The easiest and cheapest way to build your sales force is to give customers a chance to promote your products and services. Satisfied customers not only know all about what you sell, but because they have tried your product themselves, they have more credibility with prospects. A prospect believes when a past customers says "Yes, I used it and it works great." No ad or commercial can speak as powerfully.

Create A Simple Referral Program Many customers will be delighted to tell friends about your product or service. You only have to ask. Say "I'm glad you got great results from our service. Please spread word. I would really appreciate it if you told a few people you know who could also benefit from our service."

You can offer a discount to new customers referred by existing customers. One store has a sign in waiting area "Tell a friend and you both save 10% on your next purchase. Ask for details."

Start Your Own Affiliate Program Back when Amazon.com was first staring out, founder Jeff Bezos was at a party. A woman who had just gone through a divorce told Bezos she wished she could sell Amazon's books about divorce from her web site.

The wheels started turning inside Bezos' head. Back at office he worked with his programming staff to create software to track sales that came from other people's web sites.

A Good Fit:

Before you run out and join a bunch of affiliate programs, take a moment to think about your current web site visitors. What types of products and information would they be most interested in? For example, if you have a web site that deals with pets, joining an affiliate program that sells pet supplies might be a good fit. This would be something your average visitor would have an interest in. Joining a program that sells books on How To Kill Your Neighbor's Pesky Pet, may not be such a good fit. That's a bit of an exaggeration, but I think you get my point. If your affiliate program doesn't appeal to your site's visitors, you will not have much success.

More Isn't Always Better:

If joining one affiliate program is a good deal, then why not join 500 programs? Don't stop there, why not post as many different affiliate banners as will fit onto each web page? If this sounds like a good philosophy, think again! Posting too many banners and text links on your pages will not only look sloppy and slow down time it takes to load your pages, but will confuse your visitors, resulting in less click through traffic, rather than more. (Click through traffic - People that actually click on your affiliate banners and/or text links.) It's best to focus on just a couple affiliate programs. And make sure to keep your pages simple, easy to read, and aesthetically pleasing.

Increasing Your Click Through Traffic:

As I said before, your web pages should be simple. Too many banners, especially those that change rapidly or flash, can be very distracting and annoying to your visitors. Also, don't rely just on banners to generate click through traffic for your affiliate program. Adding text links in addition to banners will greatly increase your click through percentages. Banner ads are becoming so common that many people don't give them a second look. By adding simple text links on your web pages which explain a little more about your affiliate program's product(s) you can capture attention of your visitors and increase your click through traffic. Also, placement of these banners and text links is important too. Putting these at bottom of your pages will not result in as many hits as you would have if they were displayed in a more prominent place on your page.

Ask Questions Before You Join:

Doing a little research before you join an affiliate program will pay big dividends later. Find out answers to these questions before making a commitment to join any program:

* Does it cost anything to join? Most affiliate programs offered today are absolutely free to join.