Hi,

I was wondering what everyones experience is of running an affiliate program. I have seen many hosts running their own program or using a third party such as Linkshare or Commision Junction.

The advantages are obvious in you can specify to only pay for leads. But i am sure there will be disadvantages such as how much do the likes of CJ charge? How to deal with fraud etc. If so is there a greater advantage in running your own Affiliate program.

Experiences good and bad appreciated.

Take a look at CJ and take a look at the web hosts(for Merchents). When I visit that section I always notice that many are 2 weeks new or so. Which tells me not many people stay. Its hard to sacrifice that 1000 or so plus the minmum.

Originally posted by AGUK
Hi,

I was wondering what everyones experience is of running an affiliate program. I have seen many hosts running their own program or using a third party such as Linkshare or Commision Junction.

The advantages are obvious in you can specify to only pay for leads. But i am sure there will be disadvantages such as how much do the likes of CJ charge? How to deal with fraud etc. If so is there a greater advantage in running your own Affiliate program.

Experiences good and bad appreciated.

AGUK,

We run a Web Hosting Affiliate Program. We opened the program the end of October this year, using a custom built Java/JSP based Affiliate Program solution.

So far we have attracted quite a few affiliates and we are looking to grow to over 1000 affiliates by the middle of next year. Remember that affiliate marketing falls in the 98/2 rule. 98% of your affiliates will never produce anything. Many won't even put the link to your program on their site. 2% of your affiliates will take the ball and run with it. The key is to get those other 98% to get up and do something. There are a lot of ways to do it.

If you are serious about starting an affiliate program I'd highly recommend Ken Evoy's book Make Your Site Sell! (http://myss.sitesell.com/toolshed.html) We purchased it about 3 months ago, and it has been invaluable. It covers a large swath of marketing topics, and it has several chapters talking about Affiliate Marketing from both the Merchant's and Affiliate's standpoints. It is important to consider a program from both perspectives. If there is no (or very little) benefit to affiliates, why would they sign up?

Take care,

Brian

We've had terrible experiences with commission junction, even though it was a LOT easier than managing it ourselves.

Do you know how hard it is sending out checks every month, writing it off as "kickbacks", filing 1099-Misc, and 1096 forms? It's simpler to just pay commission junction for "advertising".

But their buggy softare often resulted in our account being deducted twice for the same sale, or losing pennies mysteriously.

That and they charge too much for offering that buggy system.

Originally posted by bitserve
We've had terrible experiences with commission junction, even though it was a LOT easier than managing it ourselves.

Do you know how hard it is sending out checks every month, writing it off as "kickbacks", filing 1099-Misc, and 1096 forms? It's simpler to just pay commission junction for "advertising".

But their buggy softare often resulted in our account being deducted twice for the same sale, or losing pennies mysteriously.

That and they charge too much for offering that buggy system.

We had heard lots of stories about CJ before we started our program - that is why we built our own software package. It does tracking, affiliate statistics, sales analysis, etc.

It was cheaper to get started that way, and we have complete control over it. If we want to add something, or package it and sell it as a product at some point we can.

Take care,

Brian

an added benefit of hosting your own affiliate program is the link popularity aspect (for search engine ranking)
(eg.
{many sites linking to http://qksrv.net(through cj)}
vs. {http://THEBESTHOSTINGSITEONTHENET (through your own program)}

CJ is to expensive and not worth it. Try FineClicks.com or ClickXChange.com. They are much better, though less pretty ;)

Has anyone tried Clickbank? I have been thinking of trying them out and seeing if they make a difference. My clients want an affiliate program, and have been looking around, but...I hate third parties sometimes. I have looked for scripts and nothing do what I have in mind, so we may just have to write our own I guess.

Originally posted by smartbackups
Has anyone tried Clickbank?

Clickbank looks fine except you have to use their own Card processing.

For those that run their own affiliate program how do you go about promoting and getting sign-ups. I presume the easiest way is to promote it to your current customers but these may not be ideal.

Originally posted by AGUK


Clickbank looks fine except you have to use their own Card processing.

For those that run their own affiliate program how do you go about promoting and getting sign-ups. I presume the easiest way is to promote it to your current customers but these may not be ideal.

Right. And as of last time I used Clickbank - they didn't do recurring billing. Which means you have to get customers to pay for long periods ahead of time - or you need to get them to come back and pay every month. Not exactly ideal for web hosting or other subscription services.

(Someone please correct me if Clickbank does now do subscriptions.)

Plus, clickbank charges 10% + a small fee per transaction. Quite steep. Depending on the volume you do, you may want to write your own program. We did, and it is working out very well.

