Best Way to Set up Affiliate Program for a Company I Reached Out to to Promote Their Products?

[CaptainHustle]

So I reached out to a company to enter into an affiliate partnership. They do not have an affiliate program but they are interested. What is the best way to set this up?

Should I direct them to some affiliate platform? Or is there a simpler way of tracking the traffic I drive and the sales made through that traffic?

To summarise, the objective is to achieve three things and three things only.

1.Tracking clicks.
2. Setting up a cookie.
3. Tracking sales.

 

[alwicz]

So I reached out to a company to enter into an affiliate partnership. They do not have an affiliate program but they are interested. What is the best way to set this up?

Should I direct them to some affiliate platform? Or is there a simpler way of tracking the traffic I drive and the sales made through that traffic?

To summarise, the objective is to achieve three things and three things only.

1.Tracking clicks.
2. Setting up a cookie.
3. Tracking sales.

Hey CaptainHustle,

I would probably avoid affiliate platforms. It's kind of overkill for what you are trying to do. Also, it's way more complicated to set up everything for the company you want to promote. They have to sign all those contracts, and the affiliate platform will also take a cut from the commissions so that you will end up with lower money.

If they set up it only for you, you have no competition and exclusive offer to promote.

I found this article to be very helpful: https://optinmonster.com/start-an-affiliate-program/

Take a look. Those are WordPress plugins that set up their affiliate tracking, etc. The company is entirely in charge of that.

I hope it helps!
Alex

 

[CCarter]

So I reached out to a company to enter into an affiliate partnership. They do not have an affiliate program but they are interested. What is the best way to set this up?


Should I direct them to some affiliate platform? Or is there a simpler way of tracking the traffic I drive and the sales made through that traffic?


To summarise, the objective is to achieve three things and three things only.


1.Tracking clicks.

2. Setting up a cookie.

3. Tracking sales.

It really depends on how motivated they are. The fastest way is through an affiliate platform since they've got all the technical know how with instructions and setup.

To get them to do it on their own, that's an uphill battle since you didn't mention what platform they are on. The biggest problem is the technical know-how to set all this up with some pre-made affiliate software that integrates with their eCommerce platform.

I assume if they had the technical know-how they would have already done it.

It's not difficult if they have web developers within the company, just a bit of a hassle. Remember the bigger the corporation the harder it is to get new initiatives going cause they have to go through committees and a bunch of red tape.

If it's a small operation and you can aid in finding the right developer it could be a 20 to 40 hour project.

The easiest method is to use a platform like Commission Junction. The next method is to use software and get their developers to implement it. Perhaps ZenDesk.com is the most rounded industry software available for this.

Within my operation I coded the whole process from scratch - took about 30 hours. Is the company willing to shell out 20-40 hours worth of developer work to implement and then learn and be reminded - If you can successfully sell the benefits of having a ton of people selling their product for them - yes.

 

[CaptainHustle]

I would probably avoid affiliate platforms. It's kind of overkill for what you are trying to do. Also, it's way more complicated to set up everything for the company you want to promote. They have to sign all those contracts, and the affiliate platform will also take a cut from the commissions so that you will end up with lower money.

This was exactly my logic. I am not interested in getting them to start an affiliate program or get on a platform where other people go after my juicy keywords that I cannot protect with links. So we have been looking for a smaller, workable solution. It needn't have a proper dashboard just a way to track sales in real-time. One thing I have been thinking about is getting them to give me a discount code for like a dollar or something. This way the people from my blog can apply the code and that will track itself for free.

Thank you for the link, I will try to implement that.

Within my operation I coded the whole process from scratch - took about 30 hours. Is the company willing to shell out 20-40 hours worth of developer work to implement and then learn and be reminded - If you can successfully sell the benefits of having a ton of people selling their product for them - yes.

Hey CCarter,

Thank you for the thorough reply.

I am actually not very keen on them starting an affiliate program or getting on an affiliate platform. I just wanted better commissions than amazon.

I actually proposed a 10% commission per sale but it seemed like they could have offered a lot more. The average product price is around $35. It is a pretty small company. They even said they will give me a better commission rate if they see that it has traction.

For now, I will just try a workaround solution that tracks sales accurately and has a cookie (i sense this will be more difficult?) I can't code for shit.

 

[CCarter]

I actually proposed a 10% commission per sale but it seemed like they could have offered a lot more. The average product price is around $35. It is a pretty small company. They even said they will give me a better commission rate if they see that it has traction.

If you think about the moment after next, let say you drive in 100 sales a month - you get $350 right. You don't think they are going to say "Hmmm... can't we get other people to do this as well?"

They'd have to be pretty stupid not to. Once you open Pandora's box it ain't closing.

 

[bernard]

I am actually not very keen on them starting an affiliate program or getting on an affiliate platform. I just wanted better commissions than amazon.

I actually proposed a 10% commission per sale but it seemed like they could have offered a lot more. The average product price is around $35. It is a pretty small company. They even said they will give me a better commission rate if they see that it has traction.

For now, I will just try a workaround solution that tracks sales accurately and has a cookie (i sense this will be more difficult?) I can't code for shit.

Depending on how good they are at Analytics, they could set up some kind of ecommerce funnel for you. I assume it is pretty easy to see which sales have your site as a direct channel, but of course there is often more to it than that, which is why affiliate programs set cookies to track the entire funnel. I believe that Google Analytics do have various attribution models though, such as first click, last click and various other stuff.

 

[DarkRed]

For now, I will just try a workaround solution that tracks sales accurately and has a cookie (i sense this will be more difficult?) I can't code for shit.

Why not something like this? Seems an affordable solution: https://www.affiliatly.com/