Specialist Affiliate Programme

[paulmc]

I have a an e-commerce website selling goods aimed at a small niche specialist market. I am looking for an affiliate programme with a difference. I am NOT looking for massive exposure across the internet on thousands of unrelated websites - this seems to be the service offered by most affiliate programmes I have found. Instead, I just want to advertise on about 6 specialist community websites which operate in the same specialist field as me. In effect, I would like to pay these guys for any traffic they can drive to my site by paying them a commission on sales which materialise as a result of their promotion of my site.

I am looking for a cheap and easy way to set this up.

Any suggestions?

[anar]

sorry if this sounds smartass...but have you tried emailing them.

I've been doing link exchange via email. about 10% people respond.

[paulmc]

sure, but I'd prefer to make contact when I have a firm proposition to make. If it is not possible to easily/cheaply set up this kind of affiliate system I would be wasting everybody's time

[jeffb]

I'm not sure if I follow what you're looking for. It sounds like you want to set up a private, invitation-only program, but haven't worked out the specifics of it. Is there something that holds you back from figuring out the specifics?

If I follow you correctly, it sounds like you can accomplish your goals by:
1. Deciding the specifics of your affiliate program
2. Deciding whether you want the software for this program hosted on your server (and be responsible for support) or hosted on a third-party affiliate software company's server (and let them be responsible for support)
3. Researching the many affiliate software packages available that meet your hosting desires and choosing the one you like best
4. Setting it up to run your affiliate program
5. Contact the sites you want to invite into the program

Granted, this involves some risk. You invest in the affiliate program up front and hope the sites you want to invite will actually join and provide enough revenue to justify your investment in setting up the program.

You'll have the best chance of making your investment work with a small, select group of hand-selected affiliates if you provide them with essentially a turnkey affiliate program instead of just a couple of banners.

Show them that you have some strong tools (text links, banners, articles, maybe Flash presentations or audio) that they can use to get people's attention referrals to your site. Make your offer as beneficial AND effortless for them as possible and you increase your chances of getting your target affiliates' interest.

But I think the key is to approach them with your program looking as organized and uncomplicated as possible. And approach them personally, so they see they are specially selected instead of one of 1 million sites that you're sending out your proposal to. (I haven't seen as many "Join my affiliate program" e-mails as I used to lately, but I'm sure that any site that's been around awhile has gotten plenty of e-mails that obviously were sent out to every and any e-mail address that the affiliate manager got his or her hands on.)

I hope this meets what you're looking for. Good luck in setting your program up.

[paulmc]

Thanks Jeff
Good advice. I am planning on the personal approach and offering a turnkey solution to make their life as easy as possible. My problem is that I have no idea who to approach to provide this turnkey solution for me. I do not want what the big boys offer - ie big upfront fees and an offer to splash my affiliate programme over the entire internet. I need to know which small players to approach. Any suggestions anyone?

[jeffb]

I set my clients up on 1Shopping Cart and it has always worked well for me and does not automatically promote your program to everyone and anyone; it leaves you to promote your program to whomever you wish. It integrates the affiliate program, though, right into the shopping cart, so if you already have a different shopping cart set up, this might not be the best choice for you, since you'd have to switch shopping carts to use the affiliate program.

There are two other standalone affiliate programs that I've always been tempted to try, AssocTRAC and MyAffiliateProgram. Both of them, like 1Shopping Cart, host the software for the program on their servers. MyAffiliateProgram, I believe, IS associated with a site that promotes MyAffiliateProgram users, so I don't know if you'd have the anonymity you seek with them.

AssocTRAC, as far as I know, does not promote your program for you; they, like 1Shopping Cart, leave that to you.

I'm not as up-to-date on AssocTRAC or MyAffilateProgram as I am with the one I use, so make sure you check out what I say about them.

All three are pricey. You can expect to pay $800 to $1500 a year with any of them, which is still less than going with the major affiliate networks.

So there's at least these three that you can check into.

[coffeebean]

Also check out shareasale. Very affordable, easy set up, and great support.

[OlRedEye]

I believe Mals E-commerce runs an affiliate module, even on their free cart. Haven't gone into it, but may be worth your while to check it out

[Andreals]

If you have just a half a dozen or so target sites as potential affiliates do some research on them, find out who makes decisions for them and run your program like a professional sales campaign.

Polish your presentation. Email, Snail mail, make personal phone calls, make appointments, make sales calls, follow up and call back. Make golf dates, meet them at professional conferences, etc... As you close one you will have momentum with the others.

If these are specialists in your field they should already know of you, you have a foot in the door. During the process of developing these sales plans you will discover any flaws and create a bullet-proof program.

A.