WHC Internet Marketing Guide
Running an Affiliate Program
If you sell your own product, one way to drive traffic and sales is to pay others for referring customers to you.
You'll give your affiliates special links to your products that include their individual ID, and then use techniques such as browser cookies to track whose link your visitors came through. When a customer buyers, you record who referred the customer, and pay them a commission on the sale.
Many shopping cart scripts have built-in support for tracking affiliate sales. They may also help with creating a system for affiliate to sign up and get links and other materials to use in promoting your products.
Commissions may be calculated as a percentage of sales referred or a fixed dollar amount per item. You may pay special affiliates more than others, or may have performance-based rate tiers that any affiliate can reach by referring enough sales.
(Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer -- the following should not be considered legal advice). To protect yourself legally, you should strictly enforce a no-spamming policy for your affiliates. If an affiliate uses illegal methods to promote your products, you should terminate their affiliate account immediately. Otherwise, you might be held liable for their activities.
More to come here...
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