How to set up an affiliate program for your products

First, read why you should an affiliate program for your products and services

There are several ways to set up an affiliate program.

1. Purchase an affiliate software program. Affiliate software will track your affiliate sales and enable your affiliates to view their stats. This option requires that you run your affiliate program. You are in charge of accepting payment and sending out commission checks. Affiliate software includes IDev, AssocTrac and Pro-Track.
2. Use a third party affiliate tracking company to run your affiliate program for you. These companies will track your affiliate sales, enable your affiliates to check their stats and send out commission checks for you. Affiliate tracking companies include Clickbank and Click Trade.
3. Affiliate networks. Well-known affiliate networks include cj.com (Commission Junction) and Linkshare. These networks are very expensive and are typically only used by large companies.

1. Clickbank – $50 set up fee.

Clickbank is great for setting up affiliate programs for digital products such as ebooks and software. They have many affiliates (over 100,000) that can sell your products.  Clickbank will run your affiliate program and enable you to accept credit cards. They will bill your customers, pay you, and pay your affiliates a commission. They charge a one-time $49.95 activation fee, and a $1 + 7.5% fee per sale. There are no monthly fees.

Benefits: Clickbank is the first place affiliates go look for products to promote. So if you are selling electronic products, I highly recommend Clickbank to get easy exposure to affiliates that will promote your products.

Limitations: Clickbank won’t accept physical products and you’ll need special authorizaton for products over $100. They rarely accept products over $100.

I’ve been using Clickbank for about 10 years now both as an affiliate and as a merchant.

I highly recommended Clickbank if you’re selling ebooks, software and other electronic products under $100.

Click here to visit clickbank.

Find out how to set up your product with Clickbank.

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2. Paydotcom – Free for the first product.

PayDotCom is an inexpensive solution for online vendors. I am using Paydotcom both as an affiliate and as a merchant. My reason for using both ClickBank and Paydotcom is to get additional exposure from affiliates.

Here are some benefits of Paydotcom:

1) It’s easy to get started adn set up new products. This makes it a great resource for people who are new to creating and selling products online.

2) Low fees. There is no set up fee for the first product.  There is a small fee if you want to promote more than one product. You don’t have to pay fees for each new product you add.

PayDotCom.com charges a small fee for each sale. This fee will automatically be deducted from the affiliate’s commission and will be paid to PayDotCom.com by the vendor. This is all automated. The small processing fee is based on the price of each sale as follows. $0.50 (sales under $10), $1.00 (sales from $10.01 to $20.00), $1.50 (sales from $20.01 or more).

3) Offers good reporting capabilities.

4) Immediate payment from sales. Since PayDotCom uses PayPal, you have immediate access to the money you make from your sales. No waiting for weeks before you get your money.

Click here to visit paydotcom.com

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1ShoppingCart –  Starts at $29/mo – Pro version is $99/mo and includes shopping cart, autoresponder and affiliate model.

I’ve set up several products with 1ShoppingCart’s affiliate module. I am also using 1ShoppingCart as an affiliate.

Here’s my evaluation:  1ShoppingCart’s affiliate module is okay if you only need 1 affiliate program for 1 product and it’s a good solution if are using or want to use 1hoppingcart as your shopping cart. But if you want to set up affiliate programs for several products, it gets confusing for the affiliate. The first program you set up becomes the default and that’s the one they’ll see first.

You should consider 1ShoppingCart’s affiliate tools if you want to use 1shoppingcart as your shoppingcart and only plan on having an affiliate program for 1 product.  (I do recommend 1shoppingcart highly for your shopping cart needs).

Click here to visit 1shoppingcart.

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IDev One time fee of $99.99 to $299 – or $29.99 to 49.99/mo

Idev is the best in this price range and it works well.

You can purchase IDev with a low, one-time payment of $99.99. Personally, I perfer a one time payment as it is the most economical option.  But If you don’t want to install the program on your server, you can use iDev’s low-priced hosting instead.

I’ve been using IDev as an affiliate and I also set it up for merchants so I am familiar with it from both sides. I found it user friendly as an affiliate.

The set up is user friendly. It works with almost all merchant accounts, shopping carts, billing systems and membership systems.

The support is great — and I’ve taken full advantage of it. There are also training videos that walk you through every step of the process.

I highly recommend it as the best in this price range.

Click here to find out more information about idev.

E-Junkie

I have not used E-Junkie personally but my research indicates that it provides a great shopping cart that many people use and recommend. However, some people have commented that their affiliate program is not that great – especially if you’re selling more than one product on your site. It would still be worth checking it out if you only need an affiliate program for one product.

Conclusion

There are many other affiliate programs. I can help you select the best option for setting up an affiliate program for your business.  My recommendations will vary depending on your needs. If you’re just starting out, using one of the third party affiliate companies is the easiest way to get started as everything is taken care of for you.

Contact me if you need help with setting up your affiliate program or if you need a more sophisticated system than is mentioned here.

If you want to set up your own affiliate program, I recommend reading this book:

Here’s the legal mumbo jumbo:

I only recommend products I believe in whether they have affiliate programs or not.  I have used all the products I’m recommending here either for my own web sites or clients’ web sites. Some links are affiliate links, and if you click on an affiliate link and purchase something, I might get paid a small commission.

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