How to Sell Your Product Using Affiliate Marketing Part II

We will therefore regard joint ventures as a different animal to affiliates, and exclude them from the topic of this article. You can either operate your own affiliate program, if you have the software to administer it, or have a third party such as Clickbank do it. Each has its specific advantages, though a program such as Click bank or Pay-Dot-Com is the better of the two for newcomers to affiliate marketing to promote their own products.

Taking Clickbank as the example, you first have to register with them as a merchant. You then provide details about your product and yourself. You have to set up your Hoplink details, that affiliates use in their link to your sales page, the sales page URL that the Hoplink is linked to, the price of your product, the affiliate commission, methods of payment, and so on. You also have to provide the URL of your 'Thank You' page.

Having done that, your product is put on Clickbank's database of products, or 'Marketplace'. Clickbank users can browse the Marketplace for products to sell, although you should offer your affiliate program on your own sales page and also within the product. This provides buyers of your product the opportunity to recoup the price they paid by selling two copies.

Commissions offered are generally 50% though can be higher. You will find it difficult to get takers at less that 50%. You can offer commissions to two levels if you want. The second tier is comprised of affiliates recruited by your initial affiliates. They get their 50% and you can also offer 5% or 10% to the people who recruited them. Although you pay out more, it is for sales you wouldn't have had originally.

Clickbank is a good way to sell electronically deliverable goods, and preferred over personal software systems by many experienced marketers. However, if your product is a physical product you will need to purchase your own affiliate software, or join another program such as Trade Doubler or Commission Junction. Quite frankly you are probably best with one of these companies, since they look after all the administration and payments for you, and it is a lot less bother than trying to do it yourself.

If you have a product to sell, or frequently generate products to sell on your website, you should learn how to sell your product using affiliate marketing since you will then have lots of other people generating sales for you that otherwise would not have had. This is well worth paying a 50% commission for!