You'll have a tough row to hoe.
I'd say that about 1% of online marketers start out of the gate with their own product and then use affiliates to promote it without having obtained some degree of success as an affiliate marketer themselves first.
More GURU crap!! See this thread here
http://www.wickedfire.com/shooting-shit/157139-bullshit-side-internet-marketing-guru-industry.html
Read through that thread and watch all the videos before you proceed any farther in your endeavor.
I'm not saying it can't be done, but it will be MUCH more difficult than you imagine.
Can you get affiliates? Sure, but they will most likely be n00bs who won't be sending much traffic your way.
"My" suggestion would be to promote your product yourself for at least 6 months. Keep good records and once the sales start to level off then look for affiliates to "help" promote it. Help is the key here since you will be giving most of your profit away in lieu of more sales numbers and exposure.
Also, after 6 moths you should have some creatives to share with your affiliates along an email regimen of follow up contacts if they desire to use them.
You see, buy promoting the products yourself for the first months and finding out what does and doesn't work, your affiliates won't be wasting their time & money having to figure it out. This is YOUR job. You then give them a template/system that has PROVEN data to show how it converts. Then they can either follow it or modify it their liking.
But you CANNOT expect any decent affiliate that is earning a full time living online to "figure it out". They have no time for that. Plus, if you can't show decent conversions and what their projected profits could be there will be no incentive for them to promote YOUR product over some other product out there.
The MAIN reason for having affiliates is more traffic and exposure. Yes, there will be some profit of course, but with you being NEW and just starting out with very few contacts in the business you should be looking to LEARN all the steps needed to market a product or service from inception to profitability.
You will also be better able to help your affiliates if they run into problems with promoting your product since you yourself will have hit those same bumps before.
Trying to manage affiliates with little to no experience as an affiliate yourself or not having promoted your own product to profitability on your own will most likely cause your initial affiliate program to fail.
Now let me tell you something that your IM Mentor most likely did NOT mention, seeing as how he/she left out HOW to get those affiliates to promote your product, it is VERY HARD to RECOVER from a FAILED AFFILIATE program!!!
Which by the way, there have been millions of dollars spent/lost and countless WASTED hours by NEW Internet Marketers trying to jump right in with their own product and starting an affiliate program. 99% of them have failed miserably. Most never recovered from it and very few who tried starting that way actually stuck with IM/AM and later became profitable.
They all learned that they needed to become an affiliate for someone else first or to just promote their product on their OWN first and get it to profitability.
There is a LOT to learn and you CAN learn as you go. But too many people have tried putting the cart before the horse and it was just too over whelming.
This is a smaller community than you think or know.
You are not experienced enough by what your post said, nor have the time in the business to have a large enough LIST to do JV's yet and do a LARGE launch with affiliates at the initial offering of your product.
You will hear this OVER and OVER again. "Stick with ONE thing until it becomes profitable!!" It's so simple that everyone thinks it's just CRAP. (Coming in as a n00b and starting your own affiliate program on just your second product launch in like 45 days of actual online marketing would be an exception to this though. lol)
Well, most Truth's in life are SIMPLE and that's one of the reasons they stand the test of time.
Who knows, you just might be the 1% that will just take off and continue without a hitch. If that happens you can look back on this post and just LAUGH at me/it.
On the other hand, it will be here for you to reference.
Here's a download link for
CJ's Publisher guide as a PPT (Power Point Presentation.)
http://www.cpentrepreneurs.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Publisher-Overview_20122.pptx
They and other Affiliate Networks work as intermediaries between Advertisers and Publishers. By joining one of them as Publisher first, you can get a feel for how things work.
After you know how to promote your product you can then experience how a network manages affiliates so that you will be better prepared when it's time for you to try your hand at running one on your own.
Anywho, I wish you well in your endeavors.
