Affiliate Programmes
Affiliate programmes operate on the basis that either you sell other businesses' goods and services from your website for which you earn a commission, or other websites sell your products and you pay them a commission.
Probably the most popular affiliate programme on the Internet is run by the giant online book retailer Amazon which has successfully run their affiliate scheme since 1996. You sell their goods from your website and earn a commission. This is how you do it:
1. Fill out an online application form to become an affiliate.
2. Amazon then visit your website and assess it for suitability and compatibility with their own goals and ethos.
3. If you are accepted you will be given special log on details and when you visit Amazon's website you can choose whatever goods you want to sell on your website.
4. You then cut and paste simple HTML code into your website, which displays whatever products you have chosen.
5. When visitors 'buy' from your website they will be automatically taken to Amazon's site where the sale, including processing of credit cards etc, takes place.
6. Each sale earns you a commission, which you can either take as an Amazon gift voucher or have paid into your account.
Most affiliate programmes work on this basis. There are all sorts of programmes that you can join from selling books to flights. Even the main DIY companies are now offering affiliate programmes.
There are two ways you can organise your own affiliate programme. Either offer your own programme by advertising it on your website and contacting other websites that you think might be interested in selling your goods and services. Or join one of the marketing companies which specialise in running affiliate programmes and for a fee they will recruit affiliates on your behalf and work out which one has sold what and to whom.
The advantages of working with a specialist marketing company are that your programme will gain immediate credibility which is something that can be difficult to achieve on your own. They also take away the headache of trying to work out which of your associates has sold what. Obviously the more products you offer through your site the harder this will be and the only reliable way of working out your affiliate sales is to purchase specialist software. This software could cost you anywhere from £200 to £20,000 depending on what you require.
At the time of writing http://www.affiliatewindow.com is probably the UK's largest affiliate management company. It's free to sign up to their website and browse all the affiliate programmes that you can apply to join. They also offer merchant schemes where they will, for a fee, manage your affiliate programme for you.
If you want to go it alone and purchase your own software or find out more about running your own schemes, the following websites should be useful:
- http://www.affiliatezone.com
- http://www.affiliateshop.com
- http://www.myaffiliateprogram.com.
Specialist companies come and go and it's always worth doing your own checks to find out the most up-to-date affiliate programmes and software tools. All you have to do is search the major search engines using key words 'affiliate programmes', 'affiliate software' or 'run your own affiliate programme'.
