Launching Your Personal Affiliate Program

Understanding Affiliate Programs

An affiliate program is a method that allows others to sell or promote your products and services in exchange for a commission.

Advantages of Affiliate Programs

• Your banners and links are displayed on other sites, increasing your visibility with minimal effort.
• Other people are marketing your product and services, reducing your workload.
• Your sales will see a significant boost.
• Your business will appear larger and more credible.

In the past, only large websites could establish and manage affiliate programs. Today, it's straightforward, and there are several ways to do it. You could have someone install the necessary scripts on your server and manage it yourself. This method gives you full control, but you need to be able to accept online credit card payments via your own merchant account.

It's not as expensive or complicated as it seems, sometimes it's about who you know. For instance, my hosting company provided and installed the script on my latest site for free and offers excellent service. You can learn more about this option at Rambit.

Before deciding which route to take, you need to determine the objectives of your affiliate program. You can either replicate your entire site or install a script that simply tracks your affiliate sales. Your decision will depend on what you hope to achieve.

Questions to Consider Before Starting

• Do you want to replicate your entire site, giving each affiliate their own unique URL?
• Do you simply want to track sales, giving each affiliate their own unique ID?
• Do you want to pay affiliates for actual sales, clicks, or leads only?
• Do you sell products, services, or digital products? Do you want your affiliates to market all your services and products or only some?
• Do you want to pay only the actual affiliate who makes the sale, or do you want to build a two-tier program, compensating the affiliate for sales his referrals make too?
• Do you want international affiliates or affiliates from your own country only?
• Do you want to pay a percentage of sales or a flat rate?

For example, on the WWW Treasure Hunt site, I have two affiliate programs. One compensates for Treasure Hunter sign-ups, and the other rewards affiliates for advertisers.

If you don't have your own merchant account, you could use a service like Clickbank. They provide a payment facility and will track your affiliate sales.

If you have your own merchant account but want an outside company to handle and track your affiliate program, you could use a service like Linkshare or CJ, who make it easy and handle everything for a fee.

When deciding on which service to use to set up your affiliate program, consider things from the affiliate's perspective. A key factor to running a successful affiliate program is having happy affiliates. Make things easy for them. Offer different banner sizes, text links, real-time stats, and e-mail notification when sales are made.

Once your affiliate program has been set up, you'll need to promote it. As a starting point, list your site at Revenews, Associate Programs, and Affiliate Broadcast. These sites also provide information on marketing your own affiliate program.

In conclusion, there are many options for you to choose from, depending on your circumstances, financial situation, and whether you sell products or services. Whichever method you choose, you could soon be on your way to becoming the next Amazon.com!