If you have an affiliate program, now is time to make it better. What have you offered your affiliates lately? Create some new banners. Write an article or ad they can use. Give them some new promotional ideas that seem to be working for you.

This idea worked great for me. I created an upgrade program that included significant new benefits. Not only did it increase commissions earned by my own affiliates, but many of them took advantage of upgrade as well, increasing my sales. (Make any offer like this attractive to your affiliates, mine only paid 50% of what others would pay.) Every product should have an upsell option - does yours? If not, create one!

5. Join new affiliate programs

This is a great time to research new affiliate programs that can add multiple income streams to your web portfolio. Look for programs that fit well with your target niche, offer significant ongoing income potential, and provide excellent customer support.

Another tip: Carefully analyze how much work program demands. Can you make enough extra money to justify additional work required on your part? Remember, your time is most valuable asset you have.

Summary

While this may be a slow season for sales, December offers great opportunities for webmasters to improve performance, effectiveness and income potential of their internet business. Take advantage of this time by working on things you can leverage when January sales take off.

Jeff Mulligan has an MBA and 20+ years of marketing experience as an ad agency Senior VP and VP Marketing for two software companies, one of which was publicly traded. Jeff owns CBmall, a site that provides 15 different ways for ClickBank affiliates to earn income on thousands of popular InfoProducts and affiliate programs.

I want to make one thing perfectly clear, right now. I am not suggesting that all SEO's are corrupt. I don't believe that for a second. There are many fine, honest and hardworking SEO's out there, who are doing a wonderful job for their clients.

I have utmost respect for people like Jill Whalen, Bruce Clay, Robert Woodhead and many, many other fine and reputable SEO experts. These individuals don't over-hype their services or your expectations.

They also have excellent rankings on search engines. So they definitely know what they're doing.

Then, there's other end of spectrum--the companies that give good SEO's like aforementioned a bad name. I'm sure you've all seen some of these headlines:

"Top 10 and Top 20 Rankings Guaranteed!"

"Guaranteed Number 1 Ranking!"

"Guaranteed Top Ranking!"

"Top 10 Placement Guaranteed!"

Well, next time you see this kind of advertisement, make a mental note to check out that company's ranking. You'll be shocked at what you find out. Some of these companies making these outrageous claims are ranked at number 3 million. That's not an exaggeration!

Now let me point out something very important to you. A company's search engine ranking doesn't always tell whole story. I know of many companies making a nice living on Internet that aren't ranked that highly in search engines. You probably know a few yourself. You may even be one of those companies.

However, if you're considering hiring an SEO, I think where they rank is very important. Why? Because if they aren't capable of getting their own web site a high ranking, how can they possibly achieve a high ranking for someone else? They can't!

You should bear that in mind, when checking out SEO's.

Dean Phillips is an Internet marketing expert, writer, publisher and entrepreneur. Questions? Comments? Dean can be reached at mailto: dean@lets-make-money.net