Your biggest tip to a newbie?

[TheWaiter]

Some really good tips here actually. Might stick them together, make an eBook and make my millions

[wadaman7]

Great article! Thanks

[Keule]

Very good advices here, at some points i see my own mistakes.

I think it's very important to have contact to some people who can support you in any ways, like writing content or give you tips.

[grem]

work hard and make some affiliate friends

[avinash.nektan]

Join our Affiliate programme No honestly..work hard...take some guidance from experts...top affiliates...learn learn learn..make some good affiliate friends..

[RacingJim]

My biggest tip would be work hard, learn as much as you can by reading around, get good at what you do and don't be afraid to fail. Biggest problem for a newbie can be knowing where to start, but make sure you DO start, don't just get stuck reading all the ways you could fail, the biggest way you learn is by doing.

[wadaman7]

Appreciate your support!

[sportsfreak]

its easy... work hard, keep on working hard, dont give up! and by working i'm mostly talking about writing real content. its no rocket science at all...

[wadaman7]

Thanks so much guys.

[lizza06]

I like this topic TIP TIP TIP

[freebetsfreetips]

Stick at it, work hard, focus on what makes money, not what's good for your ego/fun.

[webanalysissolutions]

Be selective in which programs you work with.

Search forums like this one to find actual opinions and commentary from forum members. This does not mean look for who the Platinum Sponsors are. This means read through and find out if there are any issues with that program those who are working with them and learn what concerns people have who refuse to work with those programs. My experience tells me that when there's "smoke", there's a good chance that there is also "fire". Even if there's not fire, my policy is that it isn't healthy to breathe "smoke", so if there appears to be current issues or concerns with a program, I stand a better chance of avoiding being "burned" if I just don't work with that program until at least the "smoke" clears.

Sift through player-oriented forums to see if there are any issues with payment or any recurring claims of unfair treatment. If there are, avoid the program.

With a "fine tooth comb", go over the affiliate terms and conditions. If there's any hint of a quota or nonsense about being able to close your account without cause - AVOID.

There's a ton more to consider in this area but that is a good platform to give a new affiliate an idea of what to look for in deciding who not to work with.

Would echo all of this. Before you even think about writing your first line of code, work out if you actually have advertisers you can work with, won't rip you off, and will make you money. Otherwise you don't have a business model. For a long time we've looked at various website ideas and usually only 1 in 20 come to fruition.

A few rules we go by:
Don't work with companies/affiliate programs based in jurisdictions you're not comfortable with - i.e. if it all goes wrong would you have the legal comeback to challenge it?
Don't work with companies/affiliate programs who have significantly retroactively changed their terms and conditions in the past. They'll do it again.
Research the forums! Do not work with people who have credible histories of scamming affiliates.
Beware of being hounded by everyone - go to the conferences, sit there on your email, you'll be hounded many advertisers. In our experience the larger the amount of hounding the more rogue the affiliate program. A lot of programs just want to get you signed up as many affiliate managers out there are paid on number of affiliate sign ups and/or a affiliate earnings targets.
Beware of deals that are too good to be true or headline deals like 70% rev share for x months. It's inevitably just a sales pitch.
Beware of small brands - will they be around for the long term? I've seen many come and go over the 11 years I've been in the industry, resulting in referred players lost, and ultimately good revenue stopped over night.

Know your affiliate program common issues - late payments, short cookie lengths, skimming/detagging stories, lack of support, where they are based, who owns the company, what affiliate system platform are they on, do they give you cross product commission, do they cross-sell your customers to other brands and not give you rev share, do they have lifetime rev share?

Never blindly trust that links track. Test them - the number of times I've seen links not tracking is horrendous.

Build your own set of rules you want your business to operate by from the above.

From experience you will probably only find 1 in 10 programs are of any use to you - the other 9 either do not make money, don't convert, are very poor at supporting you, have bad products, unknown products, no brand awareness, are simply robbing and stealing from affiliates via various methods etc etc. However they'll try and convince you to keep pushing them - you have to make strict business decisions to drop programs that are not performing. They may perform for other people, but that doesn't mean they'll perform for you. Know your own performance benchmarks and ultimately you can decide whether a program stays or goes on your websites. Ultimately if everyone took this approach the poor programs would be weeded out as ultimately earnings, or lack of, would iron out the good and the bad from the industry.

Loads of things. All a bit on the negative side above (I run my business by managing risk and keeping it to an acceptable level, so focusing on the things that will cause harm to your business makes sense to me), I'm sure I could write an equally long post about the good things too!