How to Create a Lifetime Commissions Affiliate Program

Affiliate programs are a great way of marketing online.You pay only for the results you get - if someonereferred to your site makes a purchase.But if you want to make a really strong affiliate program,with adoring-sales-machines for affiliates, it must beVERY attractive to affiliates.The best way to do that is to offer lifetimecommissions. That means you pay commissions on EVERYpurchase a referred customer makes, not just on thefirst purchase.If you pay commissions for every purchase that yourreferred customers make, you offer your affiliates thechance to earn a lot more money than they otherwisewould.That will strongly motivate your smarter affiliates towork harder and be creative, and that is EXACTLY whatyou want them to do.There are lots of things that make an affiliate programgreat, but one of the most important is reliable tracking.==============================The magic ingredient: Tracking==============================If an affiliate sends you a customer, the affiliatemust earn a commission when that customer makes apurchase.You would not have that customer if the affiliate hadnot referred them, so the affiliate deserves to berewarded.To achieve this you must track all referrals reliably,both online and off.You should use cookies to store the referringaffiliate's ID number. You should set them with noexpiry date, but they will inevitably be lost wellwithin a few months, if not weeks, after they are set.Browsers have a limit to the number of cookies theycan store. A lot of web sites now use cookies. Thismeans that your cookies will often be overwritten bythose from other web sites.You must make sure that your cookies work with InternetExplorer 6, which will discard cookies not compliantwith P3P standards.Details:http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnpriv/html/ie6privacyfeature.aspTracking by IP address is not an accurate method oflong-term tracking, however it is an effective way totrack visitors during their FIRST visit to your site.It is a good idea to use IP tracking to catch anypeople who have cookies disabled.Every time your affiliates send someone to theiraffiliate URL, your server should send them to either adynamically generated or pre-generated page with theiraffiliate ID embedded in it. The affiliate's ID shouldalso be stored in the URL, so that if the customerbookmarks and returns, the affiliate is still creditedwith the sale.In your database of customer profiles, you should storethe ID of the affiliate who referred each customer.Whenever a customer "profile" makes a purchase (onlineor off) you should credit the appropriate affiliate(s)for the sale.Storing the affiliate's ID in the customer's profile isthe best, most reliable way to track in the long term,both offline and on.Some systems also allow you to track offline bysupplying the user with a fake phone extension. Thisextension is actually the referring affiliate's ID. Youcan also ask people faxing you to quote an order number- which includes the affiliate's ID.To catch any who "slip though the cracks", your orderprocessing software should scan your order history forany orders going to the same name, e-mail address orphone number of a customer, and pay the referringaffiliate their due commission.========================================Where to get affiliate tracking software========================================You have two options: build or buy.--------------------------------------------------Buying affiliate software--------------------------------------------------Buying affiliate tracking software is the way to go.It is so much cheaper than developing it yourself,and quality is guaranteed.There is only one merchant offering a system thatcan handle true lifetime commissions: My AffiliateProgram, with it's LifeTime Commissions module add-on.This is the only system custom-built for lifetimecommissions, and it's fresh off the production line(December 2001).There is one other good near-lifetime system - Ultimate Affiliate.It is not specifically designed for lifetime commissions,but it can handle residual commissions with ease.------------------------------------My Affiliate Program------------------------------------This is a great affiliate tracking software suite,recently made even better by the addition of theLifeTime Commissions module.It is run by Kowabunga Technologies, and was honoredwith the "Editor's Choice" Award by Dr. Ralph Wilsonof Wilson Internet, who called it "the 'Cadillac'of its category."Wilson Web:http://wilsonweb.comIt is hosted on Kowabunga's secure servers, thougha version hosted on your own domain is possible. Over500 Merchants use MYAP.It tracks primarily by a cookie for the firstpurchase. CGI/ASP tracking is also available,and it can even track sales made over the phone.Affiliate management is also simple, with automatedsign-up and a clear interface.You can even reward your top earning affiliates withbonuses that can be easily and securely awarded.The LifeTime Commissions module itself works bygenerating a "LifeTime identifier" when your customersmake a purchase.This field can be anything