Employ some form of exclusivity in your product launch in order to develop curiosity. For instance, announce that you will only allow a total of 25 affiliates to join your program and all those who do will receive some sort of benefits. Consider making affiliates fill out an application to join. Believe it or not, this will actually create curiosity.

Expensive products always make better affiliate products, especially if you are looking to attract the big players in your industry. They would much rather sell 100 products that bring in a $500 commission than 1,000 products that bring in a $50 commission or 10,000 products that bring in a measly $5 commission.

If you're planning to coordinate a massive launch with affiliates, always also plan to purchase professional graphic headers and ecovers, too. If your sales page doesn't look professional, you will immediately lose a lot of potential affiliates. Like you, they want to earn a decent return from their efforts; and they also want to associate with good products, not amateur ones.

Always keep the 20/80 principle in mind. Twenty percent of your affiliates will more than likely make at least 80 percent of the sales. This is why it is so important to cultivate relationships and focus on providing potential big sellers with benefits they need. At the same time, don't ignore the rest of the 80%; they are making sales for you, too.

Most of this information comes straight from the affiliate programs pros. Careful reading to the end virtually guarantees that you'll know what they know.

Make it extremely easy for your biggest partners to participate. If a potential partner will have to spend 10 hours in order to make money with your offer and only 30 minutes with another assuming all other things are equal, there's a good chance they'll simply go with that other product. You would more than likely do the same exact thing.

Providing useful marketing materials is one of the most important parts of affiliate marketing. If your affiliates do not have good pre-made advertisements including solo ads, classified ads, and pay per click advertisements, they may not be able to effectively market your product, especially if they haven't purchased it.

Hire an experienced affiliate recruitment manager to coordinate your launch. You could offer to give this manager 25% of your profits or you could increase the amount he/she earns on a tiered basis to give him/her the incentive to find more affiliates and to bring in more profits, so that he/she will also earn more.

Just because a person doesn't own an established business does not mean they cannot be a powerful affiliate. Of course, if you want them to be effective, you will have to work harder to make sure they know how to promote a product and make sales. For people like this, you may want to offer some type of training course.

Now might be a good time to write down the main points covered above. The act of putting it down on paper will help you remember what's important about affiliate programs.