Affiliate Programs - Roll Your Own
by Darcy McDonald
There is no better way to bring traffic to your site (other than
the search engines) than starting your own affiliate program.
With an affiliate program, you pay money to sites that can send
in customers who will purchase your products or services. This
encourages your affiliates to make sure your banner advertising
and ad copy is displayed in prominent places on their sites - the
more people they send to you, the more people that buy, and the
more money both you and your affiliate makes! It's truly a
win-win situation, and is becoming hugely popular on the Internet
today.
Over the next few months, this column will cover the main points
of setting up an affiliate program, and some of the pitfalls to
watch out for.
The first step is to find some software that will allow you to
track your affiliates, so that you can determine who has sent
you paying customers, and make sure every affiliate is properly
paid for their commissions. We at Babblebot have always opted to
build our own CGI programs to do this. It allows for tight
integration with our billing system, and it is harder for people
to manipulate it for their own good when it is proprietary code.
But if you don't feel up to writing your affiliate program scripts
from scratch, there's some good news! We recommend you purchase
one of the many great scripts found at
http://www.cgi-resources.com. Just go into Programs & Scripts,
Perl, Website Promotion, Affiliate Programs, and find one that
suits your purpose.
There are lots of companies making this kind of software. If none
of the ones there look suitable, just do a search in
http://www.altavista.com or
http://www.hotbot.com for "affiliate
program software" and all sorts of sites will come up! Take the
time to find the right solution for your company. Preferably one
that is cost effective, and performs the necessary functions you
need AND offers some support from the seller. You may be able to
purchase integration services with the software, allowing you to
easily get someone else to set your affiliate tracking up with
little difficulty (although this is certainly more expensive).
This step really depends on your skill level or the skill level
of your webmaster. If you are really confident you can do it
yourself (and maintain it afterwards), build one. If you're in
the middle somewhere, buy one and set it up yourself. And finally
if you are a hands off person totally, just pick up some software
and find an integration specialist to hook it all up for you.
So we have software and it is installed and working. Now what?
Your homework for next month will be to create some ad copy for
others to use to sell your product/services, gather some
testimonials from your site or your customers, and create at
LEAST two banner ads (one should be 468x60..normal banner ad, and
one should be 88x31 or so). We will show you how to register with
some affiliate portal sites, and how to promote your affiliate
program on your own site! See you next month!
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Get Unlimited Access To Excellent New Search Engine Optimization
& Submission Tools at
http://www.babblebot.com! --------------------------------------------------------------
About the author:
Darcy MacDonald operates Babblebot, an excellent new site
dedicated to search engine submission, ranking, and
optimization services.
To find out how you can use the new doorway page
generator to get a top ranking position in all the major
search engines, visit
http://www.babblebot.com today!
-------------------------------------------------------------
| DISCLAIMER: The content provided in this article is not warranted or guaranteed by Developer Shed, Inc. The content provided is intended for entertainment and/or educational purposes in order to introduce to the reader key ideas, concepts, and/or product reviews. As such it is incumbent upon the reader to employ real-world tactics for security and implementation of best practices. We are not liable for any negative consequences that may result from implementing any information covered in our articles or tutorials. If this is a hardware review, it is not recommended to open and/or modify your hardware. |
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