If an affiliate program is a crucial part of your business, your earnings are only as good as your affiliate members. Sales fall like a rock when they get discouraged or lose interest.

You will see the dire signs if you oftentimes visit your affiliates' sites. The banner or enthusiastic endorsement they once had on their index page is now relegated to a link on the second or third tier of their site. Something as simple as that can cut the number of hits you get by a factor of ten or twenty.

Two things ordinarily account for members giving you the back burner treatment: Your product or service isn't marketing as well as it once did for them. Or members are only losing interest because newer, more exciting affiliate programs are grabbing their attention.

You can instantly work out both problems by offering a new or improved product or service. Spend time to make sure your new product is a big improvement over what has come before. The more you can make sure your product is a big deal, the more chuffed your affiliates will get.

Make your roll-out a big production. Give your new invention a whole new area with a fresh new look on your web site.

Two weeks before you reveal your new product, start sending announcements to your affiliates. Let them know something crucial is about to happen and they will be the first to hear about it.

After you bring out your product, do a quick follow-up with members. Get comments on how they expect the new product to sell. Glean early accounts of how some members are doing well with the product. Admit these comments in your every week e-mail updates to members.

A word of warning - try not to bold completely away from what has worked for you before. If you have always sold software, don't bring in a new line of office furniture as your new product for affiliates. An exciting new software application will work better and will not dilute the brand identity your business has enjoyed.

Got a major product you don't want to ignore? Good! It's almost always easier to get affiliates and customers excited about advancement to an old favourite than it is to make a favourite out of a completely new product.

Keep a file of client complaints and ideas about your product. Over time you can use these as ideas starters for ideas to build improvements that customers and affiliates will appreciate and value.

When interest in your product or service starts to diminish, pull our single file and make requested improvements. Add in enough improvements and you have a new issue, a next generation, or a fresh version you can sell as a substitution or improvement to your long list of previous customers.

Affiliate programs are still the number one way to market on the Web. It pays to keep your program exiting and top-of-mind. For many companies, it is improbable that a better way to raise net income will come along any time soon.