Contrary to what you might believe, it isn`t enough to simply set up an affiliate script, post a link to it on your site, and wait for the referrals. Affiliate marketing is an incredibly powerful tool, but takes a lot of patience and work to take off the ground.
It`s important to think of your affiliates as your business partners. One of the companies that we worked with had a dedicated affiliate manager that constantly sent out promotional materials, press releases about the company, monthly incentives, etc. to his affiliates.
If you help your partners, constantly motivate them to do better, provide them with all of the resources they might possibly need, they will return the favor by bringing new referrals to you on a constant basis.
An important thing to remember is that not all affililiates are created equal and while some people may argue with me on this, I think that you should offer extra attention and care to the affiliates that actually deliver on a regular basis, instead of spreading your time evenly among all of them.