How To Go About Setting UP Your Affiliate Program

So how do you go about setting up your own affiliate program?
Well that all depends on the type of
products you sell and the commission
structure you want to work with.
Let me explain:
A lot of affiliate programs now days let the
affiliate earn commissions in 2 ways,
sometimes more (multi level marketing).
It's called a tier structure. 1-tier and 2-
tier affiliate programs.
1-tier affiliate programs pay commission
once, thats when a product is sold. 2-tier
pay affiliates when they sign up other
affiliates under them, and they then make a
sale.
Let's see if I can't explain that in a
simpler manner. Here is a good example.
Let's say you setup your affiliate program
to be a 2-tier affiliate program. When one
of your affiliates makes a sale, let's say
you give him 40% of the sale. But here's the
trick with 2-tier affiliate programs.
Let's say that your first affiliate recruits
another affiliate under him, and that
affiliate makes a sale, and also get's 40%
of the sale. The only difference here is
that the first affiliate (the one who
referred the second affiliate) gets a
portion of the sale, let's say 10%.
So in actuality, you are paying out 50% of
the total sale price to 2 affiliates. You
are rewarding your first affiliate for
recruiting a second affiliate when they make
a sale.
The majority of the sale should always go to
the affiliate who made the sale, IE the
first affiliate.
So what affiliate software should you use?
This is a part that seems to trick a lot of
people or confuse them, so I will make it as
simple as possible.
The 2 options available to you are,
A) Do it yourself affiliate software
B) Third party software
The 2 have their advantages, and it will
depend on what you are selling which on you
choose. Let's start with selling an ebook or
digital product that can be downloaded
online.
My favourite is http://www.clickbank.com
They are used by thousands of small
businesses online, and if you are just
starting out, this is what you should be
using.
Not only will http://www.clickbank.com allow
you to setup up an affiliate program, they
also send the checks out to your affiliates
and are also used as your credit card
company.
That's right, http://www.clickbank.com will
take your orders, give you an affiliate
program to sell your products thru, and will
take care of the checks so you don't have to
do anything.
So what do they want in return? They take a
fairly hefty fee per sale. $1 and 7% per
sale and they have a one time setup fee of
$49 which is nothing really. You won't find
a better company to setup your affiliate
program with if you are selling digital
products online.
Clickbank.com cannot be used to sell
physical products, IE tangible goods.
So this brings me to my next section. What
affiliate program software should you use
for shipping physical products?
You could do it yourself and use a DIY
affiliate program script. Here are a few
options,
Ultimate Affiliate: Available at
http://www.groundbreak.com for $200.
Little Salesmen: 3 CGI Programs for $197 at
http://www.cgitoolbox.com
These have to be setup on your own
webhosting company and you are responsible
for sending out affiliate checks and making
sure everything is running smoothly. If you
are not that good at cgi scripting, it might
be a good idea to get someone to help you
with setting this up, and mind you, it isn't
cheap.
You will of course need your own merchant
account to accept credit cards on top of
this as well.
If you don't want the hassle of having to
handle the setup of your affiliate program
and still want to ship physical products,
here are your best options.
http://www.netofficetoolbox.com - A very
good option
http://www.CJ.com - Expensive, but also a
good option
Now, last but not least, if you have a
membership site (one that is billed weekly,
monthly, bi monthly, yearly, etc) and you
want to start an affiliate program (and you
should) here are a few tips that will get
that started for you.
There really is only one option currently
for recurring billing and an affiliate
program that’s handled by a third party, and
that is . They charge
15% of every sale and they do have a small
setup cost, which I believe is getting more
expensive soon.
So Ibill will accept your credit card orders
and online checks, they will also give you
the option of setting up an affiliate
program, and they will again send out checks
to your affiliates so you don't have to
worry about it.
http://www.clickbank.com
is rumoured to be
starting a service for rebilling soon, which
I would use hands down over Ibill.