This question was recently asked on a forum. Here’s my take on it…

Typically affiliate programs account for 7-15% of a company’s overall revenue. Every situation is different, but that’s an average for affiliate programs as a % of revenue. Since they are revenue share based, provided the setup costs are minimal (many programs cost nothing or just a few hundred dollars to setup), they are generally worth doing. For most smaller software companies I would not recommend using CJ.com which is among the largest because their upfront/ongoing costs are too high, it’s a pain to setup and many smaller software merchants have lost money on CJ b/c of their fees which don’t always get offset by affiliate revenue. One of our software vendors recently reported it lost about $5,000 by testing out CJ due to the fees.

But we recommend ShareASale.com, which only costs a few hundred dollars to sign up, attracts a nice range of affiliate publishers, and is easy to setup quickly. That’s why we’ve integrated ShareASale with FastSpring. Don’t expect overnight riches but after a few months it could increase your revenue 7-15% if a few decent affiliate publishers pickup your offer, like the results, and stick with it.

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