I'm not going to pull the wool over your eyes...to start off with, you must have a great product, and fantastic customer service. You MUST have these before you can develop an Associate Program that will build loyalty with your associates.

This is critically important! To build a successful Associate Program your associates must know that you have a great product, that you offer great value, and that you give fantastic customer service (so that when they recommend you or send people your way they KNOW you have a quality company). If you provide all of this, they are going to feel proud of the program. They have to be able to trust you with their customers. They have to be able to trust that you know what you are doing and that you will treat them fairly and honestly. Your Associate Program won't last very long if you get a bad reputation.

Given that you DO have a great product or service and fantastic customer service...there are dozens and dozens of things you can do to make your Associate Program a successful one! I'll discuss some of them here.

2) Choose your associate program software wisely!

The first, of course, is your choice of Associate Program software. The software you use is going to determine how you set up your program. It's going to determine where you spend your time (on marketing or on administrative trivia)... and it will be a factor which some of your potential associates will use to determine whether or not they will sign up with you! I am not going to spend a huge amount of time discussing software in this article... because I am going to discuss it in DETAIL in the articles that follow.

3) Your Associates can also be your customers.

They join your affiliate program to earn some money, but you can actually sell your products TO them also. They get a discount through the kickback they receive from their own sale. It's a great way to actually generate some new customers AND once your associates use your products or service they can use their own testimonials, increasing the effectiveness of their marketing efforts!

If you have a situation in which you sell a lot of products, you can actually get associates to sign up with you solely for the purpose of buying your products at a discount. They buy at regular price but at the end of the month they get a referral fee on their own purchases, so basically they are getting a discount. This might work for example if you are selling something like vitamins. MLM companies have been using this sales technique since the beginning of time! It works!

So it's a natural thing to actually sell products to your associates because if they buy from you they are getting a kickback (i.e. they are buying at a discount) and you are supporting your associates. It is a natural thing to do, don't fight it!

Some Associate Program owners say, "NO, you can't buy through your own Associate Program" and they fight it. They're losing out! Don't fight it! This is a great way to get new customers, new business. Let it happen. Encourage your associates not only to sell your product but to buy from you.

There's another benefit...it generates a lot of customer loyalty. You allow them to save money by buying from you through their associate membership. And you make them money when they sell for you. This is a fantastic way to build customer and associate loyalty.

4) Pay out excellent commissions and realize the backend sale.

You have to pay out good associate commissions as referral fees. The more room you have or the more profit you have, the more you should be giving to your associate. There's one reason most of your associates have joined your program... to make money! The more money they make, the more motivated they will be to market your product or service in a variety of ways. The more money they make, the more work they will put in on your behalf.

What it comes down to, and what most associate program owners do not understand… is that most of your real profit is on the "backend". Don't be afraid to give away a lot of your profit on the "front-end"… it is the customer who is worth the money. Once you have the customer, if you have quality products and services that are great value, you will generate a lifetime customer from whom you can profit for years. This is why you, as an Associate Program owner, can afford to give an associate a lot of money. You're not looking at immediate profits... but at the potential of repeat sales or potential back-end sales. If you give your customers good value, a lot of them are going to come back and buy and buy again. Over 50% of my net income is made through back-end products. So - realize it is very important!

So don't look just for the money made today, look for the money you can make over the next 6 months... or the next year, or even 5 years! You may only be mailing your customer something which is worth $50 or $100 today, but they may buy $2000 worth of merchandise over the next two years! Understand and realize that the purpose of building your Associate Program is not only just to make money today, it is about getting that customer, holding on to them and making a sale 6 months from now or a year or 2 years from now!

5) Do business with your competitors.

You will be surprised to know that you may end up doing business with some of your competitors! And that people you originally thought were competitors really aren't... in fact they can be someone you actually do joint ventures with (especially if your product/service is similar but still different)!

This may sound corny, but you will not believe how many times we do business with our competitors. When it comes down to it, many of the people who purchase our information or software will also purchase our competitors'. So why not work together and both profit from that?

For example, I do business with companies people consider to be my competitors. But we actually have established good working relationships. We sell each other's products! If I believe someone has a good service selling great copywriting skills... and they have a manual on copywriting, I will recommend them and I am sure that in return, referrals and recommendations come back in my direction.

Be prepared to look at your "perceived competitors" products... and if they would be of value to your customers... negotiate a deal, become part of their Associate Program. Look at what you can offer your competitors' customer based on what they would want and on what you both could profit from. Yes, you may find that you actually can be partners with some of your competitors and it can be very interesting. So, be prepared for this to happen.

6) You must have a great visitor to sale conversion ratio.

To have a good Associate Program you must have a good visitor to sales conversion ratio.... This is one of the things you should look for before you really ramp up your associate program. You need to be able to convert visitors into sales in order to keep your sales associates happy. If they send thousands of visitors your way and after a month or so realize you are not converting the visitors into sales, they will not be very pleased with the results.

Test, test, TEST, TEST, TEST, test!

Test everything! Don't be afraid to test!

If you don't have a site which converts enough customers into sales… or maybe you have a site which doesn't even generate enough visitors to check this… or maybe you want to do this associate program, but don't have a product or service to sell… then you need a copy of my #1 best selling Internet Marketing course called, "The Insider Secrets to Marketing Your Business on the Internet". It guides you through the fastest way to make a business successful online and put cash in your pocket (it even gives away some of my best ideas for a product or service you can do online). Click here for more details on how to get a copy .

