In recent years Affiliate Program marketing has taken Internet by storm. Many surveys have demonstrated that Affiliate Marketing can be most cost effective method to promote your website and quickly generate additional streams of income. For example, Forrester Research has rated Affiliate Marketing as most effective of all online marketing methods.

Jupiter Communications claims that, "By 2002, 25 percent of expected $37.5 billion in Internet retail sales, not including autos, will have originated on Affiliate sites."

Some of giants offering affiliate programs are: Amazon, Barnes and Nobles, Microsoft, The Mail.com, and many smaller but well-managed companies.

Affiliate Programs offer a wide range of products and services, many of which are needed by All Internet marketers. The wide range of products and services offered by Affiliate programs are software, web hosting, auto-responders, marketing, art, books, e-books, music, movies, etc... Almost any type of product or service can be packaged and sold using an affiliate program. You'll find that many of products and/or services needed to support your MLM are Affiliate Programs.

What Is An Affiliate Program?

Affiliate programs are also known as associate, reseller, or referral programs. They are revenue sharing programs between companies (the merchant) and individuals (the affiliate). An Affiliate can be likened to an independent contractor. Affiliates are basically self-employed people who are marketing products and or services of another company. They are then paid by company they represent for referring customers to company's website.

This strikes a wonderful partnership between company and affiliate, offering a Win-Win situation for both parties. The benefit to company in soliciting an affiliate to promote their product or service is, that they save in cost of advertising. The benefit to affiliate is that they do not have to develop their own product, stock inventory or worry about e-commerce, order processing or payroll for that matter. It allows them to take an already developed product or service directly to market and focus on marketing. Affiliate programs are fairly simple to work and will allow you to operate your on-line business much more efficiently while increasing your income drastically.

As with everything else online and off, what you get out of an activity is equal to effort you put into it. So if you want to make some serious cash with those programs you're joining, you're going to need to promote them. There are a variety of methods you can use. Here are a few that I've used with success:

My first suggestion to you is to join only those programs that relate to theme of your website. Make sure they're a "good fit" with your site and that they pay out "healthy" commissions. A $2.00 bounty is hardly worth work involved to earn it, like:

Weaving URL's throughout your site. Make sure you weave URL's throughout your site or devote whole pages to their topic.Don't just use banners, use alternatives like text links within your pages. Banners have become so saturated online that a lot of folks tend to ignore them,not to mention extra weight they add to your pages.