Making your own affiliate program?

I'm starting up a new ecommerce business, and it'll be going live in about a week. I was wondering though, whether anyone's had any experience making themselves an affiliate program? If so, any tips or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Also, I was contemplating using Post Affiliate Pro -- is there better software??

 

Just use CLickbank and get your own affiliates! Its so easy!

 

Post affiliate script is used by many big companies offering in-house affiliate program. Ultimate affiliate is another script you may want to check out.

You can run in-house affiliate program using some script like you mentioned in your post or join some affiliate network. The in-house affiliate program requires some time to pay all your affiliates but your only cost are a few dollars to buy the script. Affiliate networks will require sign up fee and commissions from every sale but you don't need to install the script and pay every single affiliate of yours - you make only one payment to the affiliate network.

 

Hi James,

I'm the affiliate program manager at Sports Events 365 which was established almost 4 years ago. We have very recently launched our in-house affiliate program. We also use Post Affiliate pro and it does everything we need it to do.

It takes a lot of time to create awareness to the program and get affiliates to join it when it's an in-house program.

Working with an affiliate network in addition to keeping the in-house program seems like the best solution

 

Thanks MoneyTopList -- I'll check them both out.

Is it possible to perhaps run both an in-house affiliate program and one with an affiliate network? I haven't looked into running with a network yet, but what sort of costs would be involved with them? (Obviously they'd help tremendously in finding affiliates, but I think I'd be able to find a few here).

 

Yes, there shouldn't be a problem. Check out a-zara dot com and look at their affiliates page for example, they offer affiliates to join their in-house affiliate network or their affiliate program with Share A Sale.

The costs for Share A Sale and Clix Galore for example are not high as others like CJ, Linkshare etc. there is a certain set up fee and a minor monthly fee or pay per sale comission.

I hope to find some affiliates on affiliates forums just as well, but you should know that few is not enough

 

Good luck starting something like this. I'm excited to see how things turn out.

 

I'd recommend ShareaSale as an easier way to start. Much easier to recruit via a network program than an in-house program as they have more trust they'll get paid by a trusted 3rd party network. Many other benefits too. SAS is only 550 set up compared to 5,000 - 10,000 for some of the big networks.

The other thing I STRONGLY recommend, is don't even think about an affiliate program until you have launched and done thorough conversion testing and tweaking. You need to have solid conversions before you start to bring affiliates on board. Best and fastest way to do the testing is via PPC so you can control the traffic and make sure it's targeted.

Hope this helps and best of luck!

 

Getting affiliates on Clickbank is so easy. I suggest to try them instead of starting your own affiliate program.

 

Starting your own affiliate program will do more hard works than join an affiliate network.

 

I've recently launched my new site properly, and have an in-house affiliate program. I've only got a few affiliates at the moment, but I see the affiliate program as 'something for the future'. As the site grows and becomes more trusted, I expect more people to sign up and start promoting their link. I'm trying to get some affiliates on board now with some forum advertising and by encouraging customers to join. By the way, advertising to existing customers works pretty well.

Oh and by the way, I'm using iDevAffiliate as my software.

 

Yes I agree on that, but having your own in-house affiliate program also has more benefits than joining an affiliate program, you might get more cash in the long run, you'll stablish a better reputation for your website and your barnd as well.

 

I agree with most above. Focus on your business and outsource OR list your product or service with existing CPA networks. They do this for a living and if you've got something good it will naturally attract a lot of affiliates to it through the networks.