Granted, you need to eat, but if you have started a part-time business, and you have another source of income, you need to re-invest most of your profits back into your business. Re-invest for growth. When your business grows, then you can start taking a profit.

Marketing expert Jeffery Fox calls this “paying steak and eating hot dogs.” The concept is simple: keep your expenses low, but don’t cut costs. Here are 3 ways you can re-invest in your business for growth:

1. Re-invest at least 50% of every dollar you earn in advertising.

Products: Organizations which operate affiliate programs generally have some products to sell. These products can be in form of physical products, e-products or services. It is important to ascertain that organization has some products to sell and that it recruits affiliates to help them in running their business. One should be very careful with any organization that has recruitment of affiliates as their main business. It is best to avoid such organizations because their affiliate structure is like a house of cards which can crumble at slightest impact.

The organizations which have products to sell and market them thru affiliate programs cut down on cost of advertising and distribution. This amounts to considerable savings which they share with their affiliates. If a new affiliate is already familiar with products, this can be helpful but this is not a necessary pre-condition to join affiliate program. New affiliates can learn about products quite fast.

Organization's Track Record : It is not difficult to find out about organization before joining it affiliate program. Search engines are one of sources which can be used for this purpose. Verifying testimonials presented by organization is another source of information. The organization should have proven track record of operating their programs for several years successfully. If organization is new or just starting, person starting program should be well known with good credibility. This is precaution against joining organizations which promise get-rich-quick scheme and then disappear.

Support Availble to Affiliates : Most of new affiliates joining any affiliate program are new to field of marketing on internet. They need guidance and support for promoting their business and earning money for themselves. It is in interest of organization to help their affiliates to succeed. These organizations are in their business for considerable longer time than affiliates, are more knowledgeable about their market and about ways of promoting their products. They are in best position to provide their affiliates with proper guidance. Many organizations have excellent support system by way of trainings, tutorials, articles, books, marketing plans, marketing tools, forums just to name a few. These are generally available from websites accessible to affiliates.