If you own your own product(s) that you're selling on your site, perfect - you're one step closer to mounds of free traffic. If not, don't worry - it's not hard to create one. (But that's a whole other subject - if you need to know how to create your own product, Google "How to create an ebook")



Ok, now that you have a product (or products) you need to create an affiliate program. Basically, an affiliate program is like having a huge sales force with great contacts, except they're not your employees - you only pay them for results! Here's how it works:

1) An affiliate signs up to promote your product

2) The affiliate adds their affiliate link to their website, emails, forums, anywhere they can to drive traffic to your site

3) Your job is to have a website that makes as many sales as possible. Your affiliates are doing the hard part - traffic - you can concentrate on making them, and you, more money by testing to raise your website's conversion (percentage of visitors who buy your product)

4) When a customer makes a purchase, your affiliate program credits the affilite with a sale, and tells you how much you owe them

5) After a set amount of time (usually around 30 days, but it can vary) you pay your affiliates what they're due

It's that simple! All you really need to do as a merchant is the following:

1) Sign up for an account at affiliate network like https://www.SaleFlurry.com, http://www.PayDotCom.com, and http://www.ClickBank.com - Affiliate networks automate your affiliate program back-end, all you have to do is set up your product and go

2) Get affiliates to sign up for your program. You can do this a number of ways, but you'll get your best affiliates by visiting other sites in your niche and contacting the owners directly. In some cases, you may need to offer affiliates who are performing well or who you think will perform well a higher percentage than normal - this will entice them to do more promotion and sell more for you!

3) Concentrate on increasing your site's conversion rate. The higher it is, the more affiliates will want to send traffic your way. If your conversion rate is very bad (under 1%) then you'll see the opposite effect - affiliates don't like promoting products that don't sell well, it's just wasted traffic for them.

4) Pay on time. If you're using SaleFlurry, it automatically calculates how much you owe your affiliates each month, which is very handy for people who are very busy (like me) - so you just have to log in, click a few links and a button, and you can mass-pay your affiliates with Paypal.

Yep, again, it's that simple.

Once you have your affiliate program up and running, it's time to start actively training your affiliates. Why? Because training them will increase your revenue as it increases theirs. You can do this by setting up a course on your own, or giving them links to other sites where they can learn to be better affiliates. Either way, you're helping them help you - and when you help someone make money, they will reward you for it.