Getting and managing affiliates for offers?

[socal_e30]

After spending the entire day on the phone with various networks, and getting a semi-decent backend tracking system up and running, I was wondering: would it be worth the trouble to get affiliates independent of any network for the offers my company has?

I'm in currently talking with a few networks (waiting on approval from management to take on the campaigns), and that whole process just got me thinking... we have the ability to give a few people logins to the backend to view the data that they'd need to view, and we have the ability to handle payouts... or am I oversimplifying the whole thing?

Seems like every time I learn something in this industry, it brings up a million more questions...

Thanks

 

[HarveyJ]

You mean running an in house affiliate program?

There are plenty of places that do it.
The benefit of the network is that they provide a middle man that gives a decent level of trust between you and the affiliates. The affiliates are worried you'll fuck them, and you should be worried that the affiliates could send bad or fraudulent traffic.
The networks also already have all the major affiliates, so if you're offering something good, you might get one of these guys splashing >$30k a day on an ad campaign for your stuff (hopefully pulling that money right back in as confirmed conversions/sales)

If you're a small company, I'd say you're better off going through a network until you've got a really tight grip on how it all works.

 

[socal_e30]

You mean running an in house affiliate program?

Yes, but I guess on a really small scale (a good group of 4-6)... we're a small company, still trying to get off the ground...dealing with the hassles of brokering leads.

As far as networks go, I've spoken to a few, and the biggest problem I'm finding is some networks (like Hydra) have fairly lofty requirements (not that I was expecting to get on Hydra or anyone of their caliber).

The people who I have spoken with have all been VERY helpful (esp the AWESOME guys at Ads4Dough).

Being so new (and overwhelmed by all the options presented before me), I guess my next question is... who are some of the good networks that are willing to work with small companies?


Thanks for all the help.