Services-Affiliate Program Setup & Monitoring-Internal

Setting up your own affiliate program

With an online affiliate program, you can have hundreds (even thousands!) of web sites online selling your product or service. In return, they receive a commission for every sale generated by their links. This is a great deal, as you are not paying out of pocket for advertising! You only pay for the results of the advertising. It is a lowest risk method of advertising. You are always going to make
money! 

An affiliate is an independent representative of your company. Their goal is to sell your product, and they in return take a referral fee for all of the products sold. The affiliate sends people to your site using a banner or other such tool, you track those visitors and sales, and furnish them with a referral fee for all sales generated from those visitors.

There are several options available to set up an affiliate program of your own. The
primary ingredient is the 'tracking' of the referred visitor. You must be able to attach a 'tracking code' to the URL that you give to your reseller. This URL with the tracking code makes it possible for you to track the origin of the sale.

In order to use your own tracking software, you will need to have the e-commerce necessities established. It is essential to be able to offer secure transactions and accept credit cards. As soon as you have a merchant account, you can also hook up with a shopping cart system.

You can find affiliate link software that is affordably priced and normally consists of a series of CGI scripts, which permits a webmaster to start and maintain his affiliate program for goods or services. Many software publishers will also install these scripts on your server and give you easy directions on how to use the software.

Depending upon the software you install, you may choose to pay a fixed amount for click-throughs, set the program to pay a percentage of the products sold, or a mixture of both. Real-time statistics may be provided so that you are always aware of whom is selling what and how much, and the affiliates have peace of mind that they are not being squandered. Prices vary on publisher, generally from $150 to $1500. A complete software package may very well include a new associate sign up, an automatic web site replication program, an order processing program, and administrative functions. You can hire someone to put the software on your server, otherwise known as a consultant. You will need to have tracking software that can be run from your secure server. Your secure server is where the credit card taking and authorization occurs. The consultant needs to be able to provide the tracking software, install it, and provide some additional services. You do need a merchant account for tracking software.

For help setting up your own affiliate program, please feel free to refer to our article, Affiliate eBooks and Manuals.