Why You Should Run Your Own Affiliate Program

Companies with affiliate programs just tend to do better

. Think about it for a minute. Which company do you think will succeed more- the company who only performs sales in-house, or the company who has a dedicated team of outsourced marketers and salespeople spreading their product to every corner they can find? Which do you think will do better, the company who pays their salespeople and marketers an hourly wage regardless of performance, or a company who pays their salespeople and marketers ONLY according to their performance? A company that effectively runs itsown affiliate program will just plain have much greater profit potential than a company thatdoesn't.

So what exactly does it mean to run yourown affiliate program? An affiliate program is essentially a system that you or your company manages that recruits, tracks and manages a group of affiliates. Your affiliates are going to be people who have and create websites that promote and sell your product. Every time that they send a qualified lead to your sales page and that lead makes a purchase, the affiliate earns a certain percentage of the sale. Not all affiliates work online using websites, but the majority of affiliates these days work online spreading links to your product. Each affiliate will have their own link that helps you track which affiliate sent you which sale, and this makesaffiliate program management really pretty simple.

Now, I can understand the objections to putting an affiliate program into place. After all, there seems to be two major downsides to the idea. First, you're going to be paying people a (usually large) percentage of sales you might have been able to make on your own. Second, you're going to have a whole host of new people to manage, especially if you run an open program. Let's address these concerns briefly.

It's true that you will be paying your affiliates a large percentage of the money from each sale that they generate. In fact, it's not uncommon forcompanies with affiliate programs to pay over 75% of the sale to the affiliate who generated it. That's a LOT of money, and it doesn't really make sense if affiliates aren't sending you sales that you wouldn't already be making. But that's the beauty of it- affiliates are going to generate a lot of sales for you that you wouldn't otherwise have ever made. Which would you rather have- 25% of a sale, or 0% of a sale that would never have happened?

Next, you will be managing more people, and it's not uncommon for a successful product to have hundreds of people sign up as affiliates. But there are a few things to keep in mind. Realistically speaking most of those people are not going to be that effective. Most of your affiliate sales are probably only going to come from a couple of different affiliates, and the rest of the lot probably aren't going to make enough sales to warrant a lot of management. Second, there are plenty of affordable pieces of affiliate software out there that make the job simple.

Overall, it's just a lot smarter to have an affiliate program than to not have one. The good thing about them is the fact that they tend to be really easy to start, and you don't need to put much effort into them if you don't want to. Having an even moderately successful affiliate program running in the background of your business can make a huge difference.

Why You Should Run Your Own Affiliate Program

By: Nicholas Black

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