I have been running my own affiliate program for the past 3 years now. There are many gains are loss when you run your own affiliate program. It depends on you how you run the program. The losses can be converted to gains if you plan your program well. Well in my case, I had funded my affiliate program and it took some time to make money from affiliate programs. I was expecting this and it was planned.

Advantages of running your own affiliate program

Branding yourself - You can brand yourself when you run your own affiliate program. Just go to Google and search for HomeJob, you will get my website and I get lots of visitors from Google who search for Home Jobs. For the past 3 years I have established a brand.

Gaining confidence of affiliates - You can gain confidence of your members who have been working for your program, provided, you keep your promise, make the payments promptly

Easy to launch new programs - If you have a good number of affiliates who are working for your affiliate program, you can introduce new products and get your existing members to join the new programs. This is applicable only if your affiliates are happy with your existing affiliate programs

Disadvantages of running your own affiliate program

Responsibility - You have lots of responsibility like replying to the support request, managing your affiliates, making payments, but again part of your program

Overheads - You should plan your affiliate program well so that you can manage your overheads from the revenue generated from your affiliate program

Management - Management is a part of every business, you need to manage your program well. You may not be able to do all by yourself, you may need a technical person if you are not having any technical experience. I my case, I had to recruit moderators for moderating the work done my affiliates.

Conclusion - There are pros and cons for every business you do and it depends all on you , how you plan your program and manage it. I learnt a lot from the affiliate programs I am running and now I make good revenue from my affiliate programs and I no longer need to invest any funds to make payments to my affiliates. I have sufficient income from Advertisement and registration fees. My affiliate are happy as they get paid exactly on the payout date

My affiliate Programs

• HomeJob Pro - New registration stopped from Jan 2008
• HomeJob Ref - Currently going on , high income generating program

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