Affiliate Marketing Tools, What is needed

[buyithere]

Hi all,

I hope you all are well. I was wondering if you anyone could help me?

I currently in the process of building my own shop and want to run a affiliate program with it. So my questions is:

What tools and information should I give to my affiliates to help them?

Thank you all in advance.

From
Doug

[temi]

Doug,
Are you planning to create a custom affiliate tracking software, use and off the shelf affiliate script or use a 3rd party affiliate services provider such as CJ or affiliate window?

[buyithere]

To be honest, I have not got that far. Currently a guy is building the shop for me. But more than likely it will be off the shelf one.

Thanks for your quick reply.

[temi]

I have used iDevaffiliate script in the past, its affordable. You can set up how you want your site to run etc etc from the control panel.

Originally Posted by buyithere

To be honest, I have not got that far. Currently a guy is building the shop for me. But more than likely it will be off the shelf one.

Thanks for your quick reply.

[KingPin]

I currently own a sunglasses e-commerce store which uses an XML feed as the affiliate source.

The only thing I would say is if you are going to go down that route, make sure that whatever affiliate/s you decide to choose, make sure they they update their feeds as soon as they update their own site.

Some affiliates don't update their feeds right away and it can become quite annoying.

KP

[temi]

KP,
Is your store pulling or pushing the feeds?

Originally Posted by KingPin

I currently own a sunglasses e-commerce store which uses an XML feed as the affiliate source.

[KingPin]

Pulling the feeds from the affiliates own database.

KP

[temi]

Thanks for that clarification, that is what I thought. I think buy it there would be pushing out feeds (if i read his post correctly)

[KingPin]

So it was. Sorry, I misread it.

Well, before you think about offering an affiliate scheme it might be worth getting your own site set up completely and ironing out all the bug before you go ahead and offer anything.

Once you have your store running smoothly then you can concentrate on pushing affiliates through your site.

That in it's self can be a pain so doing both at the same time that's asking for trouble,

Focus on one thing at a time.

KP

[buyithere]

Hi there,

Thank you both for the advise. I will def take it on board.

Many Thanks
Doug