Working with independent merchants

[Jed87]

Hello everybody,

New guy here, and also an affiliate newbie. I'm glad to see "there are no dumb questions!"

So, I'm building a product review and rating site with Wordpress, and I want to add price comparisons on each product's page. In my site's niche, I've found numerous online vendors on Google Shopping, but it appears virtually none of those online merchants are using networks such as CJ. In fact, I've found only one offering an independent affiliate program; everybody else appears to have no affiliate program at all.

I plan to approach all these vendors and convince them to let me be their affiliate, and I've got questions:

1) If they're affiliate newbs, how do I get them started? Is there a simple/cheap/free software package they can use for tracking, etc.?

2) How can I help them get datafeeds going? What does it take on their end? Again, is there software that'll help them do this? If they're on Google Shopping, I guess they've already put together a feed?

3) How much commission % do I ask for? Is that a % of the total price, or their profit margin?

I imagine there are other questions I'm not asking. Please point out anything else I'm about to face, resources, etc.

Thank you in advance!

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi Jed,

Good questions and while I totally understand why you'd want to do this, let me tell you too it's REALLY not worth your time or trouble to do this. It would be like pushing a rope.

Launching an affiliate program and doing it right is a huge time commitment and a pretty good financial commitment. Even with existing affiliate programs that have the commitment it can be hard to get them to do a datafeed right. Trust me, I've worked with merchants who KNOW about affiliate programs and WANT one and it's still really hard to get them to set it up and do it right. So if you're trying to convince a merchant just to set one up for you, it's just not worth it and there really is no cheap/easy way to do it.

Your time would be MUCH better spent finding merchants that are already set up and that already get it - then you can use your time to market and make money instead of "pushing a rope!"

Join Google Affiliate Network and Shareasale and see if you can find the type of products you are looking for on those 2 networks if they aren't available on CJ.