6 Tools To Start Your Own Affiliate Program
You’ve heard it’s a good idea to have your own affiliate program. How you can have your own sales army who would promote you and you only need to pay them when they perform. Sounds great right? But how do you get it set up? What tools and what kind of setup do you need?
Image by Steve Woods
There are generally two ways. Find and use a shopping cart system that has an affiliate program built in, or, use a third party or stand alone system that plugs into your existing shopping cart if you have one. Let’s explore the various tools that are built into the shopping cart.
1ShoppingCart or Wahmcart – These are similar systems. They include everything. The shopping cart, the auto responder, the email mailing list system, affiliate program, tracking system etc. So this is a very full package system which I recommend if you are pretty new. It takes the least amount of setup and technical know how. Yes you do have a monthly investment but compared to the time you’ll spend setting up your own system when you’re new, I think it is worth it. No need to frustrate yourself before you even get started.
e-Junkie, 2Checkout and Clickbank are also shopping cart systems with built in affiliate programs. They are pretty inexpensive to set up. The nice thing about these sites is, your products are included in part of the marketplace so affiliates who are already signed up can easily and quickly look you up and sell a product. In Clickbank and 2Checkout, you do not need to pay the affiliates – they will deduct it from your payment and pay the affiliates.
iDevAffiliate is a standalone system. You install it on your web site. You manage and maintain it yourself. It can work with multiple products, multiple products and with just about any shopping cart that allows you to add a small line of code into your thank you page – the last page where customers land on after checking out.
So which do you use? I hate to use this word – it depends what you want or need.
- If you already have a shopping cart and are deeply invested in it, something like iDev is probably a good place to start because it lets you get started with the least interruption to your regular sales process as possible.
- If you don’t have one and are starting fresh and want to maintain control over affiliate communications, and yet have least setup or technical concerns, 1ShoppingCart, Wahmcart or e-Junkie is the way to go.
- If you really want a totally hands off approach and don’t mind paying more processing fees – keep in mind that your communication with affiliates *may* be limited or require you to do more setup in order keep in touch with your affiliates, then 2Checkout and Clickbank is idea.
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What about using amember? I need a shopping cart and affiliate manager to work ideally both in English and Spanish. I was looking into Amember as it looks like the most versatile and affordable option. I don’t intend to sell a membership by now, just a digital product, but I’d like to be also open for that possibility in the future.
Would like to hear your thoughts.
Hi Monica, I did not include aMember for this post because it is geared more towards a web based membership site setup not so much a shopping cart that anyone from a digital product seller to a physical product seller could use although if your products are all online/digital then aMember can definitely be used in lieu of a shopping cart like you want to do. I can tell you it will work. aMember’s affiliate program still needs some improvement although I can tell you it has come a long, long way since it was first included. One of the limitations that come to the top of my head – because it is fresh and because I was just talking about this with someone the other day. The reporting part is still sparse and you can’t get information like who purchased what in your affiliate screen.
As an affiliate/admin, you can see the sale but it doesn’t link to who purchased the item and what the item was. On the other hand, you can find out who the affiliate is if you know the buyer but there’s a disconnect in between. It’s small things like that.
Also, at time of writing, you can’t actually give preferred affiliates special percentage. It’s the same across the board. So special commissions have to be calculated manually. Having said all that, having an affiliate program is better than none and aMember certainly work, especially if you want to add a subscription product down the road.
What about using amember? I need a shopping cart and affiliate manager to work ideally both in English and Spanish. I was looking into Amember as it looks like the most versatile and affordable option. I don’t intend to sell a membership by now, just a digital product, but I’d like to be also open for that possibility in the future.
Would like to hear your thoughts.
Hi Monica, I did not include aMember for this post because it is geared more towards a web based membership site setup not so much a shopping cart that anyone from a digital product seller to a physical product seller could use although if your products are all online/digital then aMember can definitely be used in lieu of a shopping cart like you want to do. I can tell you it will work. aMember’s affiliate program still needs some improvement although I can tell you it has come a long, long way since it was first included. One of the limitations that come to the top of my head – because it is fresh and because I was just talking about this with someone the other day. The reporting part is still sparse and you can’t get information like who purchased what in your affiliate screen.
As an affiliate/admin, you can see the sale but it doesn’t link to who purchased the item and what the item was. On the other hand, you can find out who the affiliate is if you know the buyer but there’s a disconnect in between. It’s small things like that.
Also, at time of writing, you can’t actually give preferred affiliates special percentage. It’s the same across the board. So special commissions have to be calculated manually. Having said all that, having an affiliate program is better than none and aMember certainly work, especially if you want to add a subscription product down the road.