you want, like thecustomer's surname plus the last 5 digits of theircredit card, their name and phone number,or any other combination you can think of.When a sale is made this field is compared with atable that contains a list of these fields and theaffiliate that referred them. If it finds a match,it awards the due commission.If it doesn't find a match, it then looks for an affiliateID in the cookie and makes a new entry to the lifetimeidentifier database.A simple, yet highly effective system. Database trackingis the most reliable way to track in the long term.I highly recommend MYAP with the LifeTime Commissionsmodule for lifetime tracking.My Affiliate Program Software:http://www.myaffiliateprogram.com------------------------------------Ultimate Affiliate------------------------------------Ultimate Affiliate is a good PERL software suite forUNIX servers. Ultimate Affiliate tracks by cookie, IPaddress, and can produce dynamic or static web pagesthat have the ID of the referring affiliate embedded inall internal URLs. All your affiliates' details arestored in a MySQL database.With a knowledge of PERL and HTML you can customizevirtually any page created by the software.This software can easily handle recurring commissions,and has graphical stats for both you and youraffiliates. It can handle up to twelve tiers ofcommissions.I recommend you do not pay out on more than two tiers.More than two tiers is multi-level marketing, whichgenerally has a bad image on the Internet because itattracts spammers. MLM products also tend to be over-priced to pay for the many tiers of commissionsUltimate Affiliate:http://www.groundbreak.com================================================Give your affiliates the right tools for the job================================================One thing that really makes some programs stand head-and-shoulders above the rest is real-time tracking thatshows affiliates the conversion rates for their variouslinks.That means affiliates can see which of their variouslinks are performing and get an idea why, and whatlinks aren't and how they could be improved.Affiliates should be able to see the number of click-throughs to each of their different links, the numberof sales that each link has made, and the conversionrate for each link should be calculated for them.This enables them to figure out how to improve theirlinks, and thus make more money for themselves, and foryou.They should also be able to set the landing page forthese links, so that they can link to specificproducts.Affiliates who link to and promote specific productsare a lot more successful than those who simply promoteyour site in general.The shorter and less your links look like referral URLsthe better. Some people recognize affiliate URLs, andare suspicious of them.Consider the following (imaginary) URLs:http://www.pottery-store.com?more-infohttp://www.pottery-store.com/cgi-bin/affiliate-referral.cgi?affiliate12341The first one (where "more-info" is the affiliate'susername) is much more likely to lure a click-through.A big advantage of short referral URLs is they areeasier to put into newsletters, which are a highlyeffective way to advertise online.=============================Help your affiliates help you=============================Ninety percent of affiliates won't make a lot of moneyfor you. They need encouragement, motivation, and help.Consider giving performance bonuses to the top earners.Run a monthly newsletter and praise your top affiliatesin it.Tell your other affiliates how the top earners did it,and about the performance bonus you gave them. Give youraffiliates ideas on how to promote your products best.Your top earners will appreciate the ego massage, andyour other affiliates will find out what's possible ifthey put their mind to it.For more details see:How to make your affiliates enthusiastically loyalhttp://www.associateprograms.com/search/affiliate-loyalty.shtmlRemember, when you help your affiliates get sales, youhelp yourself get sales.==============The end result==============Starting a lifetime affiliate program is not easy, butthe rewards are worth it.To make your affiliate program successful, you need tomake it attractive to affiliates, and the best way todo that is offer good rewards.If you pay lifetime commissions you offer affiliatesthe opportunity to earn more money than they normallywould. They will work harder for the better commissionsand in the end, it will pay off with a better, moreeffective affiliate program, that is more profitablefor you.-Christopher Pearcehttp://www.LifetimeCommissions.com-=====================Links in this article:=====================Problems with Internet Explorer 6 and cookies:http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnpriv/html/ie6privacyfeature.aspWilson Web:http://wilsonweb.comMy Affiliate Program tracking software:http://www.myaffiliateprogram.comGroundBreak (Ultimate Affiliate) tracking software:http://www.groundbreak.comeLance.com, somewhere to start looking for programmers:http://www.elance.com/How to make your affiliates enthusiastically loyalhttp://www.associateprograms.com/search/affiliate-loyalty.shtml