ACTIVE AFFILIATES are those who sign up under you for free, then upgrade to being a paid affiliate. Those who sign up but don't upgrade within the first 72 hours are called inactive affiliates and who are unlikely to ever upgrade.

These are people you DON'T invest a lot of time on. You can send them out your monthly ezine but that's as far as invested time should go.

Those who have paid to upgrade from free or just looking stage are the ones you should have regular contact in.

When I mention contact, I don't mean contact to sell more things to them, but to offer support, advise, training etc. because these are the ones that will follow you to the ends of the earth if you ask them to, if you treat them right.

Over the past 12 months I have been testing various options and theories of Affiliates who sign up for free and then become paid upgrade affiliates.

My findings although not scientific by any means has shown me that in order for ACTIVE AFFILIATES to create direct sales, they must have the right affiliate program to promote.

I've explained previously that a great affiliate program is one that is an absolute necessity, a program that will force the buyer to have to start over again if they left your services i.e. web hosting, autoresponders.

According to the search engines there are over 2 million Affiliate Programs for web hosting and over 1 Million for autoresponder affiliate programs. What about domain name affiliate programs, can you think of any others?I'm sure you can! Think necessity.

My findings also identified that a great affiliate program MUST be free to join. This gives the prospective buyer the opportunity to test-drive the product before they buy.

OK, now down to the nitty gritty - where and how do you get ACTIVE AFFILIATES?

There are essentially two ways, they are:

1. Promote, promote, promote - anywhere, everywhere that affiliates hang out looking for a bargain.

2. Get a professional to do it for you

Options one is the most commonly used way to find and ascertain ACTIVE AFFILIATES but my findings have shown me that this is not cost effective and is all time consuming. If you are new to the Internet, which most people are, trying to find a niche market, can be very difficult. Then you have to factor the cost of the promotions, set-up costs and time involved.

In testing this method over a period of 6 months a total of 17 people sign up as affiliate's and two out of the 17 people then upgraded to paid members.

Option two and not the most common or conventional way was to hire someone who could guarantee upgrades. This you might think is the more expensive option, when in actual fact for the purpose of my testing actually worked out to be a lot cheaper. The provider handled all the work and the affiliate had to qualified twice before actually joining the program all I had to do was wait.

I brought a package that guaranteed 100 signup in 60 days. I got 174 sign ups in less than 60 days. 81 of these signups upgraded to paid affiliates that equates to just over 40% conversion rate.

I try to stay neutral in all my endeavours but I believe that for those who want to Generate More Income in ANY affiliate program, option two is definitely the way to go. I was so impressed by this type of service I decided to buy one for myself.

To your online Success!

About the Author: Gillian Tarawhiti, is Founder and CEO of Community Training Centre, an Internet Marketing firm providing Online Training and Support to the new and not so new netpreneurs. Gillian is also the author of eBay Billion Dollar Goldmine and the creator of the Multiple Ripple Effect System.