Look Before You Leap!

Written by John M. Grover


You would never take a football team into a game without a “game plan”, and it’s only a game. So why would you embark your company on something as important to its future existence as an e-business initiative without a clear cut “game plan” or strategy? Yet recent studies show that almost 60 percent of businesses that were doing e-business were doing so without having a clearly articulated and well-documented e-business strategy. It doesn’t have to be elaborate, just well thought out.

To paraphrase whatrepparttar Cheshire cat told Alice in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland, “If you don’t know where you are going, it doesn’t matter which way you go.” Your e-business strategy is your road map to a successful e-business implementation project. Just throwing up a site is not enough, you must give it a strategic place in your company’s long range business plan in order to make your investment pay off. If you don’t do it right, someone else will and it will be even more difficult to catch up.

There is a lot more to e-business than a web site

Unfortunately, all too often, companies think of their corporate web site and applications that communicate with customers and trading partners online as their e-business strategy. Forrepparttar 108947 most part these sites are just extensions of their current business model. The companies have given little or no thought to leveragingrepparttar 108948 Internet to offer entirely new products and services, transfer processes online, or exploit new markets. The web site andrepparttar 108949 Internet should be thought of as an enabling technology and not a strategy in and of itself.

How often have you visitedrepparttar 108950 web site of a company that you have always respected, only to find that your experience there left a lot to be desired? A poorly thought-out web site can quickly turn off customers that have taken years to attract and nurture. Your competition is only a click away, so why do so many companies pay so little attention to getting it right? A lot of very good business men and women are just too busy with day-to-day operations and allow themselves to be drawn in to a “quick fix” or an “economy approach”, without realizing just how important this world-wide exposure is for their business. Local reputations can be lost in an instant on a world stage because someone just didn’t think it through.

Part ofrepparttar 108951 reason for this lack of an e-business strategy is that many well intended business owners and managers don’t seem to realize, that now, more than ever, they need a strategy to ensure that their e-business efforts and overall business goals and objectives are aligned and met.

How To Start Your Own Affiliate Program

Written by J. Stephen Pope


How To Start Your Own Affiliate Program by J. Stephen Pope

1. Why Start Your Own Affiliate Program?

Multiple web sites and distributors selling your product can result in increased sales and profits. Unlike conventional advertising, affiliate programs pay only for performance. Commissions are not paid out unless sales are made.

Also, with many more web sites linking to yours, your link popularity is sure to increase in search engines, resulting in additional traffic and income.

2. Combine a Merchant Account with Your Affiliate Program

If your product is downloadable (such as electronic books or software), you might consider ClickBank.com. For a $49.95 initial fee, you can process credit cards and on-line cheques for $1.00 per transaction plus 7.5% of sales. As an added bonus, you have your own built-in affiliate program.

ClickBank gives you a listing on their web site and visitors can buy your products and join your affiliate program. You chooserepparttar commission rate you are willing to pay. All commission payments are handled by ClickBank. One downside is that you can't run a two-tiered program.

To learn more about ClickBank affiliate programs, visit http://www.yenommarketinginc.com/cbap.html

3. Use an Affiliate Program Script

If you are comfortable with running CGI scripts, you may wish to install your own affiliate program on your server and administerrepparttar 108946 affiliate program yourself.

Be forewarned, though, that this is a lot of work. You will be responsible for allrepparttar 108947 testing, security, commission payments, promotion and so on. Another downside: Will your potential affiliates trust you since their commissions are not tracked and paid by an independent third party?

You will find an example of an affiliate script program at http://www.simpleaffiliate.com/s.cgi?index-12422

4. Use a Hosted Solution

There are good reasons for not hosting your affiliate program on your server. Perhaps you don't haverepparttar 108948 time to administer allrepparttar 108949 aspects of an affiliate program. Maybe your time could be used more productively in other areas of your business. Additionally, an independent third party tracking and paying affiliate commissions inspires confidence in prospective affiliates. Finally, you just might benefit fromrepparttar 108950 additional exposure that an affiliate network brings you.

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