To paraphrase what 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. For most part these sites are just extensions of their current business model. The companies have given little or no thought to leveraging Internet to offer entirely new products and services, transfer processes online, or exploit new markets. The web site and Internet should be thought of as an enabling technology and not a strategy in and of itself.

How often have you visited 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.

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 choose 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 administer affiliate program yourself.

Be forewarned, though, that this is a lot of work. You will be responsible for all 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