest secret of all.

Brace yourself…

Most affiliates fail. As in ‘fail to earn a living’. A year ago, e-consultancy.com and Affiliate Program Advice polled 1,536 affiliates for the first UK affiliate census. They found:

• 49% of affiliates earned under £500/year
• Only 27% are ‘day-job’ affiliates
• 39% of ‘day-job’ affiliates earn under £20,000/year.

So we can estimate that only one in six UK affiliates earn over £20,000/year, assuming a representative dataset and that there won’t be too many part-timers above that bracket. For benchmarks, the average graduate salary in the UK is £20,800 (2007), while the median income is around £23,244 (2006).

The truth is that affiliate marketing is a hard way to make an easy living. Think Glengarry Glen Ross: it’s a tough racket, and it’s not going to go get any easier. The difference? Affiliate marketing looks easy if you’re doing it right.

Alas, rock solid advice is hard to come by for newbie affiliates. The all-new AffEarners.com forum has come up with 99 Reasons Why You Will Fail at Affiliate Marketing.

1. You don’t get enough traffic
2. You get the wrong traffic
3. You promote the wrong product to the wrong people
4. You give up too soon
5. You don’t understand your product
6. You don’t rely on your affiliate manager
7. You can’t build a proper website
8. You don’t research your niche
9. You don’t have a niche
10. You only promote one product
11. You don’t know how to build a landing page
12. Your copywriting sucks
13. Your design isn’t appealing
14. You overloaded with banner ads and drove prospects away
15. You built your site in flash

If you’re starting out in affiliate marketing, I urge you to study the full list until you can recite it by rote.

Ever meet someone who got rich referring other affiliates? They’re few and far between.

Many two-tier affiliate programmes suck, but occasionally you get lucky. A friend referred me to one of my merchants and has earned $7396.20 by my calculations.

There are often lots of reasons *not* to tell other affiliates about decent programmes. But if you work with a decent two-tier programme you’re happy to share, I’d love to hear about it.

If I get some decent suggestions (read: no poker, pills, smut, MLM scams or ‘get rick quick’ nonsense), I’ll post a roundup Chez Nonsense. If I take your tip and post about the programme, I’ll signup as an affiliate underneath you and throw a link to a site of your choice.

Suggestions via the contact form, please, with your affiliate link and site URL.

(NB. First person to suggest each programme gets the referral/link, my judgement is final etc).

Affiliates get spoilt.

It’s not all chilled Krug and Beluga caviar at Nonsense HQ. But occasionally a merchant offers a once-in-a-lifetime prize as an affiliate incentive.

Buyagift rule the school in the UK. Last Christmas, they promised to fly half a dozen of their affiliates from London to Vegas for a no-expense-spared weekend away. I was lucky enough to win a place, along with Paul, Romain, Neil, Steve and Wardy.

This year they’re upped the ante in quite spectacular style. Six affiliates will win the chance to fly a fighter plane over the Nevada desert and enter a NASCAR race (Details here).

For merchants with more modest budgets, think creatively. Lego get a special mention for sending new affiliates Lego freebies. What more could a geek affiliate want?

Buyagift’s affiliate programme is on Affiliate Window, Lego is on Linkshare UK.

Nick Robertson, CEO of fashion e-tailer ASOS, has done a Ratner. This week’s he told New Media Age:

“Next year we’ll reintroduce affiliate marketing but as it should be, as opposed to affiliates as they were,” said Nick Robertson, ASOS CEO. “[There'll be] no silly commissions being paid to grubby little people in grubby studios growing income at our expense, getting in the way of genuine sales.”

Looks like ASOS will have trouble recruiting affiliates, given the ‘who’s who’ they’ve upset:

• ASOS: Affiliates Infested With Grubs!
• Did ASOS Attack Some of their Shareholders?
• Nick Robertson’s ASOS Clanger
• Grubby Little Affiliates Get in the Way of Sales
• Nick Robertson from ASOS is Ignorant