If you want to have hundreds or thousands of affiliates promoting your products for you, you have many options.

You can hire affiliate networks such as Commission Junction (now owned by ValueClick), LinkShare or Performics. They handle the tracking and money - and charge you a healthy percentage. Those companies charge a few thousand dollars to get your affiliate program established.

There is also a wide range of smaller affiliate networks to choose from. They charge smaller fees.

You can hire someone to put their affiliate tracking software on your server. You can buy a CGI tracking script - or you can start an affiliate program by writing your own script.

You can also use web-based tracking systems which charge a monthly fee.

One thing to ask affiliate networks is who owns and controls the email addresses of affiliates. If they're YOUR affiliates, you want to be in control of those valuable names.

If you're thinking of using any of the networks as a merchant, I strongly recommend you sign up as an affiliate first - free - and test the service your affiliates will be receiving.

Want to do more research on how to start an affiliate program? Here are the main options:

Quick, easy and budget priced: AffiliateShop

AffiliateShop offers an easy, quick and effective way to set up an affiliate program.

It offers you the ability to pay-per-lead, pay-per-click, pay-per-sale, or pay using several of these methods (e.g. pay 5% on sales and $0.05 per lead). It also can pay out step wise (e.g. pay 5% for less than 100 sales and 10% for above 100 sales).

AffiliateShop has anti-fraud protection, so that affiliates cannot generate fraudulent click throughs. The software has full tracking and real time statistics for you and your affiliates, and can easily track two-tier programs.

AffiliateShop is partnered with TroySystems to allow you to cheaply send bulk checks to your affiliates. The US Treasury has printed checks on TroySystems equipment since 1984.

AffiliateShop can quickly integrate with most third party shopping cart systems, Microsoft ASP scripts, UNIX and NT Servers and can easily export data to other databases such as MS Access and MS SQL.

All software is hosted on an AffiliateShop server meaning the set up time is minimal. You can have an unlimited number of affiliates, even multiple affiliate programs.

Affiliate Shop is good value for money, with a setup fee of $395 and a monthly fee of $45. AffiliateShop offers a 30 day free trial, and can typically be set up in less than a single day.

AffiliateShop is very quick to set up and easy to use and I highly recommend it.

A popular budget-priced option: Interneka

Tomas Brikman of Interneka has a popular, budget-priced third party tracking solution.

Tomas says it isn't as advanced as MyAffiliateProgram but it has all the features that AffiliateShop has.

"Our customers are small to medium web sites that can't pay $500 for affiliate software. That's why we are offering a really good deal for merchants who are in need of affiliate software," he says.

Check it out here

Popular with affiliates: ShareaSale

Your affiliates will approve if you choose to go with ShareaSale. It's a large network offering hundreds of programs - pay-per-sale, pay-per-lead, and pay-per-click programs. More than 700 merchants. It has a strong pro-affiliate attitude and despises parasites. Has lots of datafeeds. Highly recommended.

Large network: Commission Junction

Commission Junction, launched in 1998, has a large network of merchants. You can quickly establish a pay-per-lead or pay-per-sale program, and benefit from publicity generated by this prominent affiliate network. Here's the description from the site:

"With a pay-per-lead program, you pay a commission when an authorized affiliate refers a customer to your site and that customer fills out a form or performs another action that allows you to follow up on the sales process.

"With a pay-per-sale program, you pay a commission when an authorized affiliate refers a customer to your site and that customer buys a product or service. The purchase may occur when the visitor is at your site or it may occur at a later time.

"Whether you want to start a new program or upgrade your existing program, we can get you started in a matter of days at a price that any organization can afford. We professionally manage all the details of your revenue sharing operations including affiliate sign-ups, approvals, tracking, reporting, and commission payments."

The system works well. A huge advantage of using a large network is that it promotes your program for you. Also, Commission Junction consolidates payouts (payouts from other CJ programs get lumped together into one large check), making it a favorite of affiliates.

However, you will still have to promote your affiliate program yourself. A large percentage of the affiliates who sign up through a major affiliate network will be newcomers who don't know how to sell on the Net.

If you want to pay someone a commission for taking care of most of the details, this is a good option.

Check out Commission Junction here

Performics

Performics is a highly professional, large affiliate network with some well known brands. Performics' clients include: America Online, Blair Corp., Bose, CompUSA, Eddie Bauer, HP Shopping, Kohl's, L.L.Bean, PC Connection, RedEnvelope, Verizon Wireless, and more than 200 others. Performics is owned by DoubleClick.

LinkShare

LinkShare is a large network which handles revenue sharing arrangements.

LinkShare Corporation has created a software solution to track leads that result in immediate or long-term sales. As well, it has established a network to help publishers of sites and online retailers. The software enables merchants and sites to share feedback information and customer analysis. It costs several thousand dollars to set up. LinkShare organizes things, does the tracking and handles payments. LinkShare offers consolidated affiliate payments, direct deposit for U.S. affiliates, and user defined minimum payment thresholds. LinkShare has attracted many big names, including Dell. You benefit from the publicity it generates.

