Q: Rather than making money as an affiliate of different programs, I have been thinking of other ways to try to make money by encouraging merchants to set up affiliate programs, as I am sure there are many whose business would benefit that don’t yet have affiliate programs. This is just a seed of an idea, however I don’t have the knowledge to set myself up as an ‘expert’ and how to structure a deal to ensure that I got paid a % of sales, instead of just having the merchant set up a program for a one off fee, after which I would not stand to gain anything. I understand your expertise is advising how companies can set up affiliate programs, which is very relevant to what I am thinking, however do you have any advice how I could set up as a ‘broker’ etc, who would perform this task for them.
A: Honestly, I think you’d be better served to approach existing affiliate programs that are poorly structured and managed, where you can make a pitch to fix them.
There is not necessarily going to be any financial reward for you to effectively act as a sales person for one of the affiliate tracking technologies. So you may find that you educate merchants on why they need an affiliate program, but who is going to pay you?
If you really want to do this sort of thing, try contacting the sales teams at the various affiliate tracking technologies to see if they would be interested in working with you.
After the merchants are sold on the concept, then you’d have a chance to pitch your services on an hourly basis, a percent of the sales generated through the affiliates, a monthly retainer or some sort of hybrid compensation.