To begin with - how will you know who to approach - those big boys out there, or maybe a smaller marketer? Well, I guess the answer is: both.

But to begin with, you should offer to be an affiliate of a Marketer who is offering a quality product. How do you know what is a quality product? Well, I personally reckon the best way, and the only way, is to buy their product in the first place. Read it through and assess the quality. Then once you're happy with the product you'll need to contact the Marketer and offer to promote his or her product on your site.

If the Marketer is agreeable, you will be able to sell their product for a commission - even though you haven't written one single word of that product yourself.

It's important to find an affiliate who promotes to the same niche. Don't make the mistake of trying to sell their product on your site if it's not compatible with your own products. It's not much good trying to sell a product on "How to start up your dog-grooming service", if your niche is all about "Cooking"! Likewise don't ask an affiliate marketer if they would promote your product on their site if their niche were different to yours. It simply wouldn't work!

So, you promote the Affiliate's product on your site - make some sales - earn your commission. You're happy, the Affiliate Marketer is happy because he's earning money he would not otherwise be earning - everyone is happy.

You need to look after your Affiliates - be nice (and polite) when you contact them. No one likes to be "spoken down to" - so nurture your relationship with him or her. They need to learn to trust you too - after all, they don't know you from Adam.

When initially approaching a potential affiliate partner who you are hoping will promote your product to their list, it's essential to let them know about your product. They need to know what makes it unique. Send them your product - they won't be interested if you haven't given them every last detail of what exactly they would be selling to their list.

No doubt you will get rejections from some Marketers - this happens. Just go ahead and contact another one.

To encourage a good Affiliate Marketer to promote and sell your product, you will need to offer a high commission. This should be at least 50% or you could try offering 75% to start with - it's worth it to get going. I've known some Internet Marketers to offer their Affiliates 95% commission. After all - you'll get the names to add to your list.

Here's a quick example of how profitable Affiliate Marketing can be once you are established:

When you are established a bit more you could have a customer list of, maybe 1,000, 10,000, or even 20,000. For the sake of this example we will assume your list is 10,000. No, this is not unusual at all. Anyway, just for the sake of argument let's assume that you also have twenty Affiliates. Let's also assume (just to keep the math simple) they are promoting your product to their lists of 10,000 each Affiliate. Let's say your product sells for $97.

With your 20 Affiliates, each having their list of 10,000 names, would give you 200,000 potential customers. The average sales conversion ratio of 2% would then give you 4,000 sales. Your sales product selling at $97 would then amount to $388,000. However you wouldn't get that figure - you would be allowing your Affiliates a good commission to keep them interested. After all they are doing you a good deed by selling your product on their sites. So, lets assume you are giving your Affiliates 75% commission, which leaves you with a total of $97,000.

This is not too bad on one product, for doing nothing!

Then of course we have not yet included your own list of 10,000, which you will have also been promoting to - that's another 2% of 10,000. Your own 200 sales, at $97 per sale gives you $19,400. This figure, when added to your Affiliates' sales comes to an amazing $116,400.

If your product had been priced at $194 instead of $97, then you only have to multiply the final figure by 2 - and now you're talking money! And of course you would not consider your marketing very efficient with just one product - so you could multiply that figure by as many products as you would be promoting.

Of course, the above example is but an exercise in math. You will be doing very well indeed when you reach that large number on your list - but start small and grow - you'll get there in the end.