How do you start an affiliate program for your online business?

I’m venturing out on a small business idea online. I would like to give vendors the ability to resell my product or act as a distributor. I don’t know anything about this. How do you go about setting up an affiliate program? Any requirements? Any pros and cons?

The pros are that you will have others helping you sell your products and then you normally only pay them once they have sold the item so you can’t really loose out on that part of it.

The cons are that there is quite alot of work involved and you have to advertising your affiliate program just like a site to get affiliates interested in signing up. It’s not an easy task running an affiliate program, but you can let 3rd party networks take most of your workload of you by paying them a little extra so that they can practically run it and help get affiliates for you.

Just in case you are wondering where to get software then there is some of the best affiliate tracking software listed at: http://www.affiliateseeking.com/affiliate-software/1.html

The ShareASale listing in that link that I have just given you is a very good network that will help you get affiliates and will manage most of the affiliate program for you. You are also able to set up datafeeds, allow lifetime commissions, pay per sale, click, lead, etc.

That is a very good and reputable network. I’m an affiliate over there, but there has also been a lot of good stuff that their merchants have said to.

Hope this helped you out a little further in your decision on what to do.

Good luck anyway.