Jupiter Communications, http://www.jup.com/home.jsp, estimates that by the year 2002, 25% of all Internet sales will be generated by affiliate programs!
That's roughly works out to be over $10 Billion dollars!
Why is that important to you?
Because there is NO reason why you can not take advantage of this excellent technique to get FREE exposure for your web site and/or products and services.
It will only cost you AFTER you make a sale. And then it is only a percentage of the total sale.
An affiliate program can provide you with these benefits:
1. FREE Advertising.
People join affiliate programs to earn money.
You allow them to join for free and in return they become unpaid salespeople that spend their own time and efforts on promoting your product or service.
This is FREE online advertising at its' best.
2. Pay money only AFTER you make money.
Your affiliates will promote your site for free and you won't pay them a penny UNTIL they make a sale for you.
It is exactly like having hundreds of sales people working on straight commission and you don't have to go through the tedious hiring process or pay employee benefits.
3. Fringe Benefits.
Here is an often-overlooked benefit of starting an affiliate program; FREE traffic to your web site.
Even if visitors sent to your web site via affiliates do not make a purchase of your product and/or services, there is a good possibility that they will at least subscribe to your FREE ezine, bookmark your site or access some other feature at your web site you did not anticipate.
Remember, you only pay your affiliates when you make money. Until then, you are getting loads of FREE traffic and exposure!
4. Your Ads Tested Free.
Your affiliates will test your ads for you.
You can write ads for them, but they place them for you and you measure the results. If your ads do not work, you lose nothing.
You can then work to improve and test the ads for FREE until they do work. You only pay commission to your affiliates after they sell your product or service.
5. Viral Marketing is Powerful.
If you start a
two-tier affiliate program, your affiliates earn money on others who sign up under them. This brings you a steady flow of new sales reps to recruit more affiliates. This creates a viral marketing strategy with HUGE growth potential!
If one affiliate signs two others and they sign two others, etc.
6. Improved Search Engine Ranking.
Link popularity plays an important role in the ranking of your site on the major search engines, especially top ranked Google, http://www.google.com/. The more web sites that point to your domain, the higher your ranking will be.
7. Duplicate Your Efforts.
Every affiliate that joins your team will DUPLICATE your online business efforts for you. Instead of just one web site, yours, selling your product and/or service, you can have 100's or perhaps even 1000's of web sites all promoting your business.
How can you start your own affiliate program?
Our research did not find any free affiliate hosting services although just a few years ago there were many online.
But there are still many low cost options available to even those on a tight budget. These programs will quickly pay for themselves in the added revenues that they help generate for you.
For complete details, send a blank message to our Auto-Responder at: mailto:affiliates@emailexchange.org
You just can't lose with an affiliate program.
No matter how you decide to handle your program, it will result in free exposure for your business.
Unlike one-time advertising campaigns, an affiliate program keeps working for you 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And, it has limitless growth potential.
Instead of you alone trying to push your product or service, you can have 10, 20 or even 200 affiliates spreading the word on what you have to offer.
Affiliates will "Explode Your Traffic and Sales!"
About the Author
A.T.Rendon is an entrepreneur and published writer. Subscribe to FREE Business Classifieds Newsletter & receive FREE online access to our Password Protected "FREE Submit To Over 2.7 MILLION FREE Ad Sites!" mailto:subscribe_fbcn9@emailexchange.org Visit us at: http://emailexchange.org/?Articles