What could be better than exceeding your personal sales goals for a given month or year? How about doubling, tripling or even more of you sales goal for the month? This is exactly what affiliates can do for you. Don't think it's possible. Well apply a little elbow grease and a little knowledge then share it with a few other people and watch the sales explode!

The amount of growth potential through affiliates is unlimited; the more affiliates you have the more money you can make, after all, if Sam Walton tried to run every Wal-Mart store, he obviously wouldn't be very successful. You must realize that for maximum growth you cannot do it alone. Think of the success of companies such as Avon or Home Interiors. Their success is based on two things; a great product and excellent affiliate programs. In fact any franchise you can think of such as Burger King, WalMart, and tons of others are basically applying this same principle. They sell the rights to the ?product? and get a percentage of the sales.

You can join any one of many affiliate programs and become a part of this massive market. I have personally selected and reviewed several on my website in case you get confused from all the mass of information available to you. You can also make your own affiliate program. If you believe you have a program or product that is marketable you can turn it into a complete marketing program and offer it to affiliates that would like to work for you.

To attract affiliates to your company you should make it worth their time. Offering one percent of sales, is not an attractive offer, the higher the commission that you are able to offer your affiliates the more affiliates will be tempted to join your team. You should also provide your affiliates with the tools that they will need to successfully market your product such as banner ads, articles, and anything else that will help them to better market the product. You should provide the affiliates with updated product information through newsletters, new promotional campaigns and other things to motivate and inform the affiliates.

You can choose to run your affiliate program in a few different ways, both of which are beneficial to your business. A one-tier affiliate program allows you to generally offer a larger commission and pays on one level. The affiliate will receive a predetermined amount for each sale. Using a two-tier affiliate program, affiliates are paid on two different levels.

This is done by allowing the affiliates to recruit others to sell under them. In this situation, the top level affiliate would receive a slightly larger commission than the recruit or second level affiliate. For example if the top level seller makes 20% of the sale, then she/he would make 15% giving the second level affiliate the 5%.

Setting up the affiliate program can also be done in two different ways. One way is to do it yourself through an affiliate tracking software. This software will provide you with a way to track affiliate sales as well as allow the affiliates to view their progress.

The downside to this option is that you are responsible for making payments. You can also choose to hire an affiliate tracking company to do all the work for you. These companies will allow the use of credit cards and completely run the affiliate program from billing customers, paying affiliates, and also pay you.

This is a great option for the busy business owner or the beginning business owner and it is

affordable as most affiliate tracking companies charge a small one time fee. However you choose to run your affiliate program it is sure to increase profits for your business.

If you would like to get your feet wet in the world of affiliate marketing I would recommend you look at several programs first. Choose wisely. Choose a program with a proven reputation and lots of training. The more training you can get - the better. My personal favorite is currently the pips program. You can find information about it at my website. This program is very inexpensive to begin and comes with a very specific plan of training and several real people to gain information from. Whichever route you plan on going the affiliate marketing program can spell your future success.

Copyright ? Kathy Wozniak