1. Starting with affiliate programs: Many people start their online businesses by joining a few affiliate programs. When you do this commissions from these programs will allow you to build up an income so that you can develop your own business. Many successful business people have done this.

2. Make a profitable main income: Other people have even made a sizable income from affiliate programs and become Super affiliates. They make 1000s of dollars in affiliate commissions every month. This enables them to earn a good living from only working their affiliate programs.

3. Supplement your main income: You can supplement your income by joining a few affiliate programs that are related to your product and service. They will help to increase income and allow you to fund and develop your business.

4. Allow you to cross sell, or use as backend products: Affiliate programs will allow you to cross promote and sell back end products to your customers. Always choose programs that will compliment your service or products. When you sell to your customers you can offer one of your sponsor's products as a backend product.

5. Passive income: Build up a large team of affiliates under you in a 2-tier affiliate program and you can earn a steady income without having to do anything after building your team. This is all about numbers you will need a team of at least 100 + affiliates under you to start making money and build up to a large number to see a good income with this method.

More ways to use affiliate programs to develop your business:

Start a newsletter: Even if you decide to only do affiliate programs it is very important to offer a free newsletter. This will be on any topic relating to your business and targeting the same market as your affiliate programs.

Your newsletter will encourage visitors to your website to subscribe to your newsletter this allows you to build your business from your visitors as you can sell your affiliate products to your subscribers. Many will actually buy from links in your newsletter, as they build up trust with you. This is another way that you can build your business with affiliate programs that many affiliates do not do. There is no reason that you cannot build your business as well as building your sponsor's.

Affiliate programs are an easy business to build or enhance your business. There are 2 important things to remember when working affiliate programs.

Targeted traffic: To make any business effective you need to drive a steady stream of targeted traffic to your site. This can be done by: Linking Search engine submissions PPC such as Google Adwords Pre sell do not sell to your visitors. Your sponsor has the sales page to do the selling, your job as an affiliate is to get your visitors to click on the link to it. You do this by creating interest and curiosity in your visitor for your sponsor's products.

When you use affiliate programs to supplement your income you will be surprised at how much those seemingly small commissions will add up. Choose ones that complement your main products and try to choose programs that have products and services that are highly targeted to your market. In this way you will be making maximum profit.