Anyone selling products or services online should seriously consider operating an affiliate scheme, sometimes called an associate or affiliate program.

This involves other web site owners (your affiliates) sending visitors to your site and when one of those visitors purchases a product you pay your affiliate a commission.

This is an excellent way to build yourself a regular army of 'salespeople' working 24/7, 365 days a year. Better still, offer a 2 tier system where you pay your affiliates for recommending other affiliates, i.e. sub-affiliates and your whole network can grow much bigger, much faster.

To run an affiliate system you need software that will handle new affiliate sign-ups, allocate unique ID's, create ads, monitor clicks, sales, commissions etc. Eye4Design is the owner of Affiliate Trail, one of the webs leading affiliate tracking software products.