Affiliate marketing is all the rage, but credible, objective information on setting up such programs is hard to come by. So, with your interests in mind, Business Week frontier editors trolled the Web and came up with this selection of useful sites.

Adbility.com: This site isn't well-designed, but strong content makes it the best starting point for research on setting up an affiliate sales program. It boasts the Web's most comprehensive list of links to affiliate-program software (www.Adbility.com/WPAG/baf_ad_sw.htm) and service bureaus. Run by former attorney Mark Welch, Adbility features acid commentary. It breezily pans affiliate programs with sketchy payment structures and poor contract terms. This objectivity is helpful in designing your own affiliate program. Use Welch's lists as a reminder of what NOT to do. For instance, it singles out the seller of a video program, which "keeps changing commission terms," adding that there have been "many complaints about late and missing shipments." Another affiliate plan for a matchmaking service takes a chiding in big red type for not posting a privacy policy.

Revenews.com: Strong, simple design is this site's strength. Like Adbility, it features a list of affiliate programs, neatly divided into business and consumer categories. Revenews tries to go one step further, by soliciting user opinions which are used to create overall program ratings. Sounds like a good idea. In practice, however, the statistics aren't very meaningful. Click on the "Top 10%" category, and Revenews displays a list of these highly regarded affiliate programs, graded on a four-point scale. But fewer than 10 people voted in a number of cases. Many of the entries get straight fours in the rating categories -- from all of three voters. And one can't exclude the possibility that people participated simply to manipulate the ratings.

More useful are Revenews' columns on the economics and culture of affiliate programs. One recent article analyzed the value of a Web visitor, taking the reader through a simple, but instructional, method of tabulating the real costs and benefits of attracting people to a home page.

Refer-it.com: This solid, well-respected site is a good resource for getting your bearings in the affiliate-program software (www.Adbility.com/WPAG/baf_ad_sw.htm) and service bureaus.

By Dennis Berman in New York
dennis_berman@businessweek.com

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