Start An Affiliate Program 
by Abe Cherian,

In designing your affiliate web site for your product or service there are many important factors to consider before you start building it. 

This is not something that you should just create and design as you go along. Without taking these points into consideration you may waste a lot of time going back and changing layout when you realize something is interfering with the buying process or you could have done something better. 

The points of consideration: 

- Collecting email addresses of visitors for follow up. 
- Designing your website to monitor the behavior of visitors.
- Your affiliate program “website.” 
- Ability to test your sales process. 
- Your upsell page. 
- Your thank you page. 
- "Buy Now" accessibility.

Branding your affiliate program When designing and planning your web site should actually plan on making two separate websites. One devoted to selling your product and one devoted entirely to recruiting and motivating your affiliates. You don't have to have a separate URL but some people do. 

The best way to recruit, train, and motivate affiliates is to have an "affiliates only" site set up similar to a password protected "members only" site. Whether it is free to enter, all you have to do is sign up. Your affiliate program site is set up as a direct sales web site. 

On the main page you have sales copy for recruiting affiliates. The most effective way to recruit prospective affiliates is to list case studies of successful affiliates, use actual statistics of conversion ratios, work out figures for predicted monthly earnings depending on the amount of traffic they are able to refer, describe your rewards program etc. 

Explain your product, why people need it. Somewhere on this page you should have a log in box for you affiliates. This does two things. It makes your affiliates feel special and it allows you to offer them things such as articles and promotional items that you don't want the general public to have access to. Inside your affiliates area you want all kinds of useful things. Tips, banner ads, articles they can post, detailed explanations of exactly how your top affiliates are getting the sales they are, examples of text link ads that work well on affiliate sites. 

Basically, you want to provide them with every necessary and helpful tool you can possibly think of. You should put special emphasis on your rewards program. 

You'll want to offer your top affiliate for each pay period 10% of all their referred sales. After each pay period, send them the money via paypal, check or whatever method, announce who the top affiliate is and post a link to their site in the members area. You can also do special promotions and contests every now and then. 

You could even have a "whoever has the best conversion ratio" contest. This motivate the little affiliates who may not be able to compete with the large, high traffic sites that refer large volumes of visitors everyday. The ability to test your sales process using effective advertising is built by measuring results and testing to improve those results. It is absolutely essential that you incorporate a way to: a) Track where sales are coming from There are many services available that will allow you track exactly where your ads are coming from. For a larger initial investment you can get server-side software that does the same thing. b) Test different sales copies against one another Invest in a software program that will switch which copy is displayed to your visitors and track which one gets the sale. 

This will allow you to tweak and refine your sales copy. It is sufficient to know that you should incorporate the needed code and software as you build your affiliate website. 

Care for your Affiliates

You show that it's possible by giving them an example of success in someone close to them, that they can touch. Keep records of all your other affiliates' successes and ask them to describe them for you in detail, so that you can show them to others. It's best to publish a special newsletter just for you affiliates. In it offer the following: 

a) Step-by-Step instructions on how to market the products with the results you and the other affiliates achieved with them and real-life stories to prove it. 

b) Publish a success story of one of your affiliates every month listing the results he/she achieves and the steps he/she makes to achieve them. Let this affiliate tell your subscribers how his actions changed his life for the better, and not just the financial part.

c) Offer your other affiliates a chance to post questions to you and your other successful affiliates and post the answers in the newsletter. 

d) Provide them with all your sales material, but also explain why a specific piece did well. Teach them how to write their own. 

e) Give your less experienced affiliates a chance to speak their mind and share their stories with other affiliates as well. Create a feeling of team-work within your down line, attach your affiliates to it in all meanings of the word, and they will stay yours forever, as well as provide top results. 

You show how the environment is going to accept what you are showing and expecting them to do. Many people are afraid of what others will say and whether they will still accept them if they take an uncomfortable risk by doing something new. This especially goes for Internet-based affiliate programs. 

You must understand that people always have certain barriers implanted in them. Even if they decide to join an affiliate program that doesn't mean that they truly accepted it because they fear what their environment thinks. 

They might not even realize this, but by not fully accepting this way of life they are hindering their sales success by themselves. This is again where your personal story and the stories of your super-affiliates come in to play. 

Give your affiliates real stories of how people started out in affiliate programs and fought their environment's disapproval, but came out winners in the end, showing all others that what they are doing as just as much respectful as any other work. 

You show they can get practical help from the person who sets the example, because they have already "gone through" all of the phases, faced the same or similar problems and successfully resolved them. 

Therefore, the affiliates know they won't be left to themselves in a critical situation and will have someone beside them that can and will help them. This differs greatly from the help that comes from the management of the company that mostly just talks, nags and pressures - without giving any real or practical solutions. 

How can you show this? 

For starters immediately help all your affiliates when they request it. And then write about it in your newsletter. You have to let people know what you are doing, or they just won't know it.

You show that they won't be held 100% responsible for their actions, because they are only going to "work the system" that was designed by others. Many people really don't want to be responsible for everything they do. Instead, they prefer to be shown how to do something and then they just follow the example. In this case they want control, but not responsibility.

Why is this important? 

Because they actually fear their own failures. They fear what their environment might think if they do fail. They fear what it will do to their self-confidence. So, when they begin working with you holding them by their hands and make them feel comfortable working your system. Tell them straight it won't be their fault if it doesn't work like they hoped, but also give them real hope, based on your previous results and hard numbers.

Implementing the methods above will increase the success of your affiliates, which increases your success as well. Teach enough people to be successful and your success is inevitable. 

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