Affiliates make money in pretty much two ways, firstly by direct sales (straight forward, no need to elaborate on this) and secondly by commissions from on-selling.
In this article I will be focusing on the affiliates, better known as your down line, your team, your partners, your network.
There are several different types of affiliates, the elusive Super Affiliate, Active Affiliates from Direct Sales, Active Affiliates who On-Sell and inactive affiliates.
The Active Affiliate from Direct Sales are the ones who join up under you and maintain their subscription to the program/service but dont on-sell to others. Giving you Direct Sale Commission.
The Active Affiliate who On-Sells are the ones that provide you passive income giving you a percentage of their sales, this is known as TIER income. It is estimated that less than 5% of your Active Affiliates from Direct Sales will become On-Sellers. However, in saying that, the higher the commission on the product/service the higher percentage rate for Active Affiliate from Direct Sales to become On-Sellers.
So, lets look at a scenario, 25 Active Affiliates join under you, selling web hosting and you get $10.00 per direct sale as commission per month, assuming the Active Affiliate maintains their subscription. Thats and extra $250 a month in your pocket. Not a lot of money, BUT if you repeat this process in 9 other programs then your monthly income increases to $2500.00.
If the program being promoted is a necessity i.e. web hosting, auto responders etc, it is likely the Active Affiliate will maintain their subscription. However if the program is not a necessity item such as an ebook or similar then it is unlikely the affiliate will maintain their subscription, so choose affiliate programs wisely.
Dedicated Active Affiliate On-Sellers are a picky group that require a lot of maintenance, online support and regular contact. The product/service has to be lucrative for them to on-sell, with at least a 4+ tier system for it to be worthwhile.
Unless you have the time and money to invest in On-Sellers then my suggestion today is for you to go for width not depth, and then duplicate it many times over providing Multiple Streams of Income.
The last article in this series will focus fully on ACTIVE AFFILIATES and how to get them. Till then to your online success!
About the Author
Gillian Tarawhiti, is Founder and CEO of Community Training Centre, an Internet Marketing firm providing Online Training and Support. Gillian is also the author of eBay Billion Dollar Goldmine and the creator of the Multiple Ripple Effect System, © 2004 Permission is granted to reprint this article in print or on your web site so long as the paragraph above is included and contact information is provided to http://www.millionairerippleeffect.com