I fear the affiliate boom years are coming to a close. While promoting an online store through an affiliate program remains one of the most cost effective means of marketing, several factors are restricting its growth:

• The best niche sites are already promoting one or several affiliate programs. They don't have space or interest for others.
• Most would-be affiliates bring little or no traffic to a store. They offer low-traffic amateurish sites with little content except banners to multiple affiliate programs.
• Most affiliate programs don't offer enough monetary incentive to stimulate serious marketing by the affiliates.
• Most third-party affiliate program providers make it difficult for merchants to contact affiliates via e-mail and build a corps of savvy sales partners.

I don't believe that affiliate programs are going away. But, like anything in business, only the innovative and aggressive will succeed.

One encouraging example of a well-thought-out affiliate program is the Five Pillar Club that Dr. Ken Evoy uses to promote his book Make Your Site Sell (http://sales.sitesell.com/). Evoy offers a substantial percentage to affiliates, actively teaches them how to build their sales, offers "second tier" commissions on affiliates who sign up after finding the site through another affiliate's link, and encourages his troops with regular friendly notes and updates. Retaining top-of-mind awareness is key in affiliate programs, and Evoy is showing us the way.

Since I have an affiliate program myself, I watch carefully to see what other merchants do to promote theirs. One that caught my eye recently is Drugstore.com (http://www.drugstore.com/). They offer a 25% commission on all sales through September, and 15% thereafter. But the most striking element of their program is that affiliates continue to receive sales commissions off future sales to customers they bring to Drugstore.com. Wow!

I saw an affiliate program this week that offered a 4% commission to affiliates. Ho-hum. If your affiliate program doesn't offer real value to the affiliate, it won't go anywhere.

So offer whatever value you can. Do the out-of-the-ordinary. Kick it off in a big way. Make your affiliates feel that they're a real partner in your business. Only in that way will your affiliate program be a success in the long run. And after all, that's what counts.

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