Advice please on starting an affiliate programme in UK

[Dilip Sinha]

Hello

We are [url]www.alltopbooks.com[/url, an X-Crt based internet bookshop in London. I'd be grateful for help in how best to set up an affiliate programme.

We can use the X-Cart affiliate marketing module to allow people to register and for us to track their sales. We'd be looking to pay commission based on products sold. We do have a basic page on the website but it doesn't set out the detail of the programme as we haven't gone out to market it before now (money issues).

We already have a couple of affiliates doing around £1000 worth of business a year each with us and a few other people have registered but not bought anything yet. But I now would like to advertise it to seek more recruits proactively.

All Top Books is not a very high budget operation, being a backup to my full time day job. So where do you think I should promote it and how please?

I've looked at clixgalore.com but am doubtful that giving them £55 to pay commission from will have people beating down my door just because I am the latest website to advertise. After all, there are lots. You can pay around £300 for them to "market" your product but I wonder what results this gets (I'm asking). Please don't bother suggesting places like Commission Junction as we can't pay around $2000 at this stage especially with no guarantee of results.

So:
where would you promote it?
what would you say?
bearing in mind we are a UK book trade retail operations with margins from 30% downwards, what would you offer per sale?

I'd be very grateful for any ideas.

Regards

Dilip Sinha
www.alltopbooks.com
The difference in online bookselling!

[MattE]

affiliate marketing is about pay for results - unless you are doing a pay per click campaign.

Affiliate marketing is not something to go into lightly - read this http://www.plusone.com.au/diary/archives/70 as a backgrounder.