Starting a new Affiliate Program - need suggestions

Hey guys -

Great forum, I find myself getting lost for hours like when I'm on wikipedia!

I'll keep it short - I want to start an affiliate program for my hosting business. Is it even possible to incent affiliates to target a specific type of demographic?(e.g. business owners) Our niche is higher-priced reliable services.



Thanks!


-k

 

Nice weak off topic spam post mimmi.

To get back to the OP's question, there are a lot of hosts that do have an affiliate program. Many affiliates offer people free hosting wtih limited functionality, then off them an "upgrade" to whatever host is paying the most commission. I've seen several sites like this for sale and they seem to do pretty well.

 

Karl sent you PM with link to one of the best out there. Check it out and let me know if it suits your business.

Regards

 

what kind of software are you going to use? How do want to pay in your affiliate program? pay per sale system or pay per click, in all cases you can take a look at xooPartner Affiliate Tracking Software is pretty good and the support is great.

 

Utropicmedia-Karl,

If you want to track your affiliates commissions and things then you will need affiliate tracking software. If you have not got any yet then list at http://www.affiliateseeking.com/affiliate-software/1.html is some of the most used tracking software online for affiliate programs. To get proof, this software is listed on an affiliate programs directory so I think it would have a very good idea of what software is popular and what software is not as new affiliate program submissions get dealt with on a daily basis at this site.

Anyway good luck with your affiliate program. A good idea to probably do aswell is to check the affiliate program directory to see what other web hosting providers have used for their affiliate program. By each program it normally tells you what tracking software they use.

 

We already have affiliate capabilities in our provisioning software. We are looking to pay 20-30% of the recurring business with a cap of 100$ per referell. Comments?

edit: I think I need to be more clear when I post.

I was looking for comments on the actual structure of our program - how much to pay, how often to pay, misc. guidelines, etc.



Thanks!

 

Why don't you just pay for the life of the customer? That's fare I think.

 

I do like that idea. What is the percentage paid to the affiliate usually based upon?

 

I don't know, but I just saw your post that says you are paying recurring commission untill your affiliate reaches $100 and then they will not have anymore recurring earnings even if your customer that they referred still purchases. Thats what it looked like to me from your post and thought that wasn't really fare. If you have recurring earnings then why not just pay for the life of the customer. Many people prefer recurring earnings that are for the life of the customer rather than having a program where you just earn from the one sale or earn untill you reach a certain amount.

 

We will pay for the life of the customer - I like that. My next question is what is the best way to get new affiliates to signup?

 

Promote it just like a site. I must admit though, getting good affiliates is not easy. You can try to use forums to recruit some, but don't spam, you could submit it to affiliate directories, etc.

But I know that alot of affiliate programs fail and close whereas some actually make loads from having others sell their products. The success rate of your program will depend on how much you work on getting new affiliates, your commission rates, you support and customer service, your conversion rates, you returns rates, your cookie length, how many good affiliates you manage to get, etc.

 

If you can afford I think is best to use an experienced affiliate consultant to design, review your affiliate program and recruit quality affiliates.

Someone like http://advertising-recruiting.5staraffiliateprograms.com/recruitment.html that is also a member of this forum.

 

Or you could just join a network and leave all the worry, stress and hassle behind...

 

lol, that's a good idea

 

bump - we're still looking for suggestions. also, any input on the best way to get quality affiliates would be useful.


thanks guys!

 

we are also planning to use idevaffiliate to run the program. any feedback?

 

IdevAffiliate not bad solution used them for some time.
You may try xooPartner Affiliate Tracking Software (http://www.xoopartner.com) for free (they have special offer at the moment). No risk with free account.

 

utropicmedia-karl, you can test xooPartner Demo version to find out if it meets with your requirements