Harry and Hermione. Holmes and Watson. Batman and Robin. These famous duos span age groups, eras and the globe because they all have one thing in common: While each would be competent on his or her own, the pairs are indestructible together.

The same goes for the potential appeal your business could have with its own sidekick: an affiliate marketer.

While some direct response marketers have the advantage of selling directly to consumers -- through TV infomercials and direct mail -- internet marketers require a middleman to reach their full potential.

Affiliate marketers use a variety of tools -- from Facebook pages to YouTube videos to Pinterest boards -- to reach people who might be interested in your product. An affiliate might use a self-owned, high-traffic website to direct traffic to you. He could have a mailing list of customers interested in products like yours. Tactics vary among affiliates, but the independent promotion always earns them commission on their sales.

Is affiliate marketing right for your business? Here's how to tell:

You have a clear idea of who your target market is. Affiliates have to understand your product's ideal demographic. Otherwise, they can't target the right people. If you don't understand your target market, neither will they.

You don't have many channels competing for your business. If you have a direct sales team or maintain relationships with wholesalers and resellers, you may not have a wide enough margin to afford affiliate commissions.

You lack a brand-building budget for yourself but have the funds to pay a skilled seller. Affiliate marketing could be ideal for you -- it's a completely performance-based compensation structure. If the affiliate doesn't make sales, you don't pay.

Affiliate marketing can have a profound impact on the growth of your business -- especially since the costs are variable. Because you only pay an affiliate if he's successful and there are little to no fixed costs, it's an effective way to get your products to market. In fact, affiliate marketing is responsible for a significant portion of the revenue at a number of successful companies.

For example, Beyond Diet, a program created by Live Smart Solutions, was the second most-searched diet product on Google in 2012. Largely due to affiliate marketing, its revenues grew from zero to eight figures in three years. Peak 10 Publishing is another excellent example. The sale of its survival guide and products grew 500 percent in just a year by leveraging strong affiliate relationships.

Since you can't weed out affiliate marketing candidates by who wears his cape the best, here are a few qualities to watch for:

The affiliate has promoted other products in your space. If he's familiar with your niche, he'll likely be more successful than someone who doesn't understand the product category.

He makes his living doing this. A part-time affiliate is probably a dabbler who hasn't invested the time and resources to become proficient. Look for full-time professionals instead. These affiliates are much more committed and willing to work through challenges to achieve results.

He has good street cred. What do other product owners say about the affiliate? Don't be afraid to ask for references and work samples -- they can be illuminating.

By ensuring you have a clear understanding of your audience, evaluating your competitive landscape and investing in a competent, experienced partner, you'll be able to introduce the right people to your product at the right time. A sidekick could be the best thing for the growth of your business. 

Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular means of making some extra income online and letting people know about your business/products. To make affiliate marketing succeed for you, conversion is important, which is why you must engage actively with your visitors to purchase products from your affiliate links.

The earning potential is massive as long as you are willing to put in the hard yards to sharpen your affiliate marketing strategies. While it can be a vexing task to manage your affiliate program along with your regular activities, you need to track its growth and analyze the statistics to keep your income from dwindling. Thankfully, you can do all that and more by leveraging affiliate marketing tracking software platforms. Here are 10 such great tracking platforms:  

1. Everflow.io

Everflow is arguably the best affiliate tracking platform out there with a great UI and an extensive feature set. Everflow has some of the most advanced campaign management and reporting functionality. Also, starting at only $200/ month, Everflow is one of the most cost effective solutions out there. Its prominent features include: • Live data in the form of graphs and reports • Advanced notification system • Super fast response times • Advanced media buying tools • Graceful handling of mobile and desktop traffic * Fully exposed API 100 percent of the time • Private partitioning of traffic • Multidimensional reporting and analytics system.

