|
How to Set Up My Own Affiliate Program: Install Affiliate
Tracking Software? Use Affiliate Program Service Provider?
This
article reveals why some affiliate fails and explain how you
can avoid yourself commit in these affiliate program promotion
errors.
Developing a successful affiliate program can help you sell
your products like crazy. The reason is that you can sign
up hundreds or even thousands of affiliates, and they will
promote your products. You only reward them if they can make
sales.
Compared to banner advertising and ezine advertising, it
is far more effective and cost-justified. At least, You get
a team of powerful "pay-for-performance only" sales force.
More probably, they will sell your products on their websites
by using personal endorsement, writing article, adding a banner
of your products, and selling your products on their e-zine.
AND You just pay when they can sell. So consider to develop
your own affiliate program promotion system.
Start your affiliate marketing.....
Now, I suggest you sit down and think thoroughly:
The first step of "How to set up your affiliate program?"
YES! You are right. The first step is to establish a back-end
system for running your own affiliate program. How? You can
either buying an affiliate tracking software or employ an
affiliate service provider/affiliate network.
Both solutions have their merits. You must make your right
decision or else your own affiliate program gives you a lot
of trouble or even ruins your business.
To make a wise decision, you must ask yourself several questions:
- Do I have the capacity and willingness to deal with affiliate
administration jobs like signing check and sending check
on time for each affiliate?
- How about accounting?
- Do I have a budget to sign up tons of high quality affiliates?
- Do I have the ability to handle customer billing and billing
enquiries?
- Do I want to buy, install, manage and later update software?
(It may consume you considerable amount of time)
- Am I confident enough that my affiliates have trust on
me so that they're willing to sign up?
- Do I have experience in affiliate fraud management?
My SUGGESTION: If most of your answers are YES, THEN BUYING
an affiliate tracking software is a good choice.
On the contrary, I suggest you EMPLOYING an affiliate program
service provider.
Buying Your Own Affiliate Tracking Software
To use your own affiliate tracking software and run your
program by yourself, you must install a powerful affiliate
tracking software and plan for how to run the back-end administration
job.
The Pros of this approach is that you only spend a one-time
fee to buy a software and install it. The cons is that you
need to handle administration jobs like check preparation
and etc. It is quite time-consuming and incurs administration
cost.
However, if you have the ability to do it, GO FOR it.
A good affiliate tracking software must possess the following
features:
1. The software provider will maintain and update software
for you.
2. The sofware can accurately keep track of affiliate's sales
records.
3. The software can show valuable reports to you.
4. It can generate sales reports to your affiliates.
5. A user-friendly web-based administration panel.
6. An easy sign-up affiliate mechanism so that you can recruit
affiliates easily.
7. Allow customization of affiliate programs like setting
different commission structure, 1 or 2 tiers program.
8. Affiliates can click a button and get their passwords emailed
to the affiliates in case they forgot.
9. It allows affiliates using a short URL's for easy ezine,
classified ad, and text advertising.
10. The software must allow affiliates using text links &
banner links. 11. You can track ads result to examine which
ones are profitable and which ones are losing money.
12. Adequate security is built in.
Employing Affiliate Program Service Provider
The pros of using an affiliate service provider to handle
your affiliate program is that they handle nearly every administration
job. These administration jobs are not only tedious and troublesome,
but also incur cost. Sometimes, this cost is very high.
If you use an affiliate program service provider to handle
your affiliate program, you can really spend more time on
developing your e-business.
A really good affiliate service provider should help you
handle check payment & software updates, has a network to
help you sign up more affiliates, offer a flexible affiliate
program structure, and generate all necessary reports for
you and your affiliates.
If you have only a small team of employee or even no employee,
it is wise to use an affiliate service provider. For sites
selling widely used products or services, an excellent choice
would be
Commission Junction.
Their start up costs are reasonable, it's like taking out
an ad campaign. You get complete set-up and support, affiliate
payroll, promotion to their huge list of pre-screened affiliate
sites, and continuously updated software and systems.
I consider them the best of the best in their niche. I know
the people. They are very customer service oriented. So don't
go it alone. Set-up is extremely simple, and you can be up
and running in as little as a few hours. I strongly recommend
this as the solution for the vast majority of merchants.
Commission Junction, launched in November, 1998, is building
a rapidly growing, large network of merchants. You can quickly
establish a pay-per-lead or pay-per-sale program, and benefit
from publicity generated by this prominent affiliate network.
Here's the description from their site:
"With a pay-per-lead program", you pay a commission when
an authorized affiliate refers a customer to your site and
that customer fills out a form or performs another action
that allows you to follow up on the sales process.
"With a pay-per-sale program", you pay a commission when
an authorized affiliate refers a customer to your site and
that customer buys a product or service. The purchase may
occur when the visitor is at your site or it may occur at
a later time.
Manage affiliate marketing by commission junction is a wise
choice. "Whether you want to start a new program or upgrade
your existing program, we can get you started in a matter
of days at a price that any organization can afford. We professionally
manage all the details of your revenue sharing operations
including affiliate sign-ups, approvals, tracking, reporting,
and commission payments."
The system appears to work very well. A huge advantage of
using a network is that it promotes your program for you.
Also, Commission Junction consolidates payouts, making it
a favourite of affiliates. If you want to pay someone a commission
for taking care of all the details, this is a very good option.
Remember: You can save a lot of time for dealing with other
important tasks like establishing business parntership with
other site owners, website promotion, and etc.. You can save
administration cost. Your affiliates will be happy if you
choose
Commission Junction
<More
Affiliate Programs Tips and Articles>
|
