(c) 2003 Pencil Dude

Often difference between affiliates who drive traffic and sales to their affiliate programs' sites depends on little things that they do month after month. I know this is case for me. Here's what we do.

1. You Have To Do Something - Anything.

I was on phone with an affiliate manager for one of large Internet Marketing courses and during that conversation he told me an interesting thing or two. He told me that they get a lot of e-mails and phone calls from affiliates wondering why they haven't made any money from their program.

Every single person that has asked that question all had same problem. They hadn't bothered to do anything at all. These people hadn't even bothered to put up a banner that was readily available on their websites, let alone do any of better ways of promoting a program.

You have to do something. Start with easy stuff. If your affiliate program gives you banners or text ads to put on your site, use them. Put them up immediately. There - you've just taken your first positive action towards making some money from your affiliate program.

2. Keep In Contact With Your Affiliate Manager:

Hopefully your affiliate program keeps you up to date by way of a regular newsletter or some sort of affiliate update. However, regardless of whether they do or not it's important to keep in contact with your affiliate manager yourself.

Send them an e-mail and introduce yourself, tell them what you are doing in way of promotion for their program. If they sell more than one product or service, find out what product is doing really well currently. Ask them what types of creative are working best for that product. Is it a particular classified ad, HTML e-mail ad, banner, pop-up?

There are numerous instances where this really worked well for me. Let me share one with you.

* You get credit on all referring sales, including: sales by phone, fax, snail mail and every other conceivable form of registered sale. * The Affiliate Program you're promoting supports a minimum of 30-Day Cookie Sessions and Must Credit all Sales during this period.

* The Program pays affiliate's commissions on time and provides robust support on associates' concerns.

* Has a minimum Click-to-Sales Ratio of ~0.3%.

Other factors that affect a long-term relationship with endorsed Merchant, is honoring commissions on all reorders and recurring cuts for lifetime value of customer.

Associate programs that offer recurring commissions offer both IP and Database tracking plus lifetime cookies.