Affiliate Marketing is a system of internet advertising in which site A agrees to feature advertisements from site B, and site A gets a commision on any sales generated for site B. It can also be applied to situations in which an advertiser may be looking for marketing information, rather than a cash sale. This process is also known as an Affiliate Program.

Why Start An Affiliate Program?

By starting an affiliate program you are hiring an army of sales reps to help you sell your products or services on the internet. Just imagine if you had hundreds, or even thousands, of people on your sales staff promoting your business on a commission only basis. This means no hourly wages, paid benefits, paid vacations, or any other employee related things. They simply get a commission of the sale for each sale they help refer. If they don't make any sales for you then you don't pay them anything. This type of performance based affiliate marketing has become very popular over the past years.

Affiliate Program Management

Setting up and launching your affiliate program is just not enough. Just because you start an affiliate program and put a link on your site to your sign up page it does not mean that you will be raking in the sales by tommorrow, it is not a "magic wand." Managing your affiliate program, affiliate partners, and recruiting new quality affiliates is a job all in itself. This task should not be added onto a current employees job as an "extra project." Starting your affiliate program off in the wrong direction can give your company a bad reputation right from jump street.

With that said, there are two types of ways to manage your affiliate program. One is referred to as "In House Management" and the other as "Affiliate Marketing Consulting" both are explained in details below.

In House Affiliate Program Management

This is when you do all the program management from your own office. To do this you would (or at least should) have to hire another employee. In my opinion, there are alot of drawbacks to managing your own affiliate program in house and very few good points.

• Pros

1. You have the employee in your place of work and can monitor his or her actions and work.
2. Very easy to communicate with the employee since you know where to find them at all times.

• Cons

1. You have to pay the employee hourly wages, salary, and over time.
2. You have to give the employee paid vacation time.
3. The employee will need health benefits and other paid benefits.
4. If your employee is not know in the affiliate marketing industry alot of the big affiliate partners will not work with him or her. This is a trust issue.
5. The employee will need to be trained on how to manage the affiliate program right. This could mean more expenses for classes, books, ebooks, etc...

Affiliate Marketing Consulting

This is becoming the most commonly used method for online businesses to manage their affiliate programs. By hiring an outside affiliate marketing company to provide you with affiliate marketing services such as full outsourced affiliate program management you are getting professional affiliate program management at the fraction of the price it would cost if you hired an additional employee to your staff.

• Pros

1. No paid vacations, benefits, sick days, etc...
2. An employee could cost you up to $3,000 per month while an affiliate marketing consultant can be much lower.
3. You can have a well trained consultant managing your program. No training or training expenses.
4. By hiring a consultant with a good repuation in the industry you can see dramatically increased sales very quickly as opposed to an employee that nobody knows.
5. If things do not work out you can simply end your agreement with the consultant and move on.

There are very few drawbacks to outsourcing your affiliate program management but I feel they are very minor and really don't effect your business enought to not at least try to see if the consulting thing is the right choice for you.

• Cons

1. The consultant is not in your office, you cannot monitor his or her actions or work at all times.
2. You will have to rely on email, phone, ICQ, and other means of communication other than direct contact.

A Consultant can also provide other internet affiliate marketing services such as:

- Product datafeed setup. With this service affiliates can have your entire product catalog listed on their sites within minutes by simply uploading a file to their database.

- Affiliate marketing software consulting. They can help you in deciding which software is the best option for your affiliate program and company needs.

- Affiliate marketing networks. If you would like to place your affiliate program on an affiliate network a consultant can help you in deciding which one is the best to go with. Or even sometimes get set up fees waived for you. Alot of consultants have special deals with the network owners that will benefit the business owners in order to get their business.

About The Author

Chet Brzezinski has been in the affiliate marketing and affiliate program management industry since 1997. If you are interested in hiring Chet to help you start a new affiliate program or manage a new or existing affiliate program you may contact him using any of the following information: Site: Affiliate Marketing Consulting at Proudmedia.com E-Mail: chet@proudmedia.com Phone: 586-992-9256 (EST - USA) Ask Chet A Question You can ask Chet questions about outsourcing your affiliate program and other internet affiliate marketing related services in our forum: Click Here To Ask Chet A Question