Total Newbie - Needs Advice: Launching Ecommerce Site & Affiliate Scheme

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This is not a ploy for attention - I genuinely do need halp and advice and I have never used an affiliate scheme...

We are launching an ecommerce product (unfortunately you can't see it yet) by February 2008 and there was a demand around the people we are already connected to for a bonus scheme - basically it derived from a 'Recommend a Friend' style consideration.

The scheme runs on the basis that bonus credits are awarded in cash values if a customer registers, and remains registered after the money-back guarantee period, therefore the cash becomes payable in the third month... but it is quite substantial at £30 if someone signs up for our Standard Package, and £100 if they sign up for the Premium Package. We have already incorporated this into our systems, and people are given bonus codes that apply to them and when it is used, they receive an email confirming that someone has registered using their code, and so on...

A conversation here has recently started to escalate into whether or not we should perhaps consider Affiliate services. Upon looking at services for merchants it appears that most charge fairly high sums for merchants to join - which I think is a shame as I am sure affiliates would have a lot more smaller businesses to go at if the charges were more considerate. But I appreciate that they are getting a service too.

The problem initially for us is that we have been working for almost a year building, designing and developing what we genuinely believe is going to be a superb ecommerce solution, and certainly the most versatile and logical we have seen during our research.
However, because of the fact that we do not yet have a budget we seriously need to consider if joining some affiliate services would pay off - and in your more experienced opinions, do affiliate services work well for ecommerce solutions?

Also - which solutions would you recommend - and have you got any further advice that may be useful to me.

Many thanks in advance, all info is very welcome indeed...

Regards
Faye


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Our sales site is far from complete - but I don't mind letting you see it:

The link to the temporary affiliate info is: GoCommerced.com Contact Us

The temporary home page - currently housing a countdown link is: Gocommerced.com New Excommerce Solution

[Brendon]

From what you've said, the basic mechanisms to use some sort of affiliate deal are there, you have defined commissionable actions and trigger points and values associated with them. All well and good. What a 3rd party affiliate program will add for you at this point is

1) a large pool of affiliates who could promote you
2) existing tracking and admin functions to take some of the burden of running a program from you
3) possibly (depending on what you do) additional experience in managing an aff program (some networks will help more than others)

>> it appears that most charge fairly high sums for merchants to join

That's true of some networks, but not all. There are a couple who will take you on for free, or a nominal fee. You could consider running an independent program, and avoiding the networks altogether. You can get affiliate software which you then install and run yourselves. As you seem to have a decent dev team, it might be an option worth looking into

[moredial]

Walk before you run.

Once you have a proven product and see that your current connections are too busy to be able to bring in any more new business, then is the time to consider expanding to additional affiliates and managers.

[gocommerced]

Hello Brendan,

- and thank you for your response:

>> it appears that most charge fairly high sums for merchants to join

That's true of some networks, but not all. There are a couple who will take you on for free, or a nominal fee.

Could you update me with any details of any that are nominal or free.

We are ready to launch in February now so it will be useful to promote using affiliate services I think.

Again, thank you - as a complete novice regarding affiliating, your response was very appreciated.

Regards
Faye

[Brendon]

Faye,

Have a look down the list of forum headings on this site. Pretty much every network with a significant UK presence is represented. You might want to talk to quite a few of them, although many will prove not to be suitable for one reason or another.

Personally, I'd start with Buy.at, Webgains and Affiliate Window (in no particular order), as they all have strong UK presence, and may be inclined to offer you better terms than a CJ or a TradeDoubler