By J. Stephen Pope
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 canresult in increased sales and profits. Unlike conventionaladvertising, 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 linkpopularity is sure to increase in search engines, resulting inadditional traffic and income.
2. Combine a Merchant Account with Your Affiliate Program
If your product is downloadable (such as electronic books orsoftware), you might consider ClickBank.com. For a $49.95initial fee, you can process credit cards and on-line chequesfor $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 canbuy your products and join your affiliate program. You choosethe commission rate you are willing to pay. All commissionpayments are handled by ClickBank. One downside is that youcan`t run a two-tiered program.
To learn more about ClickBank affiliate programs, visithttp://www.yenommarketinginc.com/cbap.html
3. Use an Affiliate Program Script
If you are comfortable with running CGI scripts, you may wish toinstall your own affiliate program on your server and administerthe affiliate program yourself.
Be forewarned, though, that this is a lot of work. You will beresponsible for all the testing, security, commission payments,promotion and so on. Another downside: Will your potentialaffiliates trust you since their commissions are not tracked andpaid by an independent third party?
You will find an example of an affiliate script program athttp://www.yenommarketinginc.com/buy/simple-affiliate.html
4. Use a Hosted Solution
There are good reasons for not hosting your affiliate program onyour server. Perhaps you don`t have the time to administer allthe aspects of an affiliate program. Maybe your time could beused more productively in other areas of your business.Additionally, an independent third party tracking and payingaffiliate commissions inspires confidence in prospectiveaffiliates. Finally, you just might benefit from the additionalexposure that an affiliate network brings you.
ClixGalore.com is an example of an affiliate network. You willneed 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, youwould pay the affiliate $10.00 and ClixGalore $2.50.
With ClixGalore, you can also have a two-tier program. Takingthe above example, if you paid affiliates for finding otheraffiliates, you might pay 2% on your second tier. That would beanother $2.00 commission and $ .50 affiliate network fee for atotal of $15.00 in commissions on both levels.
To learn more about ClixGalore affiliate network, visithttp://www.yenommarketinginc.com/clixgalore.html
5. For All Affiliate Programs
Setup your own web page (or pages) outlining the benefits ofyour affiliate program. Offer articles, suggestions, text andbanner links, and other useful support for your affiliates.
Offer a generous commission so that others feel motivated tosell for you. Obtain the e-mail addresses of your affiliates sothat you can keep in touch with them to aid them to sell more.
For increased traffic, sales and profits, start your ownaffiliate program.
For more information about affiliate programs, visithttp://www.yenommarketinginc.com/affiliate.html
RESOURCE BOX
J. Stephen Pope, President of Pope Consulting Inc.,http://www.popeconsultinginc.com/ has been helping clients toearn maximum business profits for over twenty-five years.
For valuable Work at Home Small Business Ideas, visithttp://www.yenommarketinginc.com/
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