As an affiliate marketer, it's astonishing to see how many online merchants don't have an affiliate programs in place to market their goods.

That's just crazy!

Basically, they're LEAVING MONEY ON THE TABLE… and lots of it.

Who knows? Maybe they're afraid of ‘sharing' their profits and ‘losing out' somehow?

Again, that's Crazy!

Having hundreds and thousands of affiliates promote your products INCREASES net profits – it doesn't cut into existing income.

Here are the 3 more EXCELLENT reasons for having your own affiliate program:

1. Get Free Promotion – As a merchant, finding suitable websites on which to run your ad campaigns is a time consuming and expensive process. Putting an affiliate program in place requires a much smaller investment. A successful affiliate program can easily become an online merchant's largest traffic generator.
2. Increase Search Engine Ranking – Search engines, Google in particular, calculate link popularity as one of the main factors in how they list and rank sites. As such, links into your site from affiliate sites certainly help to improve your rankings.
3. Improve Brand Popularity – How did strictly online brands like Amazon and Match.com become so popular? Because of their affiliate programs! When you have tens, or even hundreds of thousands, of affiliates all promoting your site, you gain phenomenal exposure. Better yet, all that exposure is free but for the cost of the affiliate program set up and the commissions you share with your affiliates when they make a sale.

I know from personal experience that my affiliates are responsible for the lion's share – around 75% – of sales of my Super Affiliate Handbook.

Letter from a VERY Happy Merchant who started his own affiliate progam.

For still better evidence of the effectiveness of affiliate marketing, here is a letter I received from Tim Knox, a client with whom I first spoke in October 2003:

Hi Rosalind,

It's been awhile since we spoke on the phone and I wanted to give you an update on how much my business has grown in a very short time, due in no small part to the advice I received from you about starting my own affiliate program.If you recall, we initially spoke in October, 2003. I had just purchased your Super Affiliate Handbook and had a thousand questions about affiliate programs.  I invested in an hour of telephone consultation with you and it turned out to be the best investment I could have made in my business because that call sparked my desire to build my own affiliate program.

To refresh your memory, I already had a very successful web site called DropshipWholesale.net which sells my own copyrighted line of informational products focusing on selling dropship and wholesale merchandise online.  My customers consisted of people looking for dropship information and products to sell on eBay and those looking to start their own online sales business.

The primary reason for my call to you was to get your advice on how to better market DropshipWholesale.net and the related line of products.

Your advice on marketing was excellent, but it was your suggestion that I start my own affiliate program that really sparked the fire.

I launched the DropshipWholesale.net Affiliate program a few weeks later and to say the least, the results have been nothing short of phenomenal.

I now have over 500 affiliates around the world who market my products from websites that I provide to them.  The affiliates are paid 50% commission on everything sold.  I know 50% is a high commission to payaffiliates, but as you pointed out it is my affiliates who are helping me build the business, so the thousands of dollars I pay out each week to affiliates truly is money well spent.

I am on track to do over $500,000 in revenue this year with over $200,000 paid out to well-deserving affiliates.

My affiliates and I thank you for you contribution to our success.

Sincerely,

Tim Knox

Just last month, Tim wrote to tell me:

“I did $750K last year and am on track to do $1M this year, all online.”

WOW! and Woohoo!

Now, if that doesn't convince you that you need to start your own affiliate program – I don't know what will.

Perhaps it's the prospect of going through all the rigamarole of searching for, and finding, the perfect affiliate program solution, stops some merchants from setting up their own programs.

Well, I dislike ‘rigamarole' as much as, (probably more than), the next person, so let me allay those fears.

Setting up an affiliate program is just not that big a deal.

All those merchants with affiliate programs now in place can't possibly be Internet Einstein's, so don't expect starting an affiliate program to tax your gray matter any more than anything else you've done in your online business.

OK, I hear ya, but there's always out-sourcing. And remember, the more you outsource, the more time you have for playing golf or with your kids.