Are you a company interested in affiliate marketing as a means to boost profit? It works very well once you truly understand what you are doing. You are basically hiring a team of excellent sales persons to send a great pitch via the web. While affiliate marketing isn’t the same thing as Internet advertising, it is difficult to separate the two concepts, as affiliate marketing thrives in the online world.

If you are a company looking to start growing your company through affiliate marketing, then you will benefit from this guide to the “best practices for affiliate managers.” What you are essentially doing is creating a program, a sort of virtual “franchise” for how you want others to start selling your company.

However, if you are new to affiliate marketing then you may be unsure of how to approach the situation or where to start creating an affiliate program. Remember, just as with any business situation, if you want others to sell for you, you must first sell it to your sales team. Your affiliates will become your sales team.

You must make the program attractive for them so that they will be highly motivated to sell your products. Think about it as a partnership arrangement, one that requires even greater incentive than an owner-employee relationship.

Identify the Right Market and Get the Best People

First things first, make sure that you have identified the proper market—the target market. Ideally, you want to create a program that will appeal to the right group of affiliates, who will be creating instructional or entertaining sites on either general interest topics or niche topics. Your intention is to create a program on behalf of your industry’s top companies. Remember to study up on your target market, with reports on customer demographics, including educational level and regional location.

You may find great success by focusing on a niche market, as this a very logical approach to selling. You cannot possibly sell everything to anyone—you must choose a specific category of customer so that you can focus attention and make a better pitch to a far more amenable clientele. Once you do this, the next logical step is to find niche partners to work with; affiliates who have an interest in your products or services, and who already have traffic.

Remember to keep actively looking for new affiliate partners, and don’t be content with just the ones you initially find. When you become complacent, you’re basically saying that you don’t need any more money—and that just doesn’t make much sense! Besides, affiliates could easily drop you or stop trying, which reduces your cash flow. Constantly be on the lookout for new partners. You can find more by advertising on your own website, or in directories or even by direct solicitation.

Never compromise your high business standards just for a buck. Work only with trustworthy and recommended affiliates, ones that have a reputation for honesty.

Beware of any affiliate publishers who use underhanded Internet tactics, such as fraudulent claims, manipulating statistics or using cloaked links with no referrer. You should also be aware of users who send you traffic through inconvenient means, such as pop up ads, hijacked pages, and the like.

Decide who is qualified to work with you and don’t sell yourself short. Not only must you make judgments about character but you must also decide whether international affiliates are going to work well. They may not, considering all factors of convenience and security.

Remember to take care of your quality affiliates. Communicate with them regularly and keep them advised of any changes to your product line or company. A very professional and kind thing to do is to provide tips on how to better market your products. Pay them on time and be professional in all your dealings.

Creativity and the Hands On Approach

Develop a creative pitch and some excellent promotional material explaining the value of this arrangement. Remember, they have the difficult job of bringing in traffic and making the sale, so by all means make their job easier. The less work they have to do, the more inclined they will be to sell your products. This means not only devising web content and newsletter material, but perhaps also banner ideas and other ad approaches.

Along the way, you must determine whether you want to take a strong managerial approach to affiliate marketing or if you simply want to give your affiliates as much flexibility as they need. It’s the difference between franchising and starting your own company! Do you think your affiliates can easily sell your product using their own imagination and interpretation—perhaps even designing their own website?

Is this a relationship that’s only going to work if procedure is followed? Many merchants believe that all affiliate sites should have an identical web presentation in order to sell the product effectively. If this is the case, you must take the initiative and provide a template that will standardize and simplify the process for your affiliates.

Figuring Out Pricing and Performance

Lastly, give some thought to your pricing structure. Give your affiliates a fair commission for every result they produce. Some merchants prefer only paying for credited sales, but when this happens your affiliates expect a greater commission. If you are only paying for impressions or for "click-throughs" then you can pay less per result.

Bear in mind that the industry standard is 50% commission of the sales price. So don’t forget to figure this out so that you can profit even with a high commission.

Typically, affiliates won’t go for anything less than an equal partnership.

Last but not least, start researching some of the top affiliate programs in your market or niche. You may find some advantages from signing up with a certain network of affiliates, in the way of software, extra traffic, flexibility (and pre-negotiated rates with affiliates) or in other incentives.

This is a tremendous money making opportunity and it will help everyone involved make more money. You don’t need a staff or huge capital to start out in affiliate marketing. All you need is a great idea, a great start from a quality company, and the fundamentals of this business.