Do you know what your number one source of traffic should be if you want to experience massive success as an Internet marketer? It's not blogging, articles or pay per click advertising. It's not a top ranking in the search engines or giving away free reports. It's also not buying solo mailings in popular ezines.



Those are great ways to drive traffic to your site. They all work and are things you need to be doing as a marketer. But one traffic method trumps all other strategies. The method I'm talking about is affiliate traffic and involves other people driving traffic to your site for you. Even if you are a great marketer, nothing you do as a solo marketer can generate as much traffic as a strong affiliate force.

Your affiliates distribute your reports, buy advertising and write articles to promote your products. They're the ones doing what it takes to share your information with the world. In other words, starting an affiliate program is the best thing you can do for your business. Affiliates are your virtual sales team. They market your products and drive traffic to your site at ZERO cost to you.

So what motivates them to market for you? Commissions! Each affiliate has a unique link that tracks all the traffic they bring to your site. When that traffic converts, you pay them a percentage of the sale. And you decide what percentage to pay.

But if the idea of sharing your revenue bothers you, get over it! Remember, this is your team. Your affiliates are helping your business grow by driving traffic to your site. Without them, you wouldn't have made the sales their traffic produces in the first place.

Your affiliate center is your "office" for your sales team. This is the place where your affiliates sign up, get their unique links, find all the promotional tools they need and stay in touch with you. You have the option of managing your own affiliate program or having someone else do it for you.

If you want to manage your own program, you can do so through purchasing software such as IdevAffiliate or PostAffiliatePro to integrate with your website. Once you install this tracking software, you're ready to start adding products and promotional tools to your affiliate center.

Keep in mind that you do need your own products in order to start an affiliate program. Digital information products like ebooks are ideal. Another way to manage your own program is by utilizing the affiliate feature your shopping cart provides. If you use Paypal or 1ShoppingCart, you can take advantage of the affiliate programs they offer.

Managing your own program does mean that you are responsible for paying your affiliates. Having someone else manage your program means they are responsible for paying your affiliates for you. Clickbank and Infusionsoft are both managed options.

Clickbank, for instance, specializes in affiliate sales. They provide links for your affiliates, offer tracking, process and fulfill your orders, pay your affiliates for you and pay you twice a month.

To open an account with them, visit Clickbank and sign up. They explain everything for you at their site from how to setup your program to how to check your sales stats to how to test the order process.

Whether you pay your affiliates yourself or have someone pay them for you, don't think of their payment as losing money on every affiliate sale. Because the reality is that you're gaining passive income. It may only be 25% or 50% of your original price, but that's money you didn't have to work for.

And when I have the choice of making a 25% profit or $0 from doing nothing, I'm going to choose the 25%. You should, too. Besides, if none of the traffic an affiliate brings to your site buys anything, you don't pay that affiliate one cent. You can't lose!