Noob Question: Help Setting up a affiliate program

[adityas]

Hi!

I am new to affiliate marketing.

I offer copywriting services. I wish to set up an affiliate program where people can register, and maybe have a link on their site/signature or email or wherever, or even a banner!

I have a few packages, however, most sales are custom orders and the cost of each project varies a lot.

In this case what kind of an affiliate program would suit me the best? I realize I can't have a fixed commision for every buyer that is sent to my site by an affiliate as every visitor maynot be a buyer.

If a buyer coming through AFFILIATE A buys content from me for $5000 and if a buyer coming from AFFILIATE B buys content worth $200 only, then shouldn't AFFILIATE A be given more commision? Keeping that in mind, how can I pay commisions to my affiliates based on pro-rata?

Is there a ready made solution for this? Can I custom make a script? If yes can you guys please tell me what I need, maybe who should I go to, and how much it would cost me?


Thanks a lot in advance!
Really would appreciate any response from you.

Aditya

[HarveyJ]

Yeah, for what you do, you'll have to do percentage commissions.

Anyway, this is probably not the best forum to ask this question on.
There are a number of affiliate specific forums. Lord Brar & I like to hang out on one called WickedFire, but it's a tad on the harsh side for people who are new to the game.
V7N can be quite helpful. I like to go there just for the conversations in the crap talking section
Whatever you do, don't go to site point or digital point...

In terms of ready to go stuff, there really isn't that much out there, and most of what is around is not terribly good.
Stuff like PostAffiliate pro.

By & large, something like this needs a freelancer to setup a script, but it shouldn't take too long.
Simply a case of having an affiliate ID# in their links / banners that tells the form on your site that Customer X has come from Affiliate Y.
Then another script that looks for affiliate ID#s attached to completed sales, and adds it all to a database so that at the end of your pay period, you can send off the money.