Launching an affiliate program for your company is a great move into the online advertising space. You have some decisions to make however before launch your affiliate program. Many companies just choose to launch on a Commission Junction, Linkshare, Shareasale or Google Affiliate Network or a “large affiliate network” to handle it all through their systems. This is the easiest way to proceed. Launching on a large affiliate network needs to be done properly with good affiliate management in place. If you just launch the program with no plan of action or person in place to work with your new affiliates, you can’t expect your program to grow much or reach its full potential. Another way to go is to launch an in-house affiliate program by building an affiliate tracking program onto your website. This can be done relatively easily and cost-effectively, but you need the right specs and the proper coders to excute the application development. I have built several inhouse affiliate programs over the years and would be happy to assist in the design and development aspects.
Some companies choose to do both, build an inhouse affiliate program as well as launch on a large affiliate network. This is what I recommend to my clients as the best option long-term. This allows you to recruit both to your inhouse program as well as into your network program depending on the preference of the affiliate. You can also afford to payout more money per sale or per lead through an inhouse program which is desirable to the affiliate. Just make sure you pay on time every month. Launching affiliate programs on both inhouse and network platforms quires more affiliate management and upkeep. There are many tasks to perform on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. Thats why you need an experienced affiliate management company, like ours, to handle this for you. Inhouse affiliate management can be effective when done properly with a large amount of proactivity on the part of the affiliate manager.
When you go to launch an affiliate program you have to make sure you have a good plan of action, good affiliate management in place, and the resources to stick it out for the long-haul. Nothing happens in affiliate marketing over-night, it’s a process that should grown every month and every year. But doing the right things with your affiliates you can be sure that you will have a flourishing affiliate program in no time at all. Contact Experience Advertising for more information about your affiliate management needs.
