Stupid Newbie Question
 

Most of the haters are at Internext anyway, thought I would do this now.

What does it take to start your own affiliate program?

Cash - how much?

Programming - who does it?

Staff - how many salesmen/programmers/customer support reps?

Are you talking something big like Top Bucks? Or a basic affiliate system for a single (or a few) of your paysites?

9-12 sites focused on various niches (blonde, busty, amatuers, redheads, lesbian, etc.)

$$$$ + Business Plan

How much $$$$$. Figured I need to know if I am going to plan anything. Thnx

100,000 atleast

one million dollars

I would estimate at least 100k for a decent program (without the marketing to get it off the ground)

Depends on what type of affil program you want to run.

Most cash intensive up front is Pay Per Signup -- going rate is $30 - $35 Based on experience, make sure you have at least 6-9 months worth of payouts in the bank until your rebils replenishes your bank account.

For partnership -- your startup is way less but you may want to invest at least 5K in free content/webmaster freebies to incentivize them to try your partnership program. These are the most numerous types of affiliate programs, so you need to stand out from the crowd by offering $ bonuses, free weekly content, hosted galleries, etc whatever incentivizes people to sign up for your program. Ultimately it depends on how well your site retains.


Programming: If you're running a partnership, epoch, ccbill, ibill, most of the big billers out there have their own plugin affiliate system.

If you're going to be building a pay per signup system, try Clickman.com I know of other cheaper outfits but it depends on the box you're going to run--budget at least $3K for this.

There are other costs: content to giveaway, programming costs for building webmaster tools, etc.

I hope this helped. If you need anymore help, just ask here.

excellent response Frank....

i've been thinking about starting a couple of paysites and was wondering about the affiliate side of things as well

in a lot of ways have those 10 or sites would be nice cuz then economies of scale would apply.

but i'm just joe average and was thinking of starting small...

what other costs should one budget for?

Excellent response. This helps out a lot.

I have been doing searches and everything on this topic and I couldn't find squat! That was exactly what I was looking for.