What's an Affiliate Program?
An affiliate program is a marketing technique initiated by Amazon.com CEO, Jeff Bezos in 1996. The main concept is to build a network of websites, aside from you own, to promote your company. These sites will then post links and banners of your merchant site. When visitors click on your ads, they will be directed to your site, now that's time for you to do your thing and close the sale. Your website should be convincing enough to hold the attention of your potential client and eventually get them to try what you have to offer. Your affiliates will get paid for every referrer that you managed to close a sale with. You can also offer a certain amount for every visitor they direct to your site, also referred to as pay per click.

How to promote your affiliate program

Have a strong content
As with any other website, content is very important to drive in traffic to your site. Add in useful content that readers would find beneficial and in turn would entice them to visit your site more often. In no time, they would definitely buy what you offer. For instance, if you have created an affiliate program selling air mattresses, add articles about its history, design, engineering and the comfort it bring. These articles will not only serve as selling tools for your site but would also be very useful for your readers. Plus, getting useful content and optimizing them for search engines would give you a good standing on page ranks.

Choose your affiliates wisely
You don't just scatter your affiliate links all over the Internet to anyone who wants them. They key here is to promote your site to your target market through your affiliate program. You should meticulously choose your affiliates. The visitors of your affiliate site should be interested to what you offer as well, thus clicking on your link. Following the example above, if you are selling air mattresses, get affiliate websites about beds, sleeping disorders, or even about gift ideas.

Provide attractive banner links
Banners are attention grabbers compared to text links. How you represent your website and the product/ services you offer is represented in your banners ads. Keep them eye-catching and enticing enough to get visitors to click them. There are cheap banners ads that can go for as low as $5. Alternatively, you can also try other selling techniques like fly-in ads, moving ads, and pop-ups.

Submit your website to affiliate directories
If you want more people to join in your affiliate program, it is important to submit your website to directories. You will get a better response if you narrow down your positioning on the Internet and post your website on affiliate directories instead of the general directories. One good place to start posting your site is at: Affiliate Programs Directory. This website has a list of affiliate programs categorized accordingly. Website owners will surely dropped by the site to check out new affiliate programs that they could put up in their site. Niche directories are very powerful in building your online presence, thus, making your website get more traffic and consequently, sky-rocket your sales.