Should You Turn Your Product Over to Affiliates?

So what if you have your own product or products to market? Have you considered letting affiliate marketers in on the deal? Many times, product developers choose to let affiliate marketers sell their products for them so they can concentrate more on what they love to do best – create products. If you find you are spending all of your time marketing and not enough time creating, it may be time to team up with those who have chosen affiliate marketing for a career.

Creating an Affiliate Marketing Program

This is something you can do yourself or you can hire an affiliate management company to do for you. You will also have to consider whether or not you want to manage the affiliate program yourself or if you need to hire someone to do that as well. Then, of course, you’ll have to decide if you want to share your profits with affiliates and what rate of commission you will pay. You will also need to provide your affiliate marketers with links, banners, and other tools necessary for them to promote your products.

Ask Yourself These Questions

There’s no one right answer as to whether or not you should allow affiliates to promote your products. But there are some questions to ask yourself when you are ready to make this decision. Is your product already selling well? If it is not, then now might not be the time to take on the responsibility of affiliate management. On the other hand, if it is not selling well now, then it might sell much better when you have an army of marketers promoting it.

Do you need more time for product development? If you have already created successful products but spend so much time marketing them that it leaves you little time to be creative then it might be worth sharing your profits with affiliates so you will have more time to create. Do you have the time to manage an affiliate program or will you need to hire someone to do that for you? If so, can you afford to do that?

The answers to these questions and more will give you a general idea of whether or not you or your company would be a good candidate for affiliate marketing. You can always start out small, with just one product and see how it works for you. Obviously, affiliate marketing works for many companies, large and small, or there would not be thousands of affiliates making a living at it. Whether or not it will be good for your business is something you will need to research and answer.