Q: I see many companies in my industry that I want to promote, but they don’t have an affiliate mechanism in place. What is the best way to interface with them? In other words, what mechanism can I suggest to them to allow me to promote their product and make a commission, short of them actually signing up with an affiliate management company like ShareASale or CJ?
A: I can see where you’re coming from, but I think you’ve got a tough challenge in trying to sell companies on affiliate marketing just so you can promote them.
I think a more plausible scenario, though one that means cash out of your pocket, would be for you to start your own CPA network.
There are already a large volume of CPA networks out there, but if you were to create a niche CPA network, you might be on to something.
Essentially, you’d launch a network with the offers you want to run, and at the same time, you would make them available to others, which would be incremental income for you.
And rather than these companies having to be sold on affiliate marketing and then sold on shelling out money for the tracking, you could simplify things for them.
Quick and easy implementation for those companies and you would be able to provide them with reporting.
If you go this route and get some traction, you could also think about charging a setup fee to add one of the companies to your network.
It’s more risk on your part on the front end, but it would potentially bring multiple revenue streams (setup fees, affiliate commissions for your promotions, fees from the companies for transactions from other affiliates in your network, etc.) and greater returns than just being an affiliate with these companies.
Before you sign any deal to launch a CPA network, I’d urge you to make some phone calls with these companies you wish to promote to gauge their interest.