More networks

ClickBank allows sellers of information products to set up a simple affiliate program very quickly, easily and very cheaply. Because it is so easy, you will be sharing space with a fairly mixed crowd. ClickBank accepts payments by credit card for you, and charges a percentage of each sale. It has about 100,000 affiliates. This is a very popular solution.

PayDotCom is a budget-priced ClickBank competitor, offering some features not offered by ClickBank.

ClickXchange will enable you to build your own affiliate program paying per-click, per-lead, per-sale, or per-impression. ClickXchange has over 150,000 affiliates in its network, and all advertiser accounts include a customized affiliate sign-up process that merges into your site.

DoubleClick Direct advertising network works with direct marketers on per-lead and per-sale advertising solutions. It's also a useful resource for online advertising information.

I want to do it myself: QuickPayPro

QuickPayPro is an advanced shopping cart system with affiliate tracking built in. It is a hosted solution with a MySQL back end. It is completely automated, freeing up your valuable time and resources that can be better spent marketing your products, rather than wasted doing paper work.

The program automatically accepts new affiliate sign ups, and provides detailed and useful stats, including click throughs, conversion rates, expenses, profit and more, for both you, and your affiliates. Referrals are tracked reliably, using both cookies and IP address association.

The system also allows you add unlimited products to your catalog, and both you and your affiliates can link to specific products and track the effectiveness of those links.

The system can integrate with Authorize.net, InstaBill, PayPal, and ClickBank, enabling you to automatically process sales, and send out electronic checks to your affiliates with the click of a button.

The system costs $37 per month, with a trial for the first month costing only $1.

So far, I'm very impressed with this system. This is one you should seriously consider.

Click here to find out more about QuickPayPro.

Ultimate Affiliate 2000 script from Groundbreak

"Simply one of the most fully featured affiliate program scripts on the Internet," says the creator of the CGI script, Steve Miles of Groundbreak.

Steve says the Ultimate Affiliate 2000 is possibly the only affiliate program which reports affiliate statistics graphically. The program has detailed affiliate and administrative control panels as well as a complete statistical reporting system for referrals, unique referrals, and commissions. It can be used for one-tier, two-tier or three-tier programs.

Web-based system: My Affiliate Program software

My Affiliate Program software is made by KowaBunga! Technologies, a sister company of Invisio.

Features include: Fully-automated setup; admin and members' page; banner location tracking and verification; email your affiliate members; monthly account statements; export your affiliate information; tracking click-throughs, sales and commissions; automatic reminders; SMART sales report; online sales history; variable commission structure; two-tier commissions and lifetime commissions support. Perl/cgi, runs on Unix/NT.

Major improvements were made to this software in 2001, adding even more useful features and options, too many to list here. The company is well known for its superb support. Take a close look at this option.

Thousands of merchants are using this My Affiliate Program.

Leadhound: Affiliate tracking software for PayPal users

You can have your own affiliate tracking software online and operational within a couple of hours, says David Kassar of Leadhound. Designed specifically for PayPal users this version of Leadhound comes configured to pay affiliates via the "mass-pay" feature within your PayPal account that eliminates the need to pay affiliates by check saving you hours of time. You pay a monthly fee.

Learn more about Leadhound here

AssocTrac

Internet Marketing Center, founded by the late Corey Rudl, has the biggest-selling marketing course on the Internet. His two-tier associate program works well. Affiliates like the tracking system because they can find the information they need quickly and easily. To them, it appears very simple.

I recommend AssocTRAC software. You don't just get the software installed. The package also includes a heap of advice from MarketingTips, a true Internet pioneer. That's a huge bonus.

Check out AssocTrac here

Another good do-it-yourself option: Paul Galloway

Paul Galloway can supply you with everything you need to start your own associate or affiliate program - a complete software package which includes a new associate "Sign-Up" and automatic web site replication program, an "Order Processing" program (with credit card syntax checking), and administrative functions, including monthly/yearly commission reports, instant associate web site updating, associate record maintenance, and more.

Paul's clients include Internet marketing veteran Jonathan Mizel.

Jonathan comments: "Paul is great. His products are well priced and well designed. He's willing to listen when you have a suggestion, and for a modest fee, modify his program to suit your needs. I'm going to be working with him and selling his product for substantially more than he sells it for. He receives my highest recommendation."

Paul's system costs only $US199. Installation is extra, but most people should be able to install it themselves. Paul prides himself on his high quality support - the sort of support that is often lacking in large companies.

When affiliate programs consultant Declan Dunn wanted an expert, this is the guy he chose.

For more details about Paul's software see Your Own Affiliate Program. Recommended.

Another option Paul offers is Synergyx, full-featured two-tier affiliate program software with an e-commerce platform. It's perfect for anyone selling digital products because it offers a "time-expired-authentication" digital product download system. For those who need it, a shopping cart is included as well. Everything resides on your server, so you maintain complete control. Highly recommended.

