Resolution #2: Affiliate Program

A couple of weeks ago, I announced that I had four Business Resolutions for 2013, I listed those resolutions and promised that I would be telling you more about each of my plans for 2013.

Last week, I told you about my first resolution, to write and publish 20 or more e-Books in 2013.  This week, I will move on to my next resolution, #2, setting up an affiliate program for some of my products.

Some of you may be asking what an affiliate program is.  No problem with that!  For those who are wondering about that, an affiliate program is a program that a seller of items can put into place where people would earn a percentage if they refer people and those people buy.

For instance, let us say that you have a website about the Philippines.  Maybe it is about living in the Philippines, maybe it’s about Philippine history.  Whatever it is about, if it is tied to the general topic of the Philippines, it is likely that some of your readers may be interested in some of my books, since many of them are about the Philippines.  So, you sign up for my affiliate program, I provide you banners advertising my various books, and you put those banners on your site.  If somebody clicks on the banner and buys any of my books, then you would earn a commission for the referral.  Affiliate commissions vary in the amount.  I have seen such commissions as low as about 10% or so, and I have seen other commissions go even up to 80%.  It is up to the seller to decide how much the commission is, and if you agree to the amount that is being offered you can sign up for the program.

I used to have an affiliate program

In the past, I did have an affiliate program.  I got rid of it, though, for one reason.  I found that people were advertising my products on unsavory sites.  For example, porn sites and such.  I just could not allow that, so I completely eliminated the affiliate program.  But, I still get so many requests for an affiliate program that I feel it is something I need to reconsider, and put back into place.

So, that brings a big question.  How will I keep my links off of porn sites and such in the future?  Well, I need to police it better.  I need to monitor where my banners are appearing, and if they are on sites that I don’t approve of, then I need to ban that particular affiliate from the program.  It’s not hard to do, but it just takes the time and effort of actually doing it.

How to set it up?

There are a number of ways to implement an Affiliate Program.  Probably the easiest thing I could do is to implement the program through e-Junkie, the company that handles sales and download of my e-books and a few other products.  E-Junkie already has the software all set up so that I can easily implement an Affiliate program, so this would be very simple to implement.

Aside from e-Junkie, there are plenty of other methods too.  There is Affiliate program software that you can put on your site.  There are likely plugins for WordPress, which is the software that I use for my sites almost exclusively.  So, finding a way to set it up is simply not an issue.  Most likely, though, I’ll do it through e-Junkie.

Is it beneficial?

I go back and forth on the amount of benefit I would get from an Affiliate Program.  The fact is that in my niche, I have many of the top sites that I already own myself.  So, the affiliate banners would be showing on sites that are probably much less visited than my own sites.  So, would I get many extra sales?  I’m not sure, but the best way to find out would be through doing it and seeing what happens!

So, I am committed that in 2013, I will be implementing an affiliate program for my products.  I’ll see how it works, and hopefully, some of you who are reading this can join the program and make a bit of money.  How much commission will I offer?  Not sure yet.  You can be sure it won’t be like 80%, but I do hope to offer a nice commission that would make it worth your while to promote my various products.

When will it be available?  Again, not certain, but do keep in mind that this is resolution #2, so #1 will be done first, at least it will be started first.