Can you help me get my program started?

[stephenmunday]

Hi! This is my first post in this part of the forums and I would really appreciate some help and ideas from you more experienced guys.

First of all, the background: My site (www.japanese-name-translation.com) launched Jan 6th and has done well on some fortunate publicity to now be averaging 1,200 to 1,500 visitors per day without any Google or MSN yet. So, I have reached my first target of launching the site and getting a bunch of highly-targetted / fairly targetted visitors.

My next target is to improve the conversion rate and to do that there are several things I am working on right now to achieve that.

What I have noticed, though, is that I am making OK sales of my lower-priced items (kanji name images and special order translations) but I am finding it a lot more difficult to shift my more expensive (and more profitable) items - the Japanese calligraphy. This is where I think an affiliate program could make a good impact.

So, now you know the background, here are the questions:

1) What would be a sensible commission to pay? I am thinking of 15% per sale. If my affiliates are focussed on the high-value items (which I would be if I were them), they could see returns of about $22.50 per sale on average at this rate.

2) I need to do this in a cost-effective way: Most affiliate software is way way out of my league. Sure I may be able to afford $1000s when I am rich and famous, but the point is that I am not there yet. I also need something that is going to be fairly simple to set up. One program that has caught my eye (thanks to a competitor - lol!) is yourcom from http://www.yoursoft-tm.com/yourcom.htm. I like the price, simplicity and PR-passing potential, as well as the good ratings on hotscripts.com. Does anyone here use this themselves or work with a program that uses this? I would love to hear experiences from both sides of the fence.

3) Apart from a place to sign up, link text and banners, what else should I provide for my potential affiliates?

Wow! A lot of questions already! I'm going to shut up and listen now.... :)

[MandyHaga]

Your commission should be a good representation of what you can afford to pay in comparison to what your competition is paying and what you'd like to pocket.

The software needed is relative to your budget as well as your needs. If you need minimal functionality, a low or no cost script such as yoursoft would work well. Otherwise, there are competitively priced options that are feature rich and don't break the bank.

As for promotional items, make sure they have a good array of banners and text links to choose from as well as good sales text or coupons that they could use on their sites, in emails, newsletters and blogs.

There are alot of things to consider when launching a program, so feel free to contact me if you have additional questions.

[stephenmunday]

Thanks Mandy. That has given me some good ideas.

Someone has also recommended http://www.idevdirect.com/ for affiliate program management software. Does anyone here have any experience of it?

[web-content-king]

I actually did a fair amount of research on this when setting up my own program and I ended up with AffiliateShop, $45/month, no setup fee for the time being, though if you need them to code for you they charge a reasonable fee (for me it was $150). Their customer service is excellent, always get a fast reply to email and can call them on the phone easily. One big drawback is that the user interface of their affiliate management site is very hard to navigate (mystery meat navigation) and the documentation is not exhaustive.

Here is my advice for what to loook for:

1) Absolutely use an affiliate program that allows direct linking to your site. That is, the affiliate link is http://yoursite.com?AffiliateID, not, http://affiliatenetwork.com?AffiliateID You may not need this now, but you very likely will in the future. The reason is SEO. With direct links you get incoming links which boosts you, and your affiliates get a direct link which can help to boost their category relevency assuming they are in a category related to yours. With this in mind, I now try to join only affiliate programs that allow direct linking, at least for the links I will place on prominent pages of my site. There's also the issue of branding, and the fact that it makes it a little too obvious it's an affiliate link when it's something like affiliatenetwork.com?XYZ rather than your domain in the browser's status bar.

2) You have to decide whether you want a large affiliate network. A large affiliate network means you have a whole bunch of affiliates right off the bat, in all likelihood. AffiliateShop has a very small network. The only large affiliate network I know of that allows direct linking is Kowabunga. They charge the most of any network in flat costs: $1000 setup + $150/month, plus any customization or setup coding you need them to do for you, but there are no percentage charges and they seem to be the gold standard for affiliate programs. I think with your product being so unique you wouldn't necessarily get much benefit from a large affiliate network anyway.

3) You should consider avoiding any affiliate network that will try to insert itself legally in your relationship with your affiliates, and especially one that keeps you from going with them to another affiliate network. Why do you want that kind of hassle if you ever decide to take your program in-house (which is not as hard as you think), or your affiliate leaves the network, or you just get fed up with them? AffiliateShop and Kowabunga do not insert themselves this way, while I know for a fact that ShareASale does.

Best of luck.

[stephenmunday]

Thanks Joel.

I have been very impressed with Kowabunga in my research, but the cost is just much more than my company can really afford and than the narrow niche product I have can justify.

I appreciate the information about Affiliate Shop. I was not aware of them and will definitely check them out.