2. LinkTrust

This affiliate and digital marketing tracking software can track leads, add, calls, sales conversion, as well as networks. It tracks and optimizes the success of your internet affiliate marketing endeavors with efficacy, enabling you to operate a successful campaign. LinkTrust has a customizable interface that lets you track all types of offline and online advertising through pixels, server posts, cookies, CPA, CC, mobile traffic, and Pay-per-call. Other features include: • LinkTrust RTA (Remote Traffic Agent) • Lead distribution and management • Affiliate management • Campaign management • Customizable lead validation • Fraud detection, lead management • Real-time reporting • Mobile tracking  

3. AffTrack

AffTrack happens to be the lone enterprise SaaS solution that offers unlimited clicks. Being leveraged by numerous big affiliate networks since 2009, it is more than just another affiliate tracking system. With an extremely mobile friendly interface, this program makes it very easy to track on the move. Its prominent features include: • Proxy detection service (free) • 100% Real time analytics • Brandable interfaces • Suppression file management • Invoice and billing tools • Access to granular level • File manager • Unlimited advertisers and affiliates • Device targeting • Client side tracking • Geo-targeting • Affiliate referral program

4. Hitpath

Hitpath allows clients to efficiently attribute the numerous factors of their digital marketing endeavors. It is leveraged to evaluate measurable, smart customer engagements. One of the most user-friendly tracking software in the market, Hitpath is fast and productive, enabling affiliate tracking in real-time. It also offers free training for this software along with 24/7 support. Other features include: Affiliate management, Real-time campaign tracking, Accounting module, Cross pub campaign accelerator, and a pleasant interface  

5. Impact Radius

Established by the founders of Savings.com and Commission Junction, Impact Radius has created quite a buzz since 2008. Its key features include: • Automation of onboarding, contracting, reporting, and tracking of direct affiliates • Call tracking • Monitoring of promo codes • SEO-friendly links • Flexible tracking options via FTP upload, Pixel, Data Post, REST API, Mobile SDKs, etc. • Integration with CRM and Salesforce.com • Real-time analytics  

6. Click Inc

Click Inc has its intuitive interface is great for those who aren’t quite comfortable with HTML, whereas the Trulink format is a wonderful tool for boosting SEO as it will directly link to your sales page rather than using a coded link. Other key features include: Insightful reports providing traffic status commissions, graphs, and sales. Click Inc. also includes popular management tools which provide you with the power of creating coupons and following up with merchants. The starter plan is available for $25 per month, and you can also opt for the $69 or $149 monthly plan.

7. HasOffers

Has Offers Tracking Software is the preferred choice of over 11,500 online businesses. Accommodating global brands such as Social, Living Social, and Zynga, among others, you can rest assured that this software is replete with all the features you’ll need to operate and maintain a profitable affiliate marketing program. Some unique features include: Fraud protection, unlimited affiliates, 99% tracking uptime, comprehensive API, superior measurement, great tracking metrics and devices, an option for dedicated solutions, among others. You can also leverage as an ad agency for advertising your e-commerce store. You can try HasOffers for free for 30 days and can also test the software yourself.  

8. Voluum

Voluum is one of the best platforms to control, track, assess, and optimize your affiliate marketing campaigns. Using Volume performance tracking software, you can: • Monetize your campaigns by purchasing the most optimal converting traffic, • Separate as well as control your traffic by devices, OS types, and GEOs • Create swift black and white lists within your CPA dashboard • Track every user who purchased your conversions • Add tons of new campaigns • Make landing pages • Monitor each factor which can shape your funnel.  

9. CAKE

Those who’re seeking a robust management tool to optimize and monitor your affiliate networks would do well to explore the cloud-based CAKE. Within one convenient dashboard, you can check your network's overall performance and manage contacts while reviewing the results. This tool has a wide range of interesting features that include: • Fraud protection • Pixel management • Targeted campaign by device or location • Real-time metrics • Individual portals for affiliates as well as clients • 24/7 support • Referral rewards • Customizable The pricing is intrinsically based on usage and depends on what your business necessitates. The three price levels include Pro, Select, and Enterprise.

10. Post Affiliate Pro

Post Affiliate Pro is another useful affiliate marketing tracking software trusted by over 2,700 companies globally. It can link to more than 170 CMS as well as best payment gateways. Features: • Customizable interface • Themes • Multilingual support • Forced matrix • Direct tracking of links • Affiliate link styles • Fraud protection • Image, flash, and text link banners • Trends reports.

Affiliate marketing is a very useful way of increasing your income or promoting your products. By using the right kind of tracking software, you can manage, track and push your services efficaciously and accurately. However, do ensure that you adhere to best practices at all times to maximize your success.

Being a successful businessperson and entrepreneuris about taking advantage of every opportunity that comes your way. You have to be creative and find different ventures that can generate revenue even if it's for a limited amount of time. Moreover, diversifying your efforts will help increase your chances of success without necessarily multiplying your workload.

