But if you want to make a really strong affiliate program,



with adoring-sales-machines for affiliates, it must be

VERY attractive to affiliates.

The best way to do that is to offer lifetime

commissions. That means you pay commissions on EVERY

purchase a referred customer makes, not just on the

first purchase.

If you pay commissions for every purchase that your

referred customers make, you offer your affiliates the

chance to earn a lot more money than they otherwise

would.

That will strongly motivate your smarter affiliates to

work harder and be creative, and that is EXACTLY what

you want them to do.

There are lots of things that make an affiliate program

great, but one of the most important is reliable tracking.

==============================

The magic ingredient: Tracking

==============================

If an affiliate sends you a customer, the affiliate

must earn a commission when that customer makes a

purchase.

You would not have that customer if the affiliate had

not referred them, so the affiliate deserves to be

rewarded.

To achieve this you must track all referrals reliably,

both online and off.

You should use cookies to store the referring

affiliate's ID number. You should set them with no

expiry date, but they will inevitably be lost well

within a few months, if not weeks, after they are set.

Browsers have a limit to the number of cookies they

can store. A lot of web sites now use cookies. This

means that your cookies will often be overwritten by

those from other web sites.

You must make sure that your cookies work with Internet

Explorer 6, which will discard cookies not compliant

with P3P standards.

Details:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnpriv/html/ie6privacyfeature.asp

Tracking by IP address is not an accurate method of

long-term tracking, however it is an effective way to

track visitors during their FIRST visit to your site.

It is a good idea to use IP tracking to catch any

people who have cookies disabled.

Every time your affiliates send someone to their

affiliate URL, your server should send them to either a

dynamically generated or pre-generated page with their

affiliate ID embedded in it. The affiliate's ID should

also be stored in the URL, so that if the customer

bookmarks and returns, the affiliate is still credited

with the sale.

In your database of customer profiles, you should store

the ID of the affiliate who referred each customer.

Whenever a customer "profile" makes a purchase (online

or off) you should credit the appropriate affiliate(s)

for the sale.

Storing the affiliate's ID in the customer's profile is

the best, most reliable way to track in the long term,

both offline and on.

Some systems also allow you to track offline by

supplying the user with a fake phone extension. This

extension is actually the referring affiliate's ID. You

can also ask people faxing you to quote an order number

- which includes the affiliate's ID.

To catch any who "slip through the cracks", your order

processing software should scan your order history for

any orders going to the same name, e-mail address or

phone number of a customer, and pay the referring

affiliate their due commission.

========================================

Where to get affiliate tracking software

========================================

You have two options: build or buy.

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Buying affiliate software

--------------------------------------------------

Buying affiliate tracking software is the way to go.

It is so much cheaper than developing it yourself,

and quality is guaranteed.

There is only one merchant offering a system that

can handle true lifetime commissions: My Affiliate

Program, with its Lifetime Commissions module add-on.

This is the only system custom-built for lifetime

commissions, and it's fresh off the production line

(December 2001).

There is one other good near-lifetime system - Ultimate Affiliate.

It is not specifically designed for lifetime commissions,

but it can handle residual commissions with ease.

------------------------------------

My Affiliate Program

------------------------------------

This is a great affiliate tracking software suite,

recently made even better by the addition of the

Lifetime Commissions module.

It is run by Kowabunga Technologies, and was honored

with the "Editor's Choice" Award by Dr. Ralph Wilson

of Wilson Internet, who called it "the 'Cadillac'

of its category."

Wilson Web:

http://wilsonweb.com

It is hosted on Kowabunga's secure servers, though

a version hosted on your own domain is possible. Over

500 Merchants use MYAP.

It tracks primarily by a cookie for the first

purchase. CGI/ASP tracking is also available,

and it can even track sales made over the phone.

Affiliate management is also simple, with automated

sign-up and a clear interface.

You can even reward your top earning affiliates with

bonuses that can be easily and securely awarded.

The Lifetime Commissions module itself works by

generating a "Lifetime identifier" when your customers

make a purchase.

This field can be anything you want, like the

customer's surname plus the last 5 digits of their

credit card, their name and phone number,

or any other combination you can think of.

When a sale is made this field is compared with a

table that contains a list of these fields and the

affiliate that referred them. If it finds a match,

it awards the due commission.

If it doesn't find a match, it then looks for an affiliate

ID in the cookie and makes a new entry to the lifetime

identifier database.

A simple, yet highly effective system. Database tracking

is the most reliable way to track in the long term.

I highly recommend MYAP with the Lifetime Commissions

module for lifetime tracking.

My Affiliate Program Software:

http://www.myaffiliateprogram.com

------------------------------------

Ultimate Affiliate

------------------------------------

Ultimate Affiliate is a good PERL software suite for

UNIX servers. Ultimate Affiliate tracks by cookie, IP

address, and can produce dynamic or static web pages

that have the ID of the referring affiliate embedded in

all internal URLs. All your affiliates' details are

stored in a MySQL database.

With a knowledge of PERL and HTML you can customize

virtually any page created by the software.

This software can easily handle recurring commissions,

and has graphical stats for both you and your

affiliates. It can handle up to twelve tiers of

commissions.

I recommend you do not pay out on more than two tiers.

More than two tiers is multi-level marketing, which

generally has a bad image on the Internet because it

attracts spammers. MLM products also tend to be over-

priced to pay for the many tiers of commissions

Ultimate Affiliate:

http://www.groundbreak.com

================================================

Give your affiliates the right tools for the job

================================================

One thing that really makes some programs stand head-

and-shoulders above the rest is real-time tracking that

shows affiliates the conversion rates for their various

links.

That means affiliates can see which of their various

links are performing and get an idea why, and what

links aren't and how they could be improved.

Affiliates should be able to see the number of click-

through to each of their different links, the number

of sales that each link has made, and the conversion

rate for each link should be calculated for them.

This enables them to figure out how to improve their

links, and thus make more money for themselves, and for

you.

They should also be able to set the landing page for

these links, so that they can link to specific

products.

Affiliates who link to and promote specific products

are a lot more successful than those who simply promote

your site in general.

The shorter and less your links look like referral URLs

the better. Some people recognize affiliate URLs, and

are suspicious of them.

Consider the following (imaginary) URLs:

http://www.pottery-store.com?more-info

http://www.pottery-store.com/cgi-bin/affiliate-referral.cgi?affiliate12341

The first one (where "more-info" is the affiliate's

username) is much more likely to lure a click-through.

A big advantage of short referral URLs is they are

easier to put into newsletters, which are a highly

effective way to advertise online.

=============================

Help your affiliates help you

=============================

Ninety percent of affiliates won't make a lot of money

for you. They need encouragement, motivation, and help.

Consider giving performance bonuses to the top earners.

Run a monthly newsletter and praise your top affiliates

in it.

Tell your other affiliates how the top earners did it,

and about the performance bonus you gave them. Give your

affiliates ideas on how to promote your products best.

Your top earners will appreciate the ego massage, and

your other affiliates will find out what's possible if

they put their mind to it.

For more details see:

How to make your affiliates enthusiastically loyal

http://www.associateprograms.com/search/affiliate-loyalty.shtml

Remember, when you help your affiliates get sales, you

help yourself get sales.

==============

The end result

==============

Starting a lifetime affiliate program is not easy, but

the rewards are worth it.

To make your affiliate program successful, you need to

make it attractive to affiliates, and the best way to

do that is offer good rewards.

If you pay lifetime commissions you offer affiliates

the opportunity to earn more money than they normally

would. They will work harder for the better commissions

and in the end, it will pay off with a better, more

effective affiliate program, that is more profitable

for you.