How do you pay affiliates if you're just hiring them for marketing?

no landing page?

cash only

in advance

Paypal probably. Unless they (or you) are in a country that doesn't allow it.

Strictly speaking, they'd be marketing assistants rather than affiliates. Agree the parameters of the tasks you expect them to perform, and negotiate a straight payment. You could include a percentage of sales incentive, but with eBay, you'd also be giving away a percentage of your generic sales.

PayPal is probably your best bet - ask for an invoice from the marketing assistant. And if they're any good, expect them to require some or all of the payment upfront - at least to start with.

If you're not tracking them on a performance basis (Shopify Affiliate Program, CJ, CF, etc..), you should pay them via a platform that allows you to track there work.

Companies like "oDesk", have pre-built systems that take automatic screenshots on a per 5 minute basis so that you can track employee work, and ensure there not playing casino games instead of working

~ Caleb

I would have to agree with Frank, what you are referring to are actual persons, marketing assistants as mentioned. Affiliate mostly refers to organizations like ebay, amazon and the likes. I usually pay my assistants online through paypal, payoneer, or bitcoin, depends on what is convenient for both of us.

why not go with paypal

-Ike Paz

It's pretty common for people to be paid nowadays using paypal. I believe it is very convenient for anyone, anywhere in the world which is why it stays as a great option for transferring payments. Caleb is correct, there are sites where you could hire people and you can let them handle the monitoring and just keep your account balance maintained, but I believe their name now is Upwork.

Okay, call me officially confused.

Are you hiring people to work on specific marketing tasks, to generate sales, or to host a landing page?

If you're simply outsourcing specific tasks, get a written agreement that specifies what they will do and what you will pay. Pay by the task, not by the hour, and you won't need activity trackers. Expect to pay 25-50% upfront and the balance on completion.

If you hire them to generate sales, you'll need a way to track which affiliates are responsible for which sales. Might be tough with a site like eBay.

If you want to simply hire them to host your landing pages, you have a choice. Negotiate a straight lease deal, or set up a CPA type deal.

TwinklingStars,

Hmmm... Sounds like you want to hire marketing assistants ...

And, you want to track their performance through the sales they generate for you, either as paid marketing assistants with a fixed monthly salary (optionally with a fixed commission per sale to motivate them), or as marketing assistants on a pure pay for performance arrangement ...

Also, you mentioned ebay, which means you probably want to post your products there ...

Hmmm...

Well, why can't you use a merchant platform with affiliate management features for your physical products (like Amazon) or for your digital goods (like RevenueWire)?

That'd most likely make things quicker and easier for you ...

If you can only use ebay for any reason, then first check if they have an affiliate program where each of your marketing assistants can sign up as your affiliates; and

If they don't have one, then check if they have promotional features where you can enter discount codes for your products -- This way, you can give a unique discount code for each of your marketing assistants (set of discount codes can be for all products in your store, or a set of discount codes for each product in your store); and

This can allow you to track which marketing assistant generated which sale, through the discount code that was used for the sale ...

Don't know if ebay has that though ...

And, I still recommend going with a merchant platform that has affiliate management features ...