Affiliate programs can provide bootstrap capital

Filed in archive Tools on July 19, 2006

I'd like to make one final point on this whole issue of affiliate programs and whether they are or are not a legitimate business as discussed in a previous post.

It seems to me that, properly utilized, affiliate programs can easily become a source of revenue on which to bootstrap the rest of your business dreams.

Last week, for example, while putting together the blog for our own new bootstrap venture IndieTune here at Bootstrapme.com, I realized that cool photos like these were beyond my immediate budget.

I've set a goal of trying to invest only what the business is able to generate in revenue and this is a pretty ambitious goal until we begin to carry more content.

But it suddenly occurred to me that the very website I was staring at might be at least part of the answer to my problem.

I joined theaffiliate program for Artzooks(in this case called an associate program) offering visitors to the IndieTune site access to more than 750,000 stock images through a banner along the top of my page or small buttons below each post.

The program pays 10 percent of qualifying revenues from the first transaction and 5 percent of every transaction after that for up to 12 months referred through my site.

My thinking is that content creators just like me could help finance the development of my website by buying the tools they need to develop their own.

Since images can run up to $399 a piece for high resolution and since the site claims orders sometimes run into the $1000's, I hope to make enough to pay for some photos for my own website or, at the very least, hosting fees for our very own distinct URL.

I'll keep everyone apprised of my progress.