Recomendation on Affiliate Software or Service?

I would like to start my own Affiliate Program but...

[bossmanty]

I would like to start my own Affiliate Program but I'm not sure if it can be done because I'm part of a network marketing company.....

What I would like to do is offer websites owners a portion of my sales for traffic but at no cost to the website owner.... Of course I need to track the sales from each site....

Is this possible?

[jeremy goodrich]

Yes, you would need to incorporate a tracking system betwen the traffic and sales.

Easily done ...use different affiliate ID's, and then call a pixel based on a cookie with an affiliate ID, fill in a hidden field with the pixel ID / affiliate ID, and if the sale is complete, call it again on the 'thank you page'.

Combine that with some slick reporting, cookie duration of about 30 days :) and you'll have yourself an affiliate program. :)

There are also software solutions out there, if you're looking for 'off the shelf' but it probably needs to be built into your shopping cart software.

[gaouzts]

Ideally, you would want your affiliate program integrated with your sales system so that commissions are generated automatically for every sale and the payouts are handled automatically by a third party.

You'll need to have a way for your affiliates to signup for your program, a way to communicate the links/banner ads they need to use to promote your service and a way for them to verify sales that they make and review commissions.

Also, consider how to handle credits/refunds. Will you need to credit back the commission?

[edited by: rcjordan at 8:19 pm (utc) on Dec. 10, 2002]

[2_much]

Question - for the software solutions, how do this handle tracking for the affiliates? Can they view their stats somewhere? How does that work? Sorry I'm pretty ignorant about this.

[Dante_Maure]

While the level of detail varies with each program, most quality affiliate software solutions feature a members area for participating affiliates that displays their history of clicks, sales, conversion ratios, and checks mailed.

[gaouzts]

The system we use, (sticky mail me for the info) has a member login area. You can see your sales for the month, broken down by products. There is an area where you can generate sales reports for previous months and another area that shows you which products you can sell, how much you can make and the HTML code and banner ads you can use to promote the product.