Multi-tier Affiliate Marketing
for greater success, sign up lots of sub-affiliates

We are all aware at the potential income that can be generated from affiliate marketing, but how many of us really make an effort to get that second level of income.

The second and sometimes third tiers; getting your customer to sell the product that you have sold them, is a very nice way to do business as you in theory don't have to do a thing to earn a commission.

But in my experience this proves to be far from easy, firstly recruiting affiliates and motivating them to create sales can be very time consuming.

I read recently that less than 1% of affiliates actually generate any sales, with low click through rates for any site in single figures; creating sales from 1% of 1% of your visitors seems like very hard work indeed.

Muti-tier marketing is all about safety in numbers and keeping your second tier informed of everything that happens, not just on your website but on the net generally.

It really is building a relationship and building trust within that relationship, if you have sold your own product to an individual it is down to you to keep that customer, create a second product that is theme related to the first, if they bought the first and liked it they will with no doubt like the follow up.

If they have bought a product through you keep them informed of any news, look for other products that they may be interested, this is why so many companies are bought out, and the larger company is after the mailing list of the smaller company.

That is how business is generated offline, it is no different online. Get a customer, look after them and you can expect to keep them for seven years, you don't necessarily make any money from the first sale but you will from any following purchasers. Nurture your down line the same way you would any customer and you will benefit financially for many years to come.

It is very nice to wake in the morning to find that you have made an online sale during the night; it's even nicer to find that one of your affiliates has generated the income for you.

Learn all the Tricks of Marketing

You have to learn all the tricks of marketing online and the good news is that none of the tricks are hard to adopt or to learn, many publications will tell you how to market a product but you only have to look at the web or any television advert to see the tricks the marketing people get up to.

All you have to do is adopt the same principles, open your mind to the world and you will see how things are done and you will save a lot of money, costly marketing strategies are available for a reason, some are prepared to pay the price.

Marketing is all about understanding how your potential customer thinks, understanding what your second tier wants is also a help; sometimes the best way to find out is to just ask.

Send out an email to all your downline asking what they would like from you; put a form on your site asking your visitors if they found what they were looking for. These simple tools will give you an understanding of the way they think and what they want from you as a service provider.

Think about it, you have to class yourself as a service provider, online your store front is your home page, make your visitor want to enter your site, your email campaign to your down line must be of interest, not constantly trying to get them to buy the latest e-book that they can do without.

Relevant information: if they bought a book from you about fly fishing, don't try and sell them a book about the latest truck. They found your site through a targeted keyword, you will up set them and you will lose potential sales.

Simon Bricknell copyright 2006

Simon Bricknell has been online for eight years and marketing online for three. He now runs http://www.affiliate-program-profit.com, home of the Headless Ducks.