Do you offer your customers/visitors the opportunity to sell your services with an affiliate program?

If so, Please tell me of your success, has it improved your sales?
Your presence? Your Brand?

My reasoning.

We will be implementing an affiliate program for the first time next weekend and are curious as to what to expect as far as effectiveness of affiliates, not just in sales but overall brand recognition and traffic.

Regards

avidInteractive does, and we increased our sales by $1000 per month because of it. Recently I haven't been able to pay really close attention to it, but we get affiliate signups daily (approx 50-100). No doubt some of them are spam, but we're getting a great return on the usage of the banners, and free advertising never hurts

Thank you Mark,

That is exactly what I was hoping to hear.

Although I dont expect that big of a return, I do hope our program is successful.

First of all.. Your site looks very well put together. Kudos!
As far as affiliates go, I do offer them, but I'm not banking on it.
There are some hosts that rely on their affiliate programs, spending thousands..millions/month paying their best source of new customers. If you plan it out right I guess it doesn't hurt to try.

Thank you siforek,
That is a new design, Been optimizing it for SEO for 3 weeks now, almost done.

Thanks for the opinion as well, I think at this time brand recognition is our main goal with affiliates, but in the long run I think it could help in many ways with sales and traffic included in our goals.

NS

I personally prefer only affiliates that are existing customers. that why you get people being referred because you're a good host, and not just some guy plastering his AFF link all over the net.

Your site does look great. One comment only - the text at the bottom would probably look better if not all centered - possibly break into two columns or left justify. Just a quick observation.
I'm actually considering affiliate programs as well, so this thread strikes my interest. Thanks.

Thanks Steve,
Guess I didnt even think about the appearance of the text on the bottom of the main page because it is primarily for search engines, your right though, I will need to make it more apealing.

NS

Hands-on offers an affiliate program (recurring monthly comissions for the life of the account). This has worked well for many customers over the years. For a while we offered a single flat rate payout, but found that people liked the recurring monthy payments better.

We rely heavily on our affiliate system and customers referring other customers - NOTHING beats word of mouth from existing clients!

As an affiliate and much prefer recurring for life of the account. "Offline" word of mouth converts very highly but if you get some top gun online affiliates, they can churn in hundreds of sales daily.

NetSpace Ltd, I'd definately go for it so long as you're generous with your commissions. Remember, it's all new business that was generated without any work