[joefun86]

My site is Daily Quotes to your Cell Phone. I am new here and have only been posting a few days but followed the site before. I am currently marketing through MySpace and Blogger. I want to start an affiliate program, nothing complicated, straightforward and it would most likely be limited to a few people.

I will be charging $1.99 for my service, each month. I want the program to be simple. For every person that sign up through you, you would be entitled to $0.50 per month for the term of their subscription. It's not alot, but I think I want to target people with already established mailing lists. One person I will be talking to has 60,000 subscribers for an inspirational e-mail. If he gets 500 subscriptions (through ads in his e-mail) thats $250 a month for him as long as they stay signed up.

Can I do this without having to buy affiliate software? I was thinking about only using a few people and writing an agreement, then sending them their money through paypal at the end of each month.

Thoughts?

[joefun86]

I forgot to add that I would keep track of sign-ups by making a special page on my site where they would direct to sign up and track it that way.

So there add would send the person to www.thedailytxt.com/affiliate/john or somthing like that.

[rejoice]

You might as well invest in Post Affiliate Pro software and do it properly as I don't think it will work... who's this mogul with 60,000 subscribers?

[malumu200]

Originally Posted by joefun86

I forgot to add that I would keep track of sign-ups by making a special page on my site where they would direct to sign up and track it that way.

So there add would send the person to www.thedailytxt.com/affiliate/john or somthing like that.

Have you been able to make any sort of significant income from this?

[joefun86]

No, I just started this about 3 days ago. At the end of the day it is just a test run for a different idea but using the same distribution/marketing. I want to get all of this down first, then when I have worked everything out, launch my other site.

[dropship]

You can definitely keep track of your affiliate program yourself and just pay your affiliates out through PayPal or send them checks every month. If you only have a limited amount of affiliates to keep track of this is not a big deal. Once you have a significant affiliate base you might want to consider having a third party processor or some more intense software to help you keep track of the affiliate payouts. For us its worth having a third party payment processor who keeps track of the payouts. Good luck to you in your venture!

[HarveyJ]

Rejoice's recommendation of Post Affiliate Pro is a good one.
My $0.02 is on iDevAffiliate: iDevAffiliate - Affiliate Tracking Software - Affiliate Program Software
It's what I used for my program a few years back.

They're both fairly limited in scope. You can pretty much only offer a handful of products, and only one campaign style per product (unless you get super premium versions or some such... dunno, haven't checked them out to be honest).
But yeah, it comes down to which one you find easier to work with.

The other alternative is to take it to a 3rd party, like ClickBank, and become a merchant through them... down side is that they'll take the lion's share of the takings.

[tscheer]

Have you looked into posting this program into a CJ or Pepperjam type of network? As a publisher myself, I have found that when first starting a new affiliate program, not having a track record is tough, especially when the payout is very low.

Perhaps you should consider listing this in a network, and hope for a massive amount of exposure right away.

[Warranties-For-Less]

Greetings,

Yes, I went through same issues trying to start paying out and tracking manually, but it was impossible, and not worth the hassle. There are enough low cost options to consider that I would say you would be crazy not to spend a little money and use software tracking.

Personally, I didn't like the replicated site deals for they work against you in search engine listings. I use a company that has the look of one site, yet everyone is assigned a specific url to promote, but you never see it as it tranfers to the main site instantly so it is not seen.

It all depends on your plans, you don't want to start with a system that cannot grow with you as your affiliates grow, so research it carefully first.

Good luck to all, Mike

[joefun86]

thanks, that makes sense.

[stockmarketreviews]

its nice idea if you list yourself with some affiliate network and let them handle everything for you .