If you’ve been paying attention to what’s happening on the Internet lately, you will have noticed that one of the business trends that’s fast growing in popularity is the use of affiliate programs. Being the enterprising businessman that you are, you’re certainly interested in joining one, but right now it’s not all that clear to you what are affiliate programs and how they can help your business. Well, I certainly wouldn’t like you to miss out on a great opportunity, so I’d like to offer some information that could very well be all you need to get started.

First of all, an affiliate program is based on the concept of pay-for-performance marketing, where you share the revenue with your affiliates. Other websites, or even people who own newsletters and ezines, sign up to be your affiliates. It’s fairly important - but not conditional - that these sites, newsletters or ezines are relevant or have similar themes to your own business. Your affiliates then promote your products and services and refers people through to your website using their own website, newsletter or ezine. Every time you ring up a sale or get a new lead (depending on your affiliate program model) through your affiliate, that affiliate gets a set percentage of the sale. That’s what it means by pay-for-performance.

What most people like about affiliate marketing is that it is a win-win relationship. You pay only for results. If the affiliate produces no results, you don’t pay. With this type of program, your affiliates provide the marketing and promotion for your website and you provide the goods or services. With the right kind of development, there is no limit to how much your business will grow using affiliate programs. One prime example is Amazon. It has one of the most successful affiliate programs ever developed, which allows people to link their sites’ visitors to Amazon.com in return for a commission, if a sale is generated. Now Amazon has over 500,000 separate websites actively promoting their products!

If you have an affiliate program, you have an automated advertising campaign 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Literally. Affiliate registrations, visitors, sales and reports - they’re all processed and done automatically with your affiliate tracking software. And the best part about having an affiliate program? Again - you don’t pay money unless you make money. Think about that for a minute. You get to promote your site, your products and your services for free, and you don't pay them a dime until they generate a sale for you. It's like having hundreds of sales reps working on straight commission! Except that you don’t even have to go through the hiring process. What could be better than that?

You want more? How about fringe benefits? Even if visitors don’t buy a product, there’s a good chance that they will subscribe to your own ezine or newsletter, or bookmark your site. Remember that you don’t pay your affiliates unless you get a sale. So until then, you’re getting a huge amount of traffic absolutely free. Affiliate marketing is all about advertising. Your affiliates will even try out all the possible venues for you. What do I mean by that? Well, you produce the ads, and your affiliates will place them on various locations on the Web. If they don’t work, you lose nothing. You can still improve and test them for free until they do work. That’s the beauty of affiliate programs.

The best way to go about it is to join an affiliate network. Some affiliate networks charge an annual fee, and for joining the major networks, you usually have to put up around $1,000 to $3,000. In return, the affiliate network will help you set everything up, recruit affiliates for you, keep track of all the activity in your affiliate program, issue checks and distribute your links to appropriate affiliates. They will also give you the option of reviewing prospective affiliates, or you can choose to accept all interested affiliates automatically.

Marketing professionals all agree that using affiliate programs is one of the most effective and most powerful ways to advertise your company, your product and/or your service. It is said that affiliate programs are the ultimate joint venture; you link up with other webmasters, pay only when you make a profit, and don’t even have to pay for advertising that doesn’t work! You simply can’t lose with affiliate programs. There are lots of excellent affiliate networks out there that can immediately get you started. Join up and start getting profits now!