How To Start Your Own Affiliate Program

How To Start Your Own Affiliate Program
by J. Stephen Pope

1. Why Start Your Own Affiliate Program?

Multiple web sites and distributors selling your product can
result in increased sales and profits. Unlike conventional
advertising, affiliate programs pay only for performance.
Commissions are not paid out unless sales are made.

Also, with many more web sites linking to yours, your link
popularity is sure to increase in search engines, resulting
in additional traffic and income.

2. Combine a Merchant Account with Your Affiliate Program

If your product is downloadable (such as electronic books or
software), you might consider ClickBank.com. For a $49.95
initial fee, you can process credit cards and on-line cheques
for $1.00 per transaction plus 7.5% of sales. As an added
bonus, you have your own built-in affiliate program.

ClickBank gives you a listing on their web site and visitors
can buy your products and join your affiliate program. You
choose the commission rate you are willing to pay. All
commission payments are handled by ClickBank. One downside
is that you can't run a two-tiered program.

To learn more about ClickBank affiliate programs, visit
http://www.yenommarketinginc.com/cbap.html

3. Use an Affiliate Program Script

If you are comfortable with running CGI scripts, you may wish
to install your own affiliate program on your server and
administer the affiliate program yourself.

Be forewarned, though, that this is a lot of work. You will
be responsible for all the testing, security, commission
payments, promotion and so on. Another downside: Will your
potential affiliates trust you since their commissions are not
tracked and paid by an independent third party?

You will find an example of an affiliate script program at
http://www.simpleaffiliate.com/s.cgi?index-12422

4. Use a Hosted Solution

There are good reasons for not hosting your affiliate program
on your server. Perhaps you don't have the time to administer
all the aspects of an affiliate program. Maybe your time
could be used more productively in other areas of your
business. Additionally, an independent third party tracking
and paying affiliate commissions inspires confidence in
prospective affiliates. Finally, you just might benefit from
the additional exposure that an affiliate network brings you.

ClixGalore.com is an example of an affiliate network. You will
need to pay a $75.00 deposit to cover affiliate commissions.
They charge 25% of any affiliate commissions paid. For example,
if you paid an affiliate a 10% commission on a $100.00 sale,
you would pay the affiliate $10.00 and ClixGalore $2.50.

With ClixGalore, you can also have a two-tier program. Taking
the above example, if you paid affiliates for finding other
affiliates, you might pay 2% on your second tier. That would be
another $2.00 commission and $ .50 affiliate network fee for a
total of $15.00 in commissions on both levels.

To learn more about ClixGalore affiliate network, visit
http://www.yenommarketinginc.com/clixgalore.html

5. For All Affiliate Programs

Setup your own web page (or pages) outlining the benefits of
your affiliate program. Offer articles, suggestions, text
and banner links, and other useful support for your affiliates.

Offer a generous commission so that others feel motivated to
sell for you. Obtain the e-mail addresses of your affiliates
so that you can keep in touch with them to aid them to sell
more.

For increased traffic, sales and profits, start your own
affiliate program.

For more information about affiliate programs, visit
http://www.yenommarketinginc.com/affiliate.html

=========================Resource Box===========================

J. Stephen Pope, President of Pope Consulting Inc.,
http://www.popeconsultinginc.com/ has been helping clients to
earn maximum business profits for over twenty years.

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