Take care,

Brian

I just wanted to follow up on my earlier message. I just received the latest newsletter from SiteSell. They are now offering free trial downloads of Make your Site Sell. (MYSS) (The book I mentioned in my previous message, copied below.) They are also offering free trials of 3 other books as well. I haven't read through those yet, but I plan to. If they are even half as good as MYSS then it will definitely be time well spent. :)

The free books can be downloaded here. (http://freetrial.sitesell.com/toolshed.html)

Take care,

Brian


Originally posted by bteeter


AGUK,

We run a Web Hosting Affiliate Program. We opened the program the end of October this year, using a custom built Java/JSP based Affiliate Program solution.

So far we have attracted quite a few affiliates and we are looking to grow to over 1000 affiliates by the middle of next year. Remember that affiliate marketing falls in the 98/2 rule. 98% of your affiliates will never produce anything. Many won't even put the link to your program on their site. 2% of your affiliates will take the ball and run with it. The key is to get those other 98% to get up and do something. There are a lot of ways to do it.

If you are serious about starting an affiliate program I'd highly recommend Ken Evoy's book Make Your Site Sell! (http://myss.sitesell.com/toolshed.html) We purchased it about 3 months ago, and it has been invaluable. It covers a large swath of marketing topics, and it has several chapters talking about Affiliate Marketing from both the Merchant's and Affiliate's standpoints. It is important to consider a program from both perspectives. If there is no (or very little) benefit to affiliates, why would they sign up?

Take care,

Brian

Originally posted by bteeter


We had heard lots of stories about CJ before we started our program - that is why we built our own software package. It does tracking, affiliate statistics, sales analysis, etc.

It was cheaper to get started that way, and we have complete control over it. If we want to add something, or package it and sell it as a product at some point we can.


Any chance you might want to sell (or give away!) your custom program? Or do you know of any decent ones that are cheap (or free?!)

Thanks.

Hello!

For those of you who have seen our website (we ran a promo last time that neccessitates exploring our site), you may have known that we are using Clickbank and have recommended them and stated why we like them. You know what to do next... click www and discover.

:)

Brian,

I think there is a slight error in what you have said here.
Clickbank charges $1 + 7.5% of your sale. After that it deducts a certain percentage for the referring affiliate site (you decide what percentage to give on your account management).

To illustrate: Say you are selling $100 and offering 7% for your affiliate program commission.

When somebody buys from you through the affiliate link, here is the computation:

1. Clickbank charges $1 + $7.5 (which is 7.5% of $100)
2. What is left from number 1 is $91.50
3. From number 2 amount, get $6.41(7% of $91.50). BTW, Clickbank rounded off amount using 2 decimals.
4. You are left with $85.09

But, if someone buys from you directly and not through an affiliate link (BTW, they call it hoplink), you are left with $91.50

One great feature of Clickbank is that they are able to "lock" the affiliate link through a special cookie for 90 days. So if you are an affiliate of a site, and someone clicks through your affiliate link and decides to buy 90 days later, you still get the credit provided no other affiliate site referred them within that period.

Another advantage is that there is no need of merchant account.

Disadvantage: Not real-time money transfer directly to your bank account. You just have to wait for the check to arrive.

Originally posted by bteeter


... Plus, clickbank charges 10% + a small fee per transaction. Quite steep. Depending on the volume you do, you may want to write your own program. We did, and it is working out very well.

Take care,

Brian

:)

I think affliate programs areb a waste of time. They have never worked well for me only bringing a few customers. The best is to advertise on a website.

Affiliate programs work very well. Its a tricky business, but it can be very lucrative on both sides. I have about 30 sites built mainly around affilate programs. Most would be shocked at their performance.

CJ cost me $1395 network access fee plus a $500 escrow to ensure affilate payments (got in just after all the price increases earlier this year). They then 30% of what you payout to affilates, on top of what you've paid them.

$100 sale 30% commission
$30 to affiliate - $9 to CJ

If you dont payout at least $250 a month then you pay the difference between what you've paid and $250 to CJ. This is a very low threshold for any program.

My opinion of CJ is very high. I still get my personal account checks every month like clockwork and my affiliate program is extremely effective. They definately create a volume of transactions.

Clickbank wont bring you affiliates in droves, quite the contrary so far in my experience. The other networks mentioned are mainly for freebie/contest low paying but high volume type programs.

Let me know if you have any other questions, I can probably at least give you some first hand perspective.

Originally posted by electric


Any chance you might want to sell (or give away!) your custom program? Or do you know of any decent ones that are cheap (or free?!)

Thanks.

Yes, we would consider licensing our custom affiliate management software for other companies. There would be some work involved to get it to work the way the purchasing company would want, including:

-Linking to billing solutions,
-Commission percentages,
-Changing pages to look like your web site and not ours

We would need to work closely with the company to determine an appropriate license fee. It would be scaled by the number of affiliates in your program. Let us know if you are interested, we can talk in detail.

In any event if you are looking for cheap - consider MyAffiliateProgram. It is a cheap and has several tiers you can buy to get more features.

Take care,

Brian