The power of Affiliate Marketing for Small Businesses
If you are a small business owner who sells their products and services online, then you know that it can sometimes be helpful to have someone else working for you to help you to get more customers, more sales and of course, more profits. This middle man can be an affiliate marketer. 
How does Affiliate Marketing Help a Business?
The affiliate marketer is a kind of sidekick to the business owner that can help them to grow their business. It is a method of making money where the affiliates work for the business owner and are rewarded for helping the business owner to promote and sell their products or services. Since this is a very targeted approach, it is a great tool for a small business owner to help them reach potential interested clients and can save them money since it costs far less than some other forms of promoting and advertising their products or services.
Affiliate marketing is cheaper because the small business owner doesn’t have to pay the affiliate anything unless they make a sale. Then, the affiliate gets whatever percentage the small business owner has contracted with the affiliate. The affiliate is the one doing all of the advertising, promoting and selling of the product and is the one taking more risks than the small business owner. As long as the small business owner has set the percentage earned by the affiliate at an amount that isn’t going to hurt his own profits, then the deal works well for both parties.
Best Strategies for Using Affiliates to Help Sell Products	
It’s vital that the small business owner and the affiliate marketer form a solid team and are able to work together to promote and sell the products and services. For example, the business owner could use direct mail to mail out a flyer to potential customers on his list announcing a big sale or other special event. The affiliate could promote this opportunity on their website and could show it off on social media. As long as these teamwork campaigns are properly targeted to the right set of customers, it can work very well to help both the business owners and the affiliates to make a profit on sales.
Both parties must be willing and able to use a selection of different tools or technologies to promote and sell the products and services. For example, in the past few years mobile marketing has become crucial in the success of business owners. With the increase in mobile phone owners, it opens the door for businesses and their affiliates to have access to many more potential customers.
Affiliate programs need to be monitored, tracked
Another vital task in a partnership between a business owner and the affiliates is to keep track of the performance of the affiliates. The business owner needs to ensure that the affiliates they employ are doing a good job and bringing in the sales in the amount desired. If not, it’s time to find some new affiliate partners.
What Kind of Affiliate Marketer Should You Choose?
Another thing that must happen is that there must be a clear understanding in your affiliate partnership of who the target audience is for the business owner’s products and services. Otherwise, they won’t make many sales since the products may be being offered to the wrong audience and that would mean few or no sales.
The affiliate you choose should also be familiar with your product and its niche. This way they will be better able to work with you and get people to buy your product or services. You don’t want an affiliate who is clueless about your niche, as they won’t know how to come up with good ways to target potential customers. 
You also want an affiliate who does this for a living and not just some amateur who is trying to make some part-time cash. An affiliate who does this for a living has much more invested in this partnership and will work harder for you since he needs the income, so wants the sales as badly as you do.
Pros and cons of affiliate programs
Affiliate marketing has its pros and cons for both parties as well. These may include:
Pros: 
* With an affiliate marketing partner, you have a sales team working for your business that only has to be paid when they make a sale, plus they make only the percentage that you both have agreed upon in your contract with them.
* Affiliates can boost your sales, as well as help you to grow your brand.
Cons: 
Affiliate marketing is very competitive and rely on the affiliate being successful in promoting your products and services. If they are not successful, then neither party makes any money.
If you end up with a bad affiliate, they may hurt your business if they use dishonest tactics like spam or false advertising. Therefore, be careful who you hire to be an affiliate.
All in all, affiliate marketing can be a great way for a small business to branch out and have a bigger audience of potential customers and to thereby make more money if the partnership goes well for both parties.
