Many internet marketers use affiliate marketing as their main form of earning an online income and this works very well. If however you have legitimate online businesses with products or services of your own that is your main focus it is still worth considering the use of affiliate marketing as a secondary form of earning extra income.

The chance of everyone buying your primary product or signing up to your subscriber list is unlikely. People generally have their own reasons of why they don't follow through once they reach your website or sales page. Whatever the reason may be, once they leave your site they are usually gone forever. As they are not going to buy your main product anyway, why not give them the option of buying one of the online affiliate income opportunities that you have on offer? This way you still stand a chance of making some profit.

Some online business owners may be hesitant to promote affiliate products on their main website for fear that prospective customers will visit another website instead of buying their primary product. Although this argument is a valid concern you can use additional methods to at least have a way of contacting these visitors in the future either via email or an RSS feed.

If you decide to add affiliate offers to your website there is one thing that you must do and that is to ensure that the affiliate products are complimentary to your primary product. Doing this can give you two benefits, the first being that you are not offering products that are in direct competition to your main product and the second is that the affiliate products you promote compliment and enhance your primary product which could enhance your sales. By using affiliate offers in this manner you not only increase your income as an affiliate but you stand a better chance of improving the sales of your primary product.

A great way to promote your legitimate online businesses and the products that are your primary concern is with email marketing. Newsletters sent out to your list of subscribers can bring in a lot of business but if all you have to offer them is one product, it is not going to take very long before they become bored and unsubscribe and then you will no longer have a means of contacting them in the future.

When you promote affiliate products via email newsletters you have a better chance of keeping your readers interested and if you make it a habit to promote products that are helpful and of some value to them they will, over time learn to trust you and could end up buying your primary product. Just one word of warning when it comes to email marketing, don't make every newsletter a sales promotion. If you want to build a relationship with your subscribers then give them valuable information or something that can be useful to them and give it do not try to sell it.

You can see from these few ideas that there are ways that you can use affiliate marketing to your advantage and earn an extra income. If you ignore every product except you own then you are leaving money on the table and also an opportunity to build a relationship with your subscribers that will benefit your legitimate online businesses for many years ahead.