Because mobile devices and technology have become the norm, there are now dozens of different business ideas you can start either for free or for a very small investment. Not only this, thanks to the available tools, these can help you generate revenue without requiring much work on your behalf.

Here are 10 business ideas you can start doing for free by barely lifting a finger:

1. Start a chatbot agency.

Chatbots have taken the world by storm because they're changing the way companies interact with their audiences. These pieces of dedicated software are becoming a necessity for companies of all sizes and you can capitalize on this by creating a chatbot-building agency.

The best part about setting up a chatbot-creating agency is that it doesn't require you to have any coding or technical knowledge whatsoever. By using platforms like ChattyPeople, you can create an AI-powered bot in a matter of minutes. ChattyPeople offers a purely visual interface, and because you can create bots for free, you can practice and polish your skills until you're ready to offer your services.

2. Become a translator.

Mastering more than one language poses a huge advantage, especially in the globalized society we live in. If you're fluent in more than one language, you could explore providing translation services that help companies translate documents and establish effective communication channels with other organizations. If you have experience in a particular field, such as law or medicine, you can even specialize in providing technical translations. Providing quality services that use all appropriate terms and jargon can help you build a name within your industry.

3. Data entry specialist

There are many basic tasks that don't require many skills but are necessary for a company to operate. Data entry is one of those tasks that doesn't require much skill but is widely available in huge volumes. Although the payout isn't always stellar, the sheer volume and ease of work make it an attractive gig you can complete in your spare time without using much brain power.

4. App tester

If you have a smartphone, you can sign up to become an app tester. Application developers often need to test their products on different devices, models, and software versions.

All you have to do is download the app, install it on your phone and test drive it. Although you have to pay to download some applications, most developers will refund you the cost of the app when they pay you for your services.

5. Write product reviews.

Similar to app testing, some companies offer the opportunity to make money by writing product reviews on certain ecommerce sites. Keep in mind that there are already many individuals and companies offering these services, so you have to get creative and find a way to offer a unique selling point.

The best way to stand out is to always be honest and find the best tone of voice that caters to readers. The more friendly you sound, the more likely you are to catch the reader's attention. Just remember that there's a very fine line that separates a casual tone of voice from an unprofessional one.

6. Start your own blog.

Starting your own blog is an awesome way to generate revenue. Despite the fact that creating a revenue-generating blog seems to be extremely difficult, you only have to find the right subject and style that attracts a good readership.

You can start blogging about traveling, tips to get around your city or any other topic that you feel comfortable sharing. Once you have a solid base of followers, you can make money by selling ad spots on your page, joining programs like Google AdSense or by offering a paid subscription with access to extra resources.

7. Offer online courses.

If you've ever set up or managed your own business, event or organization, chances are you have valuable knowledge that people are willing to pay for. You can start offering online courses that help individuals gain an understanding of technical topics you're knowledgeable about.

The great part about offering online courses is that you get to design your own lesson structure. For instance, if you have extensive knowledge on social media marketing, you can offer a series of 10 lessons that cover topics, such as increasing engagement and monetizing your accounts.

8. Create a popular social media channel.

Social media is one of the most effective communication channels available today. If you have a large group of followers, companies may be interested in using your social media channel or profile as a marketing platform so you can generate revenue directly from your follower base.

You can team up with companies and become a "brand ambassador" that builds awareness about certain products or services. Not only can this help you land a profitable endorsement deal, but you'll also create a name and brand for yourself.

9. Offer consulting services.

Depending on your field of expertise, you could provide consulting services on a freelance basis. Consultants often get paid a better salary than employees who work directly within an organization and often have more freedom.

Besides helping companies address imminent gaps in their structure, becoming a consultant allows you to get involved and become part of a team without having to make any long-term commitment that sacrifices your flexibility.

10. Become an online reseller.

The internet constantly provides great deals and offers, and you can take advantage of all of them by becoming a reseller. By taking advantage of well-established ecommerce platforms, you can create a self-sustaining cycle that requires an initial investment, yet generates profit on a regular basis.

Finally …

Finding the best way to make money without requiring a huge investment can be tricky. The ideas discussed above are designed to inspire you and help you find the best way for you to generate revenue without having to invest a lot of time or effort, which allows you to focus your energy and resources on getting your main business ideas rolling.