AffiliateTracking

Craig Belcher's AffiliateTracking charges a flat rate - $104.95 the first month and $29.95 a month thereafter. "It's a good choice for small webmasters," Craig says. "If you're planning to have over 50,000 affiliates we can set you up with a dedicated tracking server as well. Pricing starts off at $700 a month for a dedicated tracking server and tops out at around $3000 a month . . . we don't charge 20% of the affiliates' commissions either. A flat monthly fee for both pay per sale and pay per click programs."

AffiliateGuerrilla

AffiliateGuerrilla software is installed on your own site - not a 3rd party solution. It is designed for Windows hosted web sites. It allows up to 5 levels of commissions, fixed or percent. It allows both standard products and subscriptions. It is integrated with PayPal so website owners can start their own affiliate program without a merchant account or shopping cart.
You can add affiliates or sales manually. It is only $89.

ProTRACK from Pathfinder Software

There are two versions of Pro-TRACK, which was launched in September, 1999:

Pro-TRACK Standard is for the affiliate program owner that wants to keep track of sales and wants to know from which affiliates the sale originated. Although the Standard version will not compute any sales data (owners manually keep track of sales), it is an excellent way to track and compensate your affiliate sales, says Normand Charette of PathFinder Software.

Pro-TRACK Pro will not only track where your sales are originating from, but also provide you with the statistics you need to track how well your affiliate program is doing. At a glance you will be able to spot which ones are your hottest affiliates, the amount of click-throughs per banner views, and the average sale per click. These are only a few features that are included in the Pro version. The new Pro-TRACK version 1.4 costs $597.

CyberTrakker

CyberTrakker is the tool to help you build and manage your own affiliate distribution network, e-commerce and opt-in mailing lists without having to rely on other parties, says Ian Lauder, President of Cyber Sea Inc.

"CyberTrakker gives you total control of your affiliate and marketing tracking systems. Integration of e-commerce, shopping cart, affiliate tracking, hit tracking and site administration all under your control," he says. "The CyberTrakker system is also designed for small to medium sized businesses who cannot afford the high cost of a large scale e-commerce and affiliate tracking system. As your needs grow scale up the system rather than being tied to someone else's servers and systems for your tracking."

Yahoo Stores

Yahoo Stores tracking system is said to assure accuracy and honesty in reporting. A store using it is Thom Reece's On-Line Marketing Group.

DirectTrack Systems

DirectTrack is the software that was originally developed by advertising network DirectLeads to track their own affiliate program, and is now being marketed as a hosted tracking solution.

The set-up cost is $750 and they charge a "nominal fee for bandwidth and traffic".

SalesDoubler

Affiliate software SalesDoubler from Commercial Networks hires, spreads and keeps track of your advertisers/dealers and their sales.

Vilo Ivanic of Commercial Networks says its main features are:

Standard or two-tier commission setup calculated either in % or $.
Sales Tracking
Banner Impressions Tracking
Banner Click-Throughs Tracking
Emailer - Send email messages to ALL of your dealers from one place.
Product Database - Use it as a Shopping Cart
Ability to replicate whole site, not just one page
Search Engine submitable Dealer's HTML links
Dynamically generated pages.
Advertisment banner code generator
Dealer's statistics
Easy to use owner's Administration windows
Export commissions data to off-line database

SalesDoubler costs $395 (US).

AffiliateWindow

UK based AffiliateWindow is a complete affiliate tracking and management software suite. "The program can be easily installed into existing e-commerce solutions in a matter of minutes," says managing director Kevin Brown.

AffiliateWindow.com Ltd manages the affiliate relationships, "taking away much of the financial cost and administration of running an affiliate program allowing the affiliate merchant to focus revenues and staff in other areas".

AffiliateWindow was launched in 2000. Pricing: ?999 followed by support at ?300 a month.

PDG Shopping Cart software

PDG Shopping Cart software is a fully featured shopping cart software with affiliate link tracking piggy-backed on to it. An SSL-enhanced version costs $US750.

Affiliate Scripts

Pierre Rodrigues of Affiliate Scripts offers a variety of scripts enabling you to start and manage an affiliate program for your site.

Set up your own affiliate network

Affiliate Network Pro software enables site owners to start their own affiliate network site "just like CJ and LinkShare", says John Ross of AlstraSoft.

Affiliate Network Pro was launched August, 2004.

You can see the full features of the software at AlstraSoft and do a test drive.

Ralph Wilson's Review of Affiliate Management Software

For an in-depth review of all the major affiliate management software options, get Dr Ralph Wilson's Report on Affiliate Management Software (2005 Edition)

It's the most thorough analysis of affiliate management software I've seen anywhere.

It's absolutely essential reading for anyone who's planning to start an affiliate program.

Dr Wilson is probably THE most trusted marketer on the Internet.

Do-it-yourself sites, articles, and books

For a superb article on how to operate an affiliate program, get a copy of Ken Evoy's Make Your Site Sell. It's incredibly good value for money, and comes with a 224-page FREE manual for affiliates.

CGI For The Total Non-Programmer - Basics Of Creating CGIs With Perl On A Unix Platform. Rob Young's website.