Yet for many affiliate programs, banner ad is simply a poor form of advertising. It encourages a limited response, is stuck on top or bottom of screen, and does little if anything for affiliate, or your network.

If you are going to use banner ads, be sure to drive them to one product page, or even better, to a sign up form where you can email them. These are best methods to put banner ads into action.

Okay, so what works better than banner ads for affiliate network? Here are some ideas:

Email/ezine promotions to a qualified list:

One of funniest, common realizations at a recent conference was that customers do not buy until third or fourth visit to a Web Site. Direct response marketing has been built on this fact for years, following up initial contacts with repeated messages inviting people to visit. Email is best means to conduct this and to keep up with volumes of email that come with a new affiliate program.

Yet real power of email comes in endorsed mailing.

When an ezine or list has been developed, with a trust between writer and audience, endorsement is gold. It moves people from being strangers to being introduced to you personally. The unfamiliar is replaced by a recommendation from someone they trust. Response rates to email offerings are much greater; a recent article about December Internet retail push claimed a 300% increase in sales via email than via other methods. This is hottest, unknown affiliate promotion available.

Text Links/Endorsement With Banner:

PC World does an excellent job of increasing response to their affiliate programs. PC World has an audience who buys online; over 90% of their audience have bought online. They are extremely selective with who they make their affiliate partners, for a good reason; they are good at selling advertising space, so little of this space is dead.

What is an Affiliate Program? An affiliate program is way of allowing others to sell or promote your products and services for commission.

Benefits

1. Because your banners and links are placed on other sites this makes you more visible with not much effort. 2. You have other people marketing your product and services, it's not all down to you. 3. Your sales will increase dramatically. 4. You will certainly appear "bigger" than what you are and your credibility will be higher.

Gone are days when only "big" sites could set up and run affiliate programs. Today its easy and there are a couple of ways of doing this. You could get someone to install required scripts on your own server and run it yourself. This is way I like to do it as you have full control but in order to do this you need to be able to accept credit cards on-line via your own merchant account.

It's not that expensive or complicated, sometimes it's a matter of who you know. My hosting company actually provided and installed script on my latest site absolutely free and offer an excellent service. Take a look at http://www.rambit.com to find out more about this option. You need to decide what your objectives of your affiliate program are before you decide which route to go down. You can either have your whole site replicated or you can have a script installed that will simply track your affiliate sales. You will need to look at various options depending on what you hope to achieve.

Ask yourself following questions before you begin.