Don't get me wrong, I'm not condemning affiliate programs...my entire site is dedicated to topic. I just want you to know that some companies are starting to look at new methods of rewarding you for sending them customers. After all, you are a salesman for them. How many brick-and-mortar companies do you know of that will have a salesperson make a sale, pay them their commission, and then never pay them another cent for future business from that same customer?

Why should Internet be any different? It shouldn't...and program administrators are finally figuring that out.

There are many companies that will track visitor that came from your site, and credit you for sale even if they don't purchase something until next day, or week, or month. Others will make that visitor your lifetime customer. If they come back two years later and buy something, you will get a commission for that.

A good example of this is Ken Evoy's 5 Pillar Affiliate Program. If you sell one of your visitors a copy of his book: "Make Your Site Sell!"( http://www.sitesell.com/helpmakemy.html ), you will not only get a commission for that sale, you will also get a percentage of all future sales from that customer, no matter what product or service they purchase.

A new idea being offered by companies such as Vstore ( http://affiliatematch.com/vstore ), is to allow your visitors to buy products without ever leaving your site. This means that visitor has time to spend on YOUR site, and get to know what excellent content you have to offer, and to hopefully return to YOUR site for future purchases.

This concept allows you to sell products such as magazines, gifts, luggage, hats, cooking accessories from your site, without having to give up customer that you worked so hard to get.

Here is an example of power of this idea: I have a site that gives tips and hints for those hoping to become Microsoft Certified. An excellent product for me to sell from that site is books. Everyone studying for this certification will need books at some point or another to help them pass exams. They come to my site for information, and I sell them a couple of books while they are there. Does pretty well for me, but can I quit my day job? Not exactly. I get a great deal of traffic...highly targeted traffic at that.

I should be rich! I'm not. Problem is, they visit my site, I do my best to sell them on idea that they will need books to help them study for exams, then I send them off to Amazon, and they're gone. If I'm lucky, they might remember my site when they get ready for their next exam. But chances are that they will still have Amazon shipping box sitting on their desk, and will go directly to them to purchase additional books.

So what can you do about it? Look for programs that will compensate you for future sales, or give you credit for sale next day, or month after they first visited them from your site. Or, look for programs that allow you to sell products directly from your site, without visitor ever having to leave.

This field can be anything you want, like customer's surname plus last 5 digits of their credit card, their name and phone number, or any other combination you can think of.

When a sale is made this field is compared with a table that contains a list of these fields and affiliate that referred them. If it finds a match, it awards due commission.

If it doesn't find a match, it then looks for an affiliate ID in cookie and makes a new entry to lifetime identifier database.

A simple, yet highly effective system. Database tracking is most reliable way to track in long term.

I highly recommend MYAP with LifeTime Commissions module for lifetime tracking.

My Affiliate Program Software: http://www.myaffiliateprogram.com

------------------------------------ Ultimate Affiliate ------------------------------------

Ultimate Affiliate is a good PERL software suite for UNIX servers. Ultimate Affiliate tracks by cookie, IP address, and can produce dynamic or static web pages that have ID of referring affiliate embedded in all internal URLs. All your affiliates' details are stored in a MySQL database.

With a knowledge of PERL and HTML you can customize virtually any page created by software.

This software can easily handle recurring commissions, and has graphical stats for both you and your affiliates. It can handle up to twelve tiers of commissions.

I recommend you do not pay out on more than two tiers. More than two tiers is multi-level marketing, which generally has a bad image on Internet because it attracts spammers. MLM products also tend to be over- priced to pay for many tiers of commissions

Ultimate Affiliate: http://www.groundbreak.com

================================================ Give your affiliates right tools for job ================================================

One thing that really makes some programs stand head- and-shoulders above rest is real-time tracking that shows affiliates conversion rates for their various links.

That means affiliates can see which of their various links are performing and get an idea why, and what links aren't and how they could be improved.

Affiliates should be able to see number of click- throughs to each of their different links, number of sales that each link has made, and conversion rate for each link should be calculated for them.

This enables them to figure out how to improve their links, and thus make more money for themselves, and for you.

They should also be able to set landing page for these links, so that they can link to specific products.

Affiliates who link to and promote specific products are a lot more successful than those who simply promote your site in general.

The shorter and less your links look like referral URLs better. Some people recognize affiliate URLs, and are suspicious of them.

Consider following (imaginary) URLs:

http://www.pottery-store.com?more-info

http://www.pottery-store.com/cgi-bin/affiliate-referral.cgi?affiliate12341

The first one (where "more-info" is affiliate's username) is much more likely to lure a click-through.

A big advantage of short referral URLs is they are easier to put into newsletters, which are a highly effective way to advertise online.

============================= Help your affiliates help you =============================

Ninety percent of affiliates won't make a lot of money for you. They need encouragement, motivation, and help.

Consider giving performance bonuses to top earners. Run a monthly newsletter and praise your top affiliates in it.

Tell your other affiliates how top earners did it, and about performance bonus you gave them. Give your affiliates ideas on how to promote your products best.

Your top earners will appreciate ego massage, and your other affiliates will find out what's possible if they put their mind to it.

For more details see:

How to make your affiliates enthusiastically loyal http://www.associateprograms.com/search/affiliate-loyalty.shtml

Remember, when you help your affiliates get sales, you help yourself get sales.

============== The end result ==============

Starting a lifetime affiliate program is not easy, but rewards are worth it.

To make your affiliate program successful, you need to make it attractive to affiliates, and best way to do that is offer good rewards.

If you pay lifetime commissions you offer affiliates opportunity to earn more money than they normally would. They will work harder for better commissions and in end, it will pay off with a better, more effective affiliate program, that is more profitable for you.

- Christopher Pearce http://www.LifetimeCommissions.com -

===================== Links in this article: =====================

Problems with Internet Explorer 6 and cookies: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnpriv/html/ie6privacyfeature.asp

Wilson Web: http://wilsonweb.com

My Affiliate Program tracking software: http://www.myaffiliateprogram.com

GroundBreak (Ultimate Affiliate) tracking software: http://www.groundbreak.com

eLance.com, somewhere to start looking for programmers: http://www.elance.com/

How to make your affiliates enthusiastically loyal http://www.associateprograms.com/search/affiliate-loyalty.shtml