A great thing about the Internet is that you can test very quickly. So if you have ad copy which isn't doing very well, or a banner which isn't selling well, you can put a new one up and get the results in minutes or hours, depending on how much traffic you have.

With traditional forms of advertising you had to wait weeks or even months to get the ad in, wait for it to come out and then get the results in, in order to tabulate it. It would take months and months to test for one thing.

On the Internet you can put up a banner and test it. Then only a few days put up another one to see the differences in results and find out which banners pull really well for you. You can also do different sales letters and different site designs to find out what is producing the best conversion ratio for you… all in a matter of days, not months as in traditional advertising.

For example if your banner says, "FREE gardening newsletter".... and what you want to do is sell them a gardening product... your visitors may not be very qualified because they may not be willing or interested in buying anything... they are looking for something free.

You may have a very low sales conversion ratio (1 out of every 400 to 600 visitors buys, which is not good)

If you have quality visitors coming in, people who want to buy what you are selling, then your conversion ratio should be better. Your banner might read, "INCREASE THE GROWTH OF YOUR PLANTS BY 30% ALMOST OVERNIGHT FOR ONLY $25.00". You'll bring in less visitors, but very qualified visitors. You will probably get a conversion ratio of one out of every 50 visitors… a lot better than having lots of unqualified visitors.

But you may have had to test 20 different banners to find the one that really pulls! A key to marketing success is to test everything! And then tell your associates the results of your tests. Tell them what works. Get them to use what works!

As mentioned before, in my Internet Marketing Course, I teach exactly how to make a successful website, drive traffic to that website and reap the profits… all with the least amount of work… and how to automate it so you are only spending minutes a day at it once it is set up… plus hundreds of other things on how to make money online (over 500 pages of information). Learn simple things like how to design banners which pull double or triple your competitors' banners… wouldn't that be worth something to you?

Your associates are actually working for you for nothing until they make a sale... you can not lose money!

The plain fact is that this is the most advantageous way of marketing there is right now online, because you are not paying them per hour or per ad... only for sales made!

7) The 12 Secrets and Tools to an Outrageously Successful Associate Program.

Ok, to be very straightforward, there are real "killer" ideas on how to instantaneously guarantee your associate program makes you money, but I have saved these for a special course which only comes with my AssocTRAC software.

Why?

Because there are two people online right now who are selling the same kind of information that I have been giving you here in the last two issues of this newsletter for almost $100 (I just gave you over 100 pages of information in less than 2 months… all for free). I have to hold something back… hold back my real "gems" of information that will give my clients an unfair advantage over the other associate programs out there.

So I have all of these secrets in a manual called, "The 12 Secrets and Tools to an Outrageously Successful Associate Program" which you get when you purchase my AssocTRAC software (which is a fantastic bargain on its own). Click here for more details on AssocTRAC.

My clients pay me $2,790 per hour and I can't give away everything for free. I am sure you understand. By putting this information into my special manual, many people who purchase my software are guaranteed to make their associate program so successful, that it will blow their minds, and blow their competition out of the water… just like I have done with my associates program. In the manual, I reveal all of the "nitty gritty" on EXACTLY what you have to do to make hundreds of thousands of dollars with your associates program… and exactly what I have done with my associate program to make it so successful so you can model your success after my success.

It is a "no-brainer".

You will learn how to easily get thousands of people to join your associates program and sell incredible amounts of your product or service. You simply have to read the manual and follow my steps, and you are on your way to adding hundreds of thousands of dollars to your bottom line. I just can't give that away… I have to save that for my special clients… like you… who believe in me and want to invest in my AssocTRAC software. I want to give them an edge that they can't get anywhere else - I am sure you would do the same for your clients.

The beauty of Associate Programs is that you have hundreds or even thousands of people out there promoting your product for you.

This manual will give you my few guarded secrets that will explode your sales and show you EXACTLY how to bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars in business in as short as 30 days from when you start. I have done it, and I will show you how you can easily follow in my footsteps to do the same. Click here to get details on the manual, The 12 Secrets and Tools to an Outrageously Successful Associate Program and our new AssocTRAC associate software. These are the only two things you need to start your own associate program right away and be on your way to having hundreds (if not thousands) of people on the Internet selling your product for you.

8) Find the "right" associates that can sell thousands of dollars of your product or service easily.

To be very blunt, this is what really MAKES OR BREAKS AND ASSOCIATE PROGRAM. And as I was just telling you in the last point, I am going to save this really killer stuff for my special clients that use my AssocTRAC software. These "gems" of information will give my special clients an unfair advantage over other associate programs out there (including their competitors!). I am sure you would do the same for your clients. If you are interested in what I think is one of the best associate program software packages out there on the market, Click here for more details and how the software works.

Associate Programs are "hands down" the hottest and fastest way to sell your product and make a fortune online right now! Don't take that lightly, we have been doing this for over 4 years and it has just EXPLODED in the last 8 months. Ride the wave before it is over (or before your competitors beat you to it).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Derek Gehl specializes in teaching real people how to start profitable Internet businesses that make $100,000 to $2.5 Million (or more) per year. To get instant access to all his most profitable marketing campaigns, strategies, tools, and resources that he's used to grow $25 into over $60 Million in online sales, visit: http://www.marketingtips.com/t.cgi/892189

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