4 ways to launch a travel affiliate programme

There are several ways to launch a travel affiliate program. Here are four essential methods:

1. DIY Style

Affiliates can track sales from links through handy and simple tools, such as Google Analytics, and keep records in Google Spreadsheets. However, these days there are much more convenient ways to launch an affiliate program. Instead of bringing it together yourself, you can leverage the technology available, like ready-to-go programmes, and spend your time getting the programme off the ground. The money spent on technology is often worth the return on investment you get from having a superior system that includes as much automation as possible.

2. Hire a development team

Another option is to hire a development team. Your team will spend several months or so developing your affiliate programme from scratch. Prices range from $25 an hour for offshore development to more than $850 an hour for an enterprise-class software development company. A typical software development cycle often includes concept development, initiation, planning, UI design, development and other tasks.

You might want to avoid hiring someone if you don't know the quality of communication you can expect from them (as in offshore development). While the cost of hiring a pro with an outstanding track record is worth the investment for larger companies, it might not be the best idea for your up-and-coming travel affiliate programme. Software development is a huge undertaking with a lot of moving parts. Hiring a development team isn’t recommended if you have no experience because the odds of your program being at the market level are slim.

3. Launch your affiliate programme through an affiliate network

A travel affiliate network connects affiliates with affiliate programmes and rewards them for sales in exchange for promoting their travel offers. It's a profitable niche because travel is something people genuinely love, proven by the $4,671 billion the travel and tourism sector contributed to the global GDP in 2020. And that's during the coronavirus outbreak!

This option provides a vital piece of any affiliate programme – expertise and an established base of partners who are part of partner networks. Leveraging an existing network of partners is a huge benefit when your brand is just starting out in affiliate marketing.

Affiliate networks provide hundreds of thousands of affiliates with the traffic you can access. However, you can target with more precision when you use a specialty affiliate network. For example, Travelpayouts.com works with travel affiliate marketers and brands only. The platform has over 300K verified marketing partners registered and a 5M global target audience available for brands.

4. Use a ready-made SAAS solution

Some SAAS solutions allow semi-finished product advertisers use to create their affiliate programmes.

The pros of using an affiliate technology like this are:

• the speed and advanced technology
• the ability to track sales in the lifetime of cookies
• tool development options
• the solution meets market requirements.

This solution makes it easy to get started, you don't have to hire a developer, and it's not terribly expensive, either. That's time and money saved.