Ever since Amazon invented marketing more than a decade ago, the idea has been exploding like crazy. The Internet is a big world no one can possibly dominate on their own.

In offline business which depends heavily on location, even if the business is serving a small town, still anyone can take advantage of the power of referral marketing. On the Internet, even you have gigantic advertising budget like Coca Cola, there's no way it can reach the entire Internet with their latest marketing message.

This is when the idea about marketing kicks in. Basically, a product owner offer an incentive to the partner to promote their products. If someone take action or buy the product, the earn commission. It's as simple as that.

However, it can be extremely powerful.

Nowadays building a team of affiliates can be a full time job. Affiliates look for more than a product. They also want to make sure you offer them more than great commission (everybody does that), but also a lot of promotional tools, educational materials and even long term relationship like in joint venture.

Here are a few ideas that you should focus on when building your team:
1. Communication
Send personal message. Build relationship. Don't send email just to notify for new products and push them to promote. Given that everybody is offering more or less the same incentive (more money, contests, etc.) what makes your program different from others?

See your affiliates as partners and communicate with them regularly. Be passionate about helping them reach their goals. Ask how can you help them to sell more of your products.

The key to having loyal affiliates are not just about money, but more about the quality of relationship you build over a period of time.

2. Education
Provide value to the team of affiliates via education. A lot of new affiliates don't know where to start, even experienced marketers can benefit from insider secrets about which product works best.

Being helpful is the fastest way to build relationship.

Remember that affiliates are creative business people. You'll be surprised with the amount of feedback you get that can improve your program even more.

Related to the first point above, communicate by education helps them take action. In the long run, you're making money if they like and promote your

products. Not to mention the amount of buzz they create around your brand.

New drove of affiliates will come as more people know about your product. It is amazing how this can quickly reach the snowball effect.

3. Motivation
Again, big reward is just one typical reason they should join and act upon your program. Do better by providing motivation for them to take action and actually promote your product.

Again it's not only about money. Ask them what you can do to help them achieve their goal. Better still, ask them what you can do to help them help others achieve their goals. As a business person, s/he would like to help their customers to solve their problems.

If you step up and take the role to help them do it, they will appreciate it and are more likely to promote your products. This is especially true if you provide long term benefits from this relationship.

This is what distinguishes deals with joint venture relationship.

4. Long term relationship.
I can't stress this enough. It's important to the success of your business, not one single promotion. A gift as simple as a mug for my birthday helps me remember a product merchant. Now that's what I call being unique and different.

Many people tend to focus on one single deal but by doing this there are no leverage, which is a very critical part of growing a business.