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How Easy is it to Create an Affiliate Network?

by AHayes183
11 replies
Hi Warriors,

I am currently very interested in creating my own store and affiliate network for ebooks. Not a new concept, but I was wondering if anyone had any ideas on whether it would be possible to create a new affiliate network easily or whether I would do better by piggy-backing off of Clickbank?

Regards,
Antony.
#affiliate #create #easy #network
  • Profile picture of the author Andy Rockwell
    One thing I'd suggest looking into would be Rapid Action Profits. It lets you take payments through paypal and set up your own affiliate program.
    A quick search of the forum or google will get you more info on it.

    I've been using the script on several of my sites for the last year or so and it's worked quite well.
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    • Profile picture of the author AHayes183
      Originally Posted by Andy Rockwell View Post

      One thing I'd suggest looking into would be Rapid Action Profits. It lets you take payments through paypal and set up your own affiliate program.
      A quick search of the forum or google will get you more info on it.

      I've been using the script on several of my sites for the last year or so and it's worked quite well.
      Thanks Andy, I will have a look at it in a moment. The idea is to become a publisher and distributer of really helpful/authoritative ebooks. At least then (unlike clickback) people won´t have to skip thousands of potentially awesome products due to the sheer volume of them.

      Any other suggestions?
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  • Profile picture of the author shabit87
    I would like to think that setting up everything would be the easy part.

    Finding trusty affiliates and advertisers to work with may deem itself difficult, but I have to say I have no expierence in this area, but I do wish you all the best with what you're developing. Be sure to share it with the forum when you're done, k?
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    • Profile picture of the author AHayes183
      Hi Shabit,

      Actually on the contrare, I think there are thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of affiliates who know how to sell products through various means of marketing. The good news is that by monitoring the products myself, or through my team, we can ensure that only the most useful/honest products are sold. I might have a look at incentives to keep affiliate marketers motivated, but in most cases the affiliate program on its own should be more than enough.

      At the moment the idea is only a seed but I will keep you guys updated when it starts to take shape.

      Antony.
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      • Profile picture of the author shabit87
        Originally Posted by AHayes183 View Post

        Hi Shabit,

        Actually on the contrare, I think there are thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of affiliates who know how to sell products through various means of marketing. The good news is that by monitoring the products myself, or through my team, we can ensure that only the most useful/honest products are sold. I might have a look at incentives to keep affiliate marketers motivated, but in most cases the affiliate program on its own should be more than enough.

        At the moment the idea is only a seed but I will keep you guys updated when it starts to take shape.

        Antony.
        Oh no, I meant getting affiliates to promote for you on your network. Building up a positive rep will take time. I've heard some affiliates complain about newer networks not paying on time and affiliate managers not being available to help. Sorry I didn't explain myself well.
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        • Profile picture of the author AHayes183
          Hi Shabit,

          That´s a valid point. Hopefully if I do choose to use this route I might be able to use my content company´s reputation to garner some favour. At least in this respect, I already have an address book full of internet marketers.

          However, I might try and talk to clickbank to see if they would be interesting in creating a new network; or at least a private section where I can build my own members. As I said its early days!
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  • Profile picture of the author fatboy
    Antony,

    There are many ways that you can do this that are actually pretty easy. You can go the wordpress plug-in route with the e-commerce shopping cart and the affiliate plug-in. I will have to look, but I know I have the website saved some where. I have set it up for a couple of people before.

    Another route that you can take is the amember membership site. It has a great affilaite program and is also easy to set up.

    I really think this is a great idea, as there are so many things that are clickbank that it is really hard for every "good" product gets promoted.

    Good Luck, and if there is anything I can do to help you out, let me know.

    Justin
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  • Profile picture of the author 100Bandz
    I'm no expert, but I would first make it free to post a product, and include all sorts of payment methods.. If I were you, I would sit down and think on how to make it unique.. It make take you some time, maybe even a month, but you should come up with an idea if you think hard enough.. (Shower is a great place).. You can look at all the great innovations, like facebook, to get ideas. Then you should email all the top marketers & advertise on IM forums, SEO would help as well.. Good luck
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  • Profile picture of the author willyboy104
    Building an affiliate network is easy, I could even create one in just 5 minutes, you can buy software for this, complete CMS systems for this type of network.

    The difficult part is actually getting advertisers, sure you could get affiliates to come to your site quite easily and check the network out they might even sign up but since they dont have any advertisers to promote...they would be inactive.

    So, what's the hard part?

    Well thats getting the advertisers, these advertisers would choose lower CPA costs for them, lower CPC costs and CPM costs as well as higher revenue shares, why? Because your a new network, to them you are a small company, a freshy...they want you to prove yourself and to do that you have to pay the price...this means lower costs for them and affiliates losing out for less money...so this creates another problem.

    Why would they affiliates promote on lower payouts?

    Simple, they wouldn't.

    To create a successful affiliate network these days you need backing, or leverage from other successful sites in the sector...

    If you don't have investment and a high working capital to pay affiliates as well as a large admin cost for all the advertiser deals.

    A very difficult challenge in today's performance marketing networks. The most successful are getting very strong, to beat them you would probably need to merge pre-existing networks in order to create a strong competitor.

    Just my 2 pence.
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  • Profile picture of the author jazbo
    I have an affiliate network with 50% commission on all my products. It took some time to get going, but I now have about 30 affiliates and the value of their sales is now outweighing the sales from my site. So it can work, but its an effort to get the right plugin/script to run it and to get people to sell for you.
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    • Profile picture of the author AHayes183
      Hi,

      Thanks for the response guys. What got me thinking about this all in the first place is I am currently writing my own series of books which covers various markets. I then thought of a place to put them all under the brand name; while offering services to others... Of course each one will have its own sales page but its good to build a brand.

      100 Bandz:

      Lol, thanks for the tips. It will be free to post a product but it would need to be reviewed first before it could get accepted. As for promotion, I have many ideas since thats one of the specialities of my current company.

      Willyboy:

      Talking about merging networks could be an idea. I know that this idea would grealty benefit Clickbank for example if they decided to turn it into a joint venture, but I really cant imagine them using a third party if they went for it. I might have to approach a couple of smaller networks who are on the rise and see if they want to branch out. Im reading Business Stripped Bare by Richard Branson at the moment and I admire his life goal to always provide the best to customers. I don´t plan on taking on Coca Cola but I think there is a huge market for this at the moment. Because of this, once some advertisers understand the mission they will certainely jump on board. For those that don´t, thats their decision. Business always works like that, I suppose its about finding the venture capitalists.

      Jazbo:

      Thanks for the input. Would you be interested in linking?

      Regards,
      Antony.
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