Internet Marketing Strategies -- Setting Up Your Affiliate Program

If you're marketing your own product on the Internet, you
can dramatically increase your sales with an affiliate
program.

An Affiliate program will enable you to recruit an unlimited
number of individuals to sell your products. The key to
obtaining affiliates is to offer a nice commission for each
sale. The higher the commissions, the more affiliates you'll
recruit.

There are thousands of affiliate programs on the Internet.
In order to be successful, you must sell your affiliate
program just like your product. In other words, your
affiliate letter should be written like a sales letter. You
must persuade your visitors to join your affiliate program
by packing your affiliate sales letter with benefits. Tell
them exactly what your affiliate program will do for them,
how much commission they will receive and make the sign-up
process simple.

One Tier Verses Two Tier

One tier affiliate programs pay commissions on one level.
For each sale an affiliate makes, they will receive a
commission. For example, if you offer your affiliates 30%
commission and your product sells for $39.99, for every sale
your affiliate makes, they will receive a $12 commission.

Two tier affiliate programs pay commissions on two levels.
Affiliates will receive a commission for each sale they make
and for each sale their recruits make. Two tier affiliate
programs usually divide the commissions over the two levels.
For example, if you want to give your affiliates a total of
30% commission for each sale, you would offer 20% commission
on their first level sales and an extra 10% commission for
second level sales. If your affiliate makes a $39.99 sale,
they would receive a $8 commission. If one of their recruits
makes a sale, they would receive an additional $4
commission.

Increasing Affiliate Sales

Nobody knows more about your product than you do. Provide
your affiliates with banners, sample ads, articles or
anything that will assist them in making sales.

To further increase sales, create an ebook that is directed
towards your target audience and allow it to be freely
distributed. This ebook should be packed with valuable
information and, at the same time, used as a sales tool for
your product. Customize a copy of your ebook for each of
your affiliates and allow them to freely distribute it. You
can customize the ebooks yourself or purchase an ebook
compiler that enables your affiliates to customize your
ebook themselves. Not all compilers will allow
customizations. I highly recommend Ebook Edit Pro. You can
find it here:
http://www.ebookedit.com

To keep your affiliates motivated, set up an opt-in list to
enable them to subscribe. This list should be used to send
information about new promotional methods, sales letters and
articles to assist them in making more sales. This will not
only increase their sales, but it will also enable you to
keep in contact with your affiliates and introduce new
products.

Setting Up Your Affiliate Program

When you're ready to set up your affiliate program, there
are basically two options. The first option is to purchase
an affiliate software program. Affiliate software will track
your affiliate sales and enable your affiliates to view
their stats. This option requires that you run your
affiliate program and you are responsible for accepting
payment and sending out commission checks.

The second option is to use a third party affiliate tracking
company to run your affiliate program for you. These
companies will track your affiliate sales, enable your
affiliates to check their stats and send out commission
checks for you.

Affiliate Tracking Software

My Affiliate Program - A feature-packed, web-based Affiliate
Marketing Tracking, Automation & Management Application that
"plugs in" to virtually any website. It's powerful, yet
user-friendly features will allow you to effortlessly track
and manage the activities of your Affiliates, partners and
other revenue-sharing relationships.
http://www.myaffiliateprogram.com

AssocTRAC- Features real time tracking of stats. It tracks
both visitors and sales for each associate to determine the
quality of visitors and the effectiveness of your sales
copy. It includes an easy sign-up process that instantly
creates accounts for associates so they can be up and
running within five minutes. An autoresponse email message
is instantly sent out with linking instructions and other
detailed information. This powerful software tracks through
the use of cookies and CGI scripts.
http://www.marketingtips.com/assoctrac/index.html

Pro-TRACK - Will enable you to keep track of sales and which
affiliate the sale originated. Although the standard version
won't compute any sales data (owners manually keep track of
sales), it is an excellent way to track and compensate your
affiliate sales. The Pro version will not only track where
your sales originate, but also provide you with the
statistics you'll need to track how well your affiliate
program is doing.
http://www.affiliatesoftware.net/

Affiliate Tracking Companies

ClickBank - This Company will not only enable you to accept
credit cards, but they will also run your affiliate program.
Over 60,000 affiliates can choose to sell your products for
you. ClickBank enables any web seller to automatically pay
sales commissions to affiliates. They will bill your
customers, pay you, and pay your affiliates a commission.
They charge a one-time $49.95 activation fee, and a $1 +
7.5% fee per sale. There are no monthly fees.
http://www.clickbank.com

Be Free - Performance Marketing that enables e-businesses to
promote their goods and services on tens of thousands of
relevant online locations. Paying only when a sale is made
or a lead generated.
http://www.befree.com

Commission Junction - Creates powerful alliances between
online merchants that sell products or services and
affiliate content sites that have information or
entertainment of interest to businesses and consumers.
Commission Junction enables online merchants to place their
products and services everywhere online at the point-of-
interest to their consumers on a pay-for-performance basis.
http://www.cj.com/

Take your time and select the best affiliate option for your
business. If you're just starting out, you may want to use
one of the third party affiliate companies, as this is the
easiest route. You won't have to worry about anything, as
everything is taken care of for you. This will enable you to
concentrate on making more sales and developing new
products.