Creating information products is a great way to create a source of residual income. You simply put in some work to create a product and you can earn money by selling it over and over again. Opening up your information product to affiliate sales can greatly increase your sales, and therefore, your income.

Starting an affiliate program takes work, but it is easy to get started, and there is not much up front cost. There are several methods for managing your affiliate program. The easiest method is to you use a shopping cart system that includes an affiliate management system.

Once you have uploaded your products into the shopping cart system, you can start advertising your affiliate program. You can use the same methods to promote your affiliate program as you would use to promote your information product. Some examples include: pay per click advertising, including a link in your signature line, as well as blogging about your program.

You can also do some research and find websites that offer other information or products that could serve as companions to your information product. Send an email to the website owner, give them a little background info on your product and include a sample. Ask the website owner if they might want to become an affiliate for your product.

Giving your affiliates tools to help sell your product will increase their chances of success. You can offer them special reports and articles to publish on their websites that help explain the benefits of your product. You can also offer incentives, such as increased commission rates to increase their sales.

If you do not have time to do all of this work, consider outsourcing the work to an affiliate manager. Check with various virtual assistants; they may have experience in this area. Your affiliate manager can respond to your affiliates’ questions as well as recruit new affiliates. Your affiliate manager can also handle the payments that go to your affiliates and any refunds that are requested by customers.

You can pay your affiliates for several types of activities, such as pay per sale, pay per lead, and pay per click.

You can determine the commission rate you want to pay your affiliates. Since digital products do not require much money to create, many affiliate programs pay 50% commission.

While paying the commission to your affiliates will cut into your profits, you will be gaining many more sales by having them than if you tried to market your product all on your own. Plus, you will only have to pay them after the sale has been made. You will not be wasting money on a sales team that is not producing.