In response to the article on affiliate programs (“Affiliate Programs Secret to Net Marketing,” Aug. 10), setting up an affiliate program is even easier than Joe Haedrich said. In the scenario he described, you still need to set up a Web site, promote it in order to get sites to sign up, and when they do, handle the activity, problems and questions that inevitably arise from sites in your network. It can become a full-time job for an active affiliate program.
We foresaw this problem more than 18 months ago and created the TransAct! network. We create banners and “offer pages.” We place banners on thousands of sites that generate hundreds of thousands of impressions. We capture the leads and send them to our clients or their fulfillment houses. Our clients pay only a fixed per-lead cost.
Many of our clients are circulation managers and people who know little about setting up Web sites, nor do they have the time for that. So, we basically take their
direct mail pieces and convert them to an Internet lead generation program, all with no up-front investment in Web sites, software, hardware, programming or staff.
Irv Brechner
Director of marketing technology
ALC Interactive
Peterborough, NH
