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You can significantly increase site revenue and traffic by starting your own associate or affiliate program. Planning your program will involve choosing or developing your software, setting up agreements with your associate sites, and deciding how much pay in commissions. You will also need to accurately track the activity on your program once it's up and running, and to do this you'll need to consider how you can provide good reporting systems to your associates.

But before you begin you should understand the ins and outs of affiliate networks and decide if this approach is indeed the best outlet for your marketing energies. A successful affiliate program will require you to consider and decide on many options, such as outsourcing opportunities, product offerings, program models, and affiliate site evaluation criteria. You'll need to target your market and spread the word about your opportunity, and manage the selection and payment of your affiliate sites. This sounds like a lot of work, but the rewards can be tremendous. Just ask Amazon.com.
Understand Affiliate Programs

Creating an affiliate program is a good way to boost your revenue, expand your marketing reach, partner with leading e-tailers, and increase your site traffic. But you need to understand the different types of programs and how the different commission structures work before you launch one of your own.
Should You Create an Affiliate Program?

Once you understand the basics of an affiliate program, you'll have to evaluate whether having one will be a worthwhile investment of your time and money. As with any other business venture, you will need to consider many factors, including whether there is a demand for the program, whether you have adequate capital and staff to implement and manage it, and whether you will gain an acceptable return on your investment.
Choose Your Path to an Affiliate Program

If you decide that you want to implement an affiliate program, you have two basic choices: Outsource by joining an affiliate network or go the "indie" (independent) route. If you have a sufficient budget, an affiliate network, such as CommissionJunction.com, LinkShare.com, or Nexchange.com, can handle the basic development and implementation of a program. But if your budget is somewhat smaller or you would prefer to develop the program on your own, the entire development process can be done quite effectively in-house.
Develop Your Own Affiliate Program

If you go the independent route, you'll need to develop the entire program yourself, from deciding which of your product offerings will be included in the program and choosing a program model to drafting legal agreements and determining evaluation criteria for membership. But before you begin, be sure to do your homework. This includes conducting research to see what affiliate programs already exist in your space, as well as what your target market is looking for.
Launch Your Affiliate Program

Once you've developed an associate program, it's time to decide what types of affiliate sites you want to target and plan a marketing campaign to garner their attention. You'll also want to visit each applicant's site to determine if it is appropriate for inclusion in your network, and you'll need to be prepared to provide members with the necessary links and graphics to promote your associate program on their venue.
Manage Your Affiliate Sites

If you've developed an attractive associate program and marketed it well, it won't be long before you have a good number of sites to manage and links to track. Managing your members effectively will require you to use dependable tracking methods to ensure accurate measurement of each affiliate's effect on your sales and traffic. As a reputable affiliate merchant, you will also want to pay timely commissions, provide administrative and technical assistance, and establish an ongoing quality control program to ensure affiliate conformance with program guidelines.

by Jennifer LeClaire