How to start your own affiliate program

Clickbank and Commission Junction are among the most expensive and least appealing solutions with huge fees starting at 7.5% through clickbank. CJ charges thousands of $$ to setup + 30% on affiliate payout totals.

You are far better off selecting an ecommerce platform or service that integrates with your own merchant account and CRM and has an integrated affiliate management system.

Choose an affiliate management system that tracks by IP, Cookie, Email, and Coupon if you can ;-) At the very least IP and Cookie.

I'm kind of in the same boat you are. I'm going with ClickBank to sell my product and gain affiliates since I do not have enough exposure to branch out on my own. Hopefully, one day I shall have enough exposure....and I use DAP which has lots of affiliate settings and will go through PayPal. (I assume PayPal, but I could be wrong, haven't gotten this far into my planning.) But DAP seems like it has the recipe for building your own affiliate network, if you have enough people interested without the help of being associated with someone like ClickBank.

Izzyfoshizzy,

You can check out affiliate management scripts/SAS (Software As Service) providers like this one[/URL] and other similar ones. Now, here's a tip for getting affiliates:

You're implementing content marketing campaigns (content syndication, guest posting, forum marketing, social network marketing, viral marketing, etc.) to promote your products/service offers, correct? If you have employees or outsourced service providers who develop content and implement your content marketing campaigns for you, you can:

Configure a two-tiered affiliate system where they (your content developers) can generate sales and leads for you and earn commissions for each sale/lead, as well as for them to refer affiliates and earn commissions from the commissions of those affiliates (for the sales/leads they in turn generate for you). Then:

Tell your content developers they can sign up as your affiliates so they can earn commissions for each sale or lead generated by the content materials (with their affiliate links that point to your sales and squeeze pages) they develop and post for you in your network of sites and in your offsite publication channels. Also tell them they can refer affiliates so they can earn commissions from the commissions of the sales/leads generated by the affiliates they'll refer. Next:

Develop and give them a step-by-step blueprint that they can use to promote those content materials to improve the likelihood of them earning affiliate commissions. With this strategy:

You get unique content from them at their standard service rates. And, you get affiliates who'll continuously promote (on their own, using their own resources) your sites, content, products/service offers, as well as refer prospect affiliates...

I use idev affiliate for my affiliate program.

But, the hard part is getting the affiliates. If you aren't getting enough traffic to generate enough sales do you think that traffic is going to want to try to sell your items if they don't even want to buy it? It's the kind of reality I'm facing with my custom shirt sites.

I didn't see it mentioned above but take a look at shareasale.com. They seemed to have a really good offer for merchants when I was looking into getting listed somewhere.

I use rapid action, and also clickbank. STill cannot find anything better.

You could also use Paydotcom. Get it listed in the marketplace and have other affiliates promote it for you, and then promote your "affiliate sign up" page via the affiliate program directories.

I've looked into Rapid Action Profits per the recommendations of some of you. Has anyone had any experience with this software?

I still can't get over the fact that almost all these sources seem optimal for digital products like ebooks, etc. Our business offers a service, a promotional service. Do you guys think any of these resources would help? Has anyone tried using affiliates to sell services? Is this something that can even work?

Thanks again for all your help everyone. really appreciate it

wow it's expensive setting up your own affiliate program on sites like shareasale.com. not sure what steps to take next now...

You can consider DigiResults.com, it integrates both credit card payment and affiliate management, and its service is free.

You can check it.

There are many affiliate marketing outside there. You just have to decide which one is best for you and how much you are willing to spend. The truth of the matter is that, getting affiliates in not so easy nowadays.