Affiliate programs tend to create a win-win situation, don't they? Someone else finds your customer for you, and you still keep at least some of the profit (and usually, 100% of the profits following the initial sale).

How easy is it to implement an affiliate program, and are there any scripts for managing one?

Affiliate or Referrals are ideal in ANY industry - it's how businesses grow.
Implementing an affiliate program can be done by just someone saying "bob sent me" and you know you Bob is, so you send him a check, OR if you want to get a little more automated, you can install one of any hundred different types of affiliate software on a site.

If you're selling hosting, MOST billing programs also have an affiliate program built into them.

Here at Hands-on, we use the affiliate program built into WHMCS and our clients love it.

"Ultimate affiliate" from Groundbreak.com, idevaffiliate and jrox would be some of the affiliate software that's on the popular side (AFAIK). then there are the affiliate networks like cj.com, shareasale.com, clickxchange.com etc. Each approach has its benefits.

Thank you both for your suggestions. I looked up Ultimate Affiliate - looks good, but it's a $200 program, and I can't seem to find many reviews on it. Has anyone here tried it?

Never tried Ultimate I don't think, but iDev I used to use in the past and still have it here somewhere.

Share-a-sale I use, and comission junction I use too, but these are 3rd party places to manage the comissions. iDev is fairly reasonable from what I remember.

In your experience, is it better to manage your own program or run them through an affiliate network, like Commission Junction? I assume that the former is a one-time expense and the latter involves the other party taking a recurring cut.

I would use both. The issue with a home grown and run affiliate program is you have to have customers first. when you affiliate yourself with a network, there are already people willing to sell your products because they know the game.

I find that 3rd party programs yield higher results because the individuals promoting your product have developed strategies to maximize sales. That is why they do affiliate marketing.

If you are looking to implement the program yourself and manage everything yourself, you can use JROX software. I know in the past it has been free for you to use for up to 100 affiliates however I have not checked it here recently. Affiliate programs are very popular lately!

which one of those give the most benefits?

True, lots of hosts do that. They use the affiliate network to reach affiliate they would not otherwise attract, and use the in house program (usually with a significantly lower payment scheme too) to encourage customers to recommend them.

I'm just setting up the inbuilt WHMCS one. It seems quite adequate for my needs, I think it needs extra pages up to augument it properly.

I used groundbreak.com, its worthless. CJ is the best.

How do you get people to sign up the affiliate programs?

Just hope they sign up when they visit your site for hosting or is there afliate sites you can subscribe to other your offer around?

In many cases Neil that's part of sales. You can HOPE they do something, but really you want to let them know that it exists and explain the rewards of it. Send reminder information (like stats etc) and get their feedback on how YOU can help THEM increase conversion to your site.

You'd be amazed at how many people will offer to help you to grow your business if you just let them know that you need some help.

There are some networks I'm sure that you can subscribe to, Share-A-Sale comes to mind, but be prepared to have heafty comissions if you're in those kinds of networks as you're competition usually has more money to throw at the client.

Your best bet on affiliates is having your existing customers recommend others - afterall, THEY like you, so why wouldn't they want to tell others about you!