Setting up an affiliate program

[CaseyC]

How hard is it to set up your own affiliate program and what all is involved? Our company is looking for other ways to develop leads and an affiliate program is something I am curious in.

Thanks

[5starAffiliatePrograms]

Hi CaseyC,

I'm an affiliate management consultant and have helped lots of companies start affiliate programs.
However, the answer to your question:How hard is it to set up your own affiliate program and what all is involved?depends on many different factors including what type of products, what type of program and what skill sets you already have in-house. So it's a little hard to answer without knowing a little more. I'll try not to write a book and just give you a quick overview of what's involved, then maybe you will have more specific questions to ask.

The 1st thing, before you even consider an affiliate program is to look at your existing conversion rates to be sure they are good! Before starting an affiliate program merchants need to realize conversion and sales is their job and dependant on things only they can control. The affiliate’s job is to send qualified traffic, but if the conversions are too low affiliates will not stay.

Then providing your conversions are good, you will need to buy and install tracking software or join an affiliate network. Lots of options. This is your foundation though so important you pick the right one.

Then there is lots of marketing copy to write to set up your landing pages, affiliate info pages, welcome emails, designing banners and other marketing tools and a bunch of stuff like that. Then you need to recruit, train, support and motivate on an on-going basis.

Starting a SUCCESSFUL affiliate program takes a lot of work. Some merchants launch one and assume it will run on auto-pilot. It does not work that way. Launching and growing a thriving program is much like building an outside sales force.

So in a nutshell that's it. Not trying to make it sound like too daunting of a task, but to do it right does take lots of work. However if you do it right it can be your highest ROI sales channel.

Let me know if you want some resources or more info on any specific areas I've touched on.

Linda