Catalyst - 5:51 pm on Feb 25, 2004 (gmt 0)

There is no magic bullet in affiliate marketing. Regardless of the network, to some degree your success will be based on your offer, market, conversion rates and how much effort you put into recruiting top partners. Many people think the networks are the answer and yes they are part of the answer. I guess you could say the network is the foundation, but without lots of work the house will never get built.

CJ ='s large volumes of affiliates. Some are supers and many barely know how to put up a banner and will never make sales. Yet I have had many client's on CJ that are doing 100K to 3.2 million in sales and one even cutting individual commissions checks in the 10K a month range. So there is lots of money to be made on CJ but it does not happen on its own. It takes lots of recruiting effort and many other things to do it successfully.

Similar results can be attained on other networks or even Indie programs, it just takes more recruiting and takes longer to build up your base of top performers. So the way I see it, you "pay to play" either way. You either pay the higher cost of CJ and get off to a faster start (but it still takes work) or you start on another platform, wait months to make sales wonder why sales are not coming in OR you pay someone to recruit for you.

Either way the goal should not be to get 1000s of partners, which is what you get on CJ, but enough top quality partners that know how to make sales. Most of my CJ programs have about 2000 affiliates, 600 active and 20 top performers. So if you can find a way to just get those 20 top performers you can skip CJ. But how do you find those? It's a lot harder without the benefit of a network.

Sharesale is a great network that costs less than CJ. But you get what you pay for and there are not as many affiliates or as many top performers there as there is on CJ. In-house software is much less expensive but there is also more labor involved and a heck of a lot more recruiting. So again, one way or another you pay to play.

There is much more involved in launching an affiliate program than many people realize. So as someone said earlier - it's not something you should go into thinking you will just "try it out".

It's not as passive at doing PPC, where you just tweak your KW and check your stats - it's a lot of work to do it right and be successful. And you aren't just dealing with paying a PPC company and if it does not work you just cancel the account. You will be building partnerships with real people, who will come to rely on and trust in you. So I would recommend not even trying to launch a program unless and until you fully realize the time, money and effort that will need to go into it and are committed to do what it takes to build a strong program that strong partners will want to join.

Best of luck to all, Linda