The Affiliate Program

In previous posts, I wrote about whether your fundraising is friendly to mobile devices, and mobile internet statistics.

Then, I wrote about Fundraising Mobile Apps: Still Having Problems? This included how, for a time, Apple wasn’t allowing charities to receive donations using apps through their web store. This also included the problems and costs of developing apps. Natives, which are designed to run on one OS, and hybrids, which can run on multiple, and how the costs can be several or tens of thousands of dollars.

From there, I went on to discuss Challenges for Fundraisers: Fundraising Operation Costs, Investing in New Technology, Use of Donor Data, Keeping Engaged with Donors, Sagging Public Trust, and how Nonprofits can succeed.

Finally, I wrote about The Drain of Fundraising. This include 5 parts, outlined, from WikiHow, how your members and community may grown at “not another fundraiser,” or how people simply can’t, because they don’t have any spare funds. Now, I present solutions.

One of the best options is The Affiliate Program. You may be rolling your eyes, thinking of all the spammers that try to get you to buy something you may or may not want, invites to dating sites, or even to get you to spend money on an adult site. All of these happen, but aren’t shouldn’t discourage you from looking into setting up an affiliate program for your organization.

One of the most well known is Amazon Associate program. You can sign up for an account for your organization. You provide Amazon with your tax information. Then, you can link to specific products, or just to the site or search, yourself. When someone makes a purchase, your organization gets a commission. Set up a section on your site, and create the links from there. You can do the same thing on your Mobile App. If you don’t have either, we can help.

Another option is to join up on Ebay’s Partner Network. While there are many other auction sites out there, Ebay continues to be the most well known, around the globe. Having members of your group, as well as the community, to shop through your affiliate link to do their regular Ebay shopping, with commission rates that range from 40% to 80%.

Shopify Affiliate Program is also an option, for people looking to start their own online store.

Clickbank is one of the largest and longest affiliate market programs around. It makes it fairly easy for both sellers and affiliate marketers to make money. ClickBank is a privately held Internet retailer of both physical and digital products. ClickBank was founded in 1998.

CJ Affiliate (formerly Commission Junction): Another large company and one that has been around for years. Likewise, it was founded in 1998.

ShareASale.com has over 2,500 merchants to choose from, real-time stats, and on-time payments. Founded 2000.

You can find affiliate programs for just about anything, and for many companies. Decide what companies you want to have for your affiliate programs. Then, put the links on your site, and create that section in your App. If you don’t know how to do these, talk with your site and app developer. If you don’t have a site or app developer, we can help.