Do you have an e-commerce website? If so, have you considered setting up an affiliate marketing program to help promote your products?

I’ve outlined some simple tips below to help you successfully launch an affiliate program:

1. Invite your friends and family to be the first to join
2. Offer multi-tiered payouts to inspire your affiliates to recruit other affiliates
3. Provide customer support to your affiliates
4. Offer bonuses to those who achieve certain commission levels
5. Promote your program to online affiliate directories

Here are the two largest affiliate networks from which you can choose:

1. Commission Junction (http://www.cj.com/)
2. Linkshare (http://www.linkshare.com/)

If you are looking to host an affiliate program on your website, then check out iDevAffiliate (http://www.idevdirect.com/idevaffiliate.php)

The most important factor to consider when launching an affiliate program is to make sure that your payouts are competitive with other companies in your same industry, but not so competitive that your payouts exceed your profit margins.