[pentupentropy]

I have a website I want to set up in my spare time... idevotions.com (matchmaking/dating). What I would like to do is get an accurate list of fixed costs on a per-sale basis. I think affiliate marketing is the way to go, but I need an advertising program to target the affiliates. Has anyone had any luck with any of these? I am looking into CJ (www.cj.com) which is owned by valueclick. They're a big player, but I was wondering if there are any others? I'd like to do this aside from my other ventures and fo rthe most part let it run itself.

[ColinS]

Hello,
I am also building an affiliate program for telecommunications services. I looked into some of the advertising networks like CJ and found that they are very costly to setup and take a good chunk of profit that could be yours.

I learned that you really have to go out on your own and recruit your own super affiliates to build the business. The good news is doing the work once can create effortless sales month after month. By using a two-tier affiliate program, you give your affiliates a huge incentive to recruit and build your business for you.

Corey Rudl's Insider Secrets to Marketing Your Business on the Internet is an invaluable step by step guide to building a highly-successful automated business online, no matter what the product. I don't know how I could live without this.

For my business www.800Revolution.com I am using some really powerful software called AssocTrac to build my affiliate program. It automatically handles all the signup chores, tracks all my sales and commissions, and lets my affiliates check live sales statistics 24/7. Best of all it automates the payroll! All I have to do is hit one button to export the commission data into quickbooks 8-)

I am really excited about all the opportunity online these days. With all of the dot-com fallout, I thought there was no more money to be made on the internet :-0 But what that meant is--business is business, online or offline. Focus on delivering value to consumers and stay profitable.

Best of luck to you... feel free to email me if you have any questions or comments

colin [at] chasethechance.com

[teana]

THere are many affiliate services like cj, linkshare, b3, but those are definitely costly. If you want a simple solution, os commerce has an affiliate engine that's pretty decent. It works with their os commerce shopping cart.

It's free too!

We're testing right now for our new site and so far it's pretty good. We just have to create reports so that the affiliates can see what's going on.

[jpomerenke]

Originally posted by teana
THere are many affiliate services like cj, linkshare, b3, but those are definitely costly. If you want a simple solution, os commerce has an affiliate engine that's pretty decent. It works with their os commerce shopping cart.

It's free too!

We're testing right now for our new site and so far it's pretty good. We just have to create reports so that the affiliates can see what's going on.

Teana-
Glad to see you are still alive. We also are testing Oscommerce Affiliate. We are either going to use that or possibly program our own.

[teana]

hey joey,

love your site! We've been busy building out our new site and going through a lot of legal stuff which has bogged us down for the past few months. That aside, it's good to be back!

[earthwonder83]

Is OScommerce and Linkshare the same? Linkshare provides the merchants and OScommerce is just about online store management right? I'm confused...

[jpomerenke]

Originally posted by teana
hey joey,

love your site! We've been busy building out our new site and going through a lot of legal stuff which has bogged us down for the past few months. That aside, it's good to be back!

Can i ask what kind of legal stuff?

[teana]

earth,

to answer oscommerce has its own affiliate program, which means people sign up through you and you cut the checks to each person that signs up. You have the reports and stuff.

Linkshare is a thrid party affilaite program, where people join up at linkshare and then from there can join to all these other places. LS handles all of the account maintenance, reporting and what not. They are costly to join, but programs like theirs have thousands of people already joined, where as if you start your own, you have to try and get your own affilaites too.

Joey,

the legal stuff was just trademarking issues, which is why we changed our name. My brother now runs the company under the new name of Paper Street Teas, so I can focus on product development. Along with the name change came new logo development, new label and packaging designs, new web design, pretty much starting all over. But the reincarnation of our company looks to be really awesome!

[Netffiliate]

Take a look at my affiliate tracking system:

http://www.netffiliate.com

Please excuse the fact that the online tour/demo isn't working just yet, I've been revamping the site.

Netffiliate is a pretty new affiliate tracking system but it's been under development for almost 2 years. Feature wise it's on par with the biggest systems out there such as DirectTrack and MyAffiliateProgram. It even has advanced security features that they don't offer plus a simpler interface. Pricing wise it's much cheaper and fees are based on useage and not a percentage of payouts. I currently have two advertisers using the system to great success.

Also, any new advertiser gets a free personal consultation with an experienced affiliate program manager to help plan and establish real goals and a plan for their program. We also offer fully managed affiliate programs where our affiliate manager will personally setup, maintain and promote your program at a very reasonable rate.

Also, I've got a new service getting ready to launch to the public called FeedShare. It's hands down the most advanced product feed system online. If you're not familiar with product/data feed technology, it allows an online merchant place their whole shopping cart on their affiliate sites instead of the typical text/banner ads.

Affiliates have several ways of integrating their site with the system but it's extremly simple, as little as one line of code and they don't have to program, run a database or even update content, it always shows the latest inventory.

The site for FeedShare is still under construction but we've currently got 7 advertisers using it including NationalGeographic.com, LuggageOnline.com and GeneTree.com.

Try it out... this is the link for LuggageOnlines affiliate setup page. This is where the affiliate designs how they want it to look and you can get a live preview of it by clicking the Get Code button at the bottom:
http://luggageonline.ipc.partnercent...s/default.aspx

If anyone has any questions just let me know. I'm still working on getting this business off the ground and would love to talk to others in the same industry.

[pentupentropy]

I don't really need software, I have 13 different software suites over a range of sites that pretty much all have their own affiliate software built in. I will say though, that I reviewed the site and one of the features I really like is the recurring payouts. I wrote to some of the developers of certain brands like aewebworks, and ask them to put recurring commissions in the dating software. They didn't know what I was even talking about. Why would I want to pay my affiliates every customer pay period? silly people.

Do me a favor, look at the dating software available from aewebworks (http://www.aewebworks.com) and see if I can use your affiliate system for that on a basis that works when users pay. In other words, can I tie it into my system so that when members pay (once every 1, 3 6 or 12 months) the affiliate gets paid too. If you can get it to that for me I'll buy it. I also may need you to install it at that point.

[Netffiliate]

pentupentropy,

I've looked at the dating software you use, looks like a nice app by the way! There should be no problem integrating my system with your dating application.

The two ways to do integration is using "Clear Pixel" technology where you place a clear 1x1 pixel gif on your order confirmation page which ties into the tracking system, sending it all the info to log the transaction.

The second way is the most secure because it's done on the server but requires custom server code. It's more secure since your web server talks directly to the tracking system, there's no way for the user to alter the data being sent.

For simplicity the first method would probably suit you best as Netffiliate lets you personally approve all leads/sales before the affiliate is paid so if anything looks off you can deny the sale. Only if you notice a high rate of strange sales would I recommend the 2nd method.

Installation is not a problem, I can integrate the tracking pixel into your order confirmation page, test it out and setup the branding so the affiliate interface looks like your site.

Also, if you opt for the "Private Domain" feature (lets you run your tracking system from affiliates.yourdomain.com instead of yourdomain.netffiliate.com, I'll cut the setup fee to $95 from $145 and you have a full 30 days to make sure you like the system or the setup fees are refunded.

If you have any more questions just let me know. If you would like to use Netffiliate just send me an email at: ajeric@netffiliate.com and I'll walk you through the signup process. If you'd like the Private Domain option I'll set up the discount on that for you and let you know the how to get a sub domain setup with your host and pointed to the Netffiliate server.

Thanks