Paul Colligan Interviews Anik Singal

Paul: And everything is automated? You got to do a lot of work? How does all that work?

Anik: Well as far as the tracking goes it's all 100 percent automated. You can have two selections now. A lot of programs do auto-approval, meaning if I go sign up now for an affiliate program I'm automatically approved and I get my promotional link and I'm on my merry way. But there's also the option where you say no, I want to be very selective I want to make sure I know who's working with me. In that case you have a little bit of manual labor you can face because someone comes to your site, they apply to your program and you have to manually login and approve them or disapprove them. But when it comes to the actual tracking and calculating payments and things of that sort, no that's 100 percent automated from whatever tracking solution you decide to use.

Paul: Beautiful. Does it matter what type of product or service you're selling? I mean obviously if you're selling web hosting, it seems like every web host has a huge affiliate program. Is affiliate marketing, an affiliate program good for anybody selling anything online? Are there certain people who shouldn't do it? Does what you're doing affect the type of affiliate program you have? How does all that come together?

Anik: That's a great question. It's funny because I get this question all the time and I'll get someone that comes to me and says, "Oh Anik I don't think my product is good for affiliate marketing." And I always laugh at that because I, to this date, have not found a single product or service that's being sold online that's not good for affiliate marketing. I personally believe that if you're selling something, even if it's a service or a product and you got a profit margin on it, there's room for affiliate marketing.

Anik: You know, Paul, it's funny I even noticed some big consulting firms that have launched an affiliate program in a pretty enterprising way in that most consulting firms don't have a set product or set anything. It's basically a client comes to them, they make a custom proposal and they send it out and if the client agrees they've got a deal. Well I've actually seen a couple of programs a couple months ago where they'll still find a way to give that affiliate a certain percentage of the agreed on proposal. So if they can launch an affiliate program I really can't think of a service or a product that can't an affiliate program.