Affiliate Programs Revisited

Many webmasters have sung the praises of Affiliate Programs. They are an easy, low cost way of generating revenue and hits for your site. Affiliate programs allow you to sell items with no start up costs, no inventory and no order fulfillment. Simply place a small logo on your site and let your visitors click through to the target site.

There are many Affiliate Programs out there and their pay scale varies by product. Each company sets their own terms and you must agree to abide by their rules. But what if you could dictate the affiliate program on your terms? You can by creating your own reverse-affiliate program.

With some planning and a little ingenuity, you can create your own program and state your own terms. The reverse-affiliate program is a hybrid of an affiliate program and a link exchange. But, the company you deal with doesn’t have to be online. In fact, the best place to start is by contacting those businesses that are not yet online. No doubt the owners of these businesses are aware of the benefits of having a web site. They either haven’t had the time or the money to get a full web site up and running.

Here’s How To Start the Program

Approach business that are not yet online and offer them a free web page on your site. They can post things like their hours of operation, a street address and a motto or tag line. Tell them you are offering a professionally designed page. In return you ask that they offer a special to people who come to your web site and view their page. Include a coupon on their page that can be printed out and redeemed at their store. You can run the reverse-affiliate program two ways:
1. If you have access to reliable web statistics, you can charge the shop owner every time their page is viewed.
2. You can ask the shop owner to pay you a fee every time a coupon is redeemed.

The best way to manage your reverse-affiliate site is through a basic WYSIWYG editor. This is because they offer features that can save valuable time. Choose an overall theme for the web site and make sure each of the store pages retains that theme. Go Daddy Software (http://www.godaddy.com) created a program, WebSite Complete, that allows for easy site creation and maintenance. New pages can be added, integrated, and linked with a mouse click. Each page maintains the overall site theme, while allowing for individual customization. The time it takes to add a reverse-affiliate page with WebSite Complete is minimal.

There are benefits for you and the shop owner. First, your site is generating some income. Secondly, you are getting more hits to your site. Each shop owner is going to mention the URL to his or her customers. For the shop owner, he or she will have an online presence with no development costs. Plus, the store will be exposed to customers who browse to the page from other reverse-affiliate pages.

Taking it one step further

When you significantly increase the number of hits to your site, you are ready to take it one step further. Include testimonials from happy shop owners about your site. Include a form on your site so others can sign up for this reverse-affiliate program. Once you have established your site as a reliable place for customers to find bargains, you can begin charging shop owners to place more elaborate pages on your site.

The reverse-affiliate program is a win-win solution. You get an increase in traffic to your site and the store owner gets an online presence free (or at a low cost).

About the author

Article by Amy Flynn. Amy is a Net Writer and Strategist for Go Daddy Software (www.godaddy.com) in Scottsdale, Arizona. Go Daddy Software provides web management software anyone can use. In addition, Go Daddy provides long term support for customers by providing them with timely research and effective web site promotion information.

This article provided by the InfoZone Archives at: http://www.MakingProfit.com


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