If you have products or services that you offer through your web site, starting an affiliate program is something to strongly consider. An affiliate program allows other web site owners to sell on their web sites, the same products and services which you are offering on yours. In return, you pay them a percentage of your sales earnings. This is a definite win-win scenario since both parties benefit from the relationship. You get additional sales which you probably wouldn’t have been able to generate on your own, while the affiliate webmaster gets compensated for selling your item.
To start an affiliate program, We recommend signing up with a 3rd party affiliate broker. Two such brokers worth checking out are Commission Junction and ShareASale.com. The advantage of having a broker act as middle-man is that you take away the headaches of systems maintenance and sales tracking. An affiliate program requires a sophisticated system in order to successfully and accurately track all the sales transactions. Setting up such a system on a hosted account may be too complex for the starting webmaster. Furthermore, a 3rd party broker removes the possibility of the webmaster being accused of deliberate undercutting of sales. Brokers charge a percentage of your pay-out which means you don’t pay them anything (other than the joining fee) if you don’t make anything.
So thats good news.
