Note: Affiliate links may be used in this post. When you buy through my affiliate links I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Full disclosure here.
How to Start an Affiliate Program
This guide will teach you how to start your own affiliate program.
Starting an affiliate program is an amazing opportunity for digital product creators to increase their sales and reach more customers.
My affiliates earn hundreds of dollars for themselves every month, and in turn, I make more sales and income because of them!
This post is going to show you exactly how to start an affiliate program with Payhip. If you aren’t already selling your digital product on Payhip, I highly recommend making the switch to this easy-to-use platform.
Here are my top three reasons for using Payhip to sell my digital products:
- They offer a free plan. You can start selling your products for free, and Payhip just takes a very small percentage of your sales on this plan.
- It’s seriously the most user-friendly platform I have ever seen. I was able to set up and start selling my ebook in Payhip in about ten minutes.
- You can quickly start your own affiliate program, and it’s so easy to manage that it will only take you a few minutes a month!
Click here to sign up for Payhip for free.
Ready to start your own affiliate program? Here’s what you need to know.
Update: I no longer run an affiliate program for my own digital products, but I’m keeping this guide active so you can still use it!
What is an affiliate program?
In case you are unfamiliar with affiliate programs, here’s the gist of it.
Affiliate marketing is simply promoting a product and earning a commission when someone makes a purchase through your unique affiliate link.
Digital product creators can set up their own affiliate program and incentivize affiliates to promote their products by offering them a commission. (This is usually a percentage of the sale – I offer 40% commission.)
I wrote a complete guide to affiliate marketing, which goes more in-depth about affiliate marketing (from the affiliate’s point of view.)
However, this guide is focused on the product creator’s side and will teach you how to start your own affiliate program to increase your traffic and income.
Why should you start an affiliate program?
Having an affiliate program is a great opportunity for digital product creators. Here are some of the benefits of starting an affiliate program for your products:
- Increase sales by having many people promote your product for you.
- Drive more traffic to your blog or website through your affiliates.
- Improve your SEO with affiliates linking to your site.
- Spend less on marketing since your affiliates will market your product for you.
- Build brand authority and trust through recommendations from your affiliates.
Since starting an affiliate program for my ebooks, I have been able to drive traffic and make so many more additional sales than I could have done on my own!
How to set up your affiliate program in Payhip
Once you have uploaded your digital product (or products) in Payhip, you can create an affiliate program for them in just a few easy steps.
Payhip has an entire step-by-step tutorial right here showing you how to do it.
Once you have an affiliate program for your digital product, you might be wondering what the next steps are. Such as, how do you get qualified affiliates to actually sign up for your program and promote your products for you?
How to make your affiliate program successful!
Here are some tips for encouraging your affiliates to promote your products and making your affiliate program a success…
- Mention your affiliate program and how to join at the end of your product.
- Add a link to join your affiliate program on the sales page for your product and elsewhere around your blog to maximize exposure.
- Send out the occasional email newsletter to your affiliates (for example, on a quarterly basis) sharing tips and tricks for promoting your product.
- Run a contest for your affiliates and award a cash bonus to the top-performing affiliate who generates the most affiliate sales in a month.
- Create pre-made social media graphics and swipe copy for your affiliates to use on their blog, in emails, and on social media.
- Offer to do interviews about your product with your affiliates on their blog to help them promote it using their affiliate link.
- Make sure you’re offering a generous commission for your affiliates (I personally give my affiliates 40% commission on sales.)
- Contact bloggers in your niche and let them know about your affiliate program and offer them a free copy of your product to review.
It’s easy to start your own affiliate program, but it does take more work to manage a successful program. However, the benefits of having your own affiliate program are huge, and it can really help you increase sales and income.
How to pay your affiliates
Paying your affiliates can be a hassle, but Payhip makes it incredibly easy.
At the beginning of every month, they will send you an email with a spreadsheet with all your affiliate earnings due for that month.
If you have mass payments enabled on PayPal, all you have to do is upload the spreadsheet, and you can pay everyone at once. (I highly recommend doing it this way because it saves you a ton of time each month!)
Otherwise, you can just pay each affiliate manually through PayPal or whatever other payment system you want to use based on the affiliate report.
Starting an affiliate program with Payhip
So that’s all there is to it. Starting an affiliate program for your digital products with Payhip is quite simple, and it can be very lucrative too.
Click here to sign up for Payhip for free.
With a free plan, Payhip is by far the most budget-friendly software out there that you can use to sell your digital products AND start your own affiliate program. This is why I highly recommend it for all digital product creators!
I hope these tips will help you start your own affiliate program today!
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