How should I implement an affiliate program

[Bubzeebub]

What's the process of becoming an affiliate? I don't mean selling other products, I mean having others sell YOUR product? What should someone be wary of? Also, what affiliate sites are best?

[lorax]

You might want to spend a few minutes sifting through these [google.com].

[Bubzeebub]

I see. Wow, is this correct what I'm seeing? CJ charges the advertiser 3k to join? Are there any affiliate programs where advertisers can sign up at minimal costs?

[Playful Melissa]

great questions - starting a program from scratch is hard and required a lot of time, effort and advertising.

When you balance all that out its not a bad price for all the exposure CJ gives you - if I could get someone from there to return phone calls I would be there.

[Bubzeebub]

Do you know of any that have a lower startup fee?

[incrediBILL]

There are a bunch with low startup fees under $500, or you can download and install a FREE or low cost affiliate program package directly in your own web site. I advocate the latter as all the affiliate links then point to YOUR domain (an SE bonus depending on who you talk to) and you get links as well as referal sales. One good hosted one to look at, less than half of CJ's price might be "My Affiliate Program" by Kowabunga Technologies, and they have what I advocate: "your affiliates can use YOUR main url as their affiliate link".

HOWEVER, with all that said, the advantage you get with Commission Junction is many thousands of grubby little affiliates that will jump on your campaign right away and start pushing your wares. It might take you quite some time to get that volume of affiliates using other affiliate services. If you're seriously interested, call Commission Junction and explain you want to use them, but they're a little pricey, see if they'll give you a discount. It's business, if they're hungry they might be willing to deal vs. letting their competition get your account.

[Bubzeebub]

It looks interesting. What I took special note of was the claim that the new anti-virus software actually BLOCKS most ads from other popular affiliate programs by default! Very interesting. Thanks for the heads up. You're incrediBill!

[incrediBILL]

Bubzeebub, glad I gave you something interesting to look at!

BTW, it's not exactly the anti-virus software that blocks the affiliate ads, it's the personal firewall component of the anti-virus package to be exact. Anything that tries to display an image with the image source containing ".html, .cgi, .php, .asp" etc. is assumed to be a banner server and just blocked by default. I didn't know about this until I was visiting my mom once and was showing her something on my web site and NONE of my affiliate programs showed up, NADA, as her firewall blocked them all.

[Bubzeebub]

that doesn't seem to bode well for some of the bigger affiliate programs then. They'll have to change their tactics a bit, or face decreasing sales, don't you think?

[incrediBILL]

Best I can tell I'm getting about 75% affiliate impressions, but there's spider crawling in that 25% too, I haven't take the time to figure out the exact variance.

Webmasters may fight back in the future and just refuse to serve the content if ads won't display, as I toyed with a javascript solution that did just this and it was trivial to implement. Unfortunately I sell sponsored links and banner ads direct so I can't afford to stop the banner blockers at the expense of my direct advertisers.

[Bubzeebub]

What concerns me is the number of affiliates a new company would have. Companies lik CJ seem to have that advantage, if nothing else. I'd love to hear more stories of people who have done well with affiliates .