In the summer, the company targeted systems integrators with a solution based on Microsoft's Small Business Server platform. And in November, The Planet launched its first consolidated reseller hosting solution since the creation of the merged organization in 2006.

This year, the company is targeting a third partner channel with the launch of an affiliate program. On Tuesday The Planet will launch its first ever program to provide commissions for both customers and non-customers who refer new business to the company.

Urvish Vashi, director of product management at the Planet, says the amount of business the company was receiving naturally through referrals was the impetus for the development of a fully developed affiliate program.

"We spent some time talking to our customers," says Vashi, "and we asked them 'where did you guys hear about the planet? How did you come to determine that you wanted to do business with The Planet?' First on the list was peer recommendation. And that kind of set a bug in our ears. It seems to me we should take advantage of that and encourage not just our customers but also others to recommend The Planet."

Along with the program, the company is launching a website built for affiliate partners. (Though it doesn't appear to be live as of the posting of this article, the site should be found here very soon.) The launch of such a program requires the navigation of certain expectations held not just by customers, but by the community of affiliate businesses.

"This is going to be an environment that is very mass market for us. Our goal is to sign up hundreds, and eventually thousands, of affiliates to this program."

To that end, the company has built what it considers a competitive commission structure, offering affiliates 65 percent of the first months referring revenue for any business referred. And The Planet has assigned a dedicated staff - responsible for both affiliate recruitment and affiliate efficacy - armed with marketing materials ranging from Web copy to banner ads designed to make those affiliates more successful in promoting the company.

"We selected Shareasale (sharesale.com) as our partner in administering this," says Vashi. "Shareasale is a company that administers affiliate programs. So they will handle a lot of the back-office processes. They're working on the creation of an affiliate portal that our affiliates can log into to see how much traffic is coming our way, how much of it is converting, how much money they're owed and so on."

An important concern of the affiliate community is the possibility that traffic referred to a merchant like The Planet might not be adequately recognized, resulting in the affiliate losing the sale. The industry term for this is "leakage," says Vashi, and The Planet is making a priority of addressing this concern.

"We have a strong commitment," he says, "that once an affiliate sends a potential prospect to us, if we close that business, we want that affiliate to be fairly compensated for it. So we're doing a couple of things around our website. When affiliate-referred traffic comes to our website, they'll see a version that is optimized for converting affiliate traffic to online sales. We're going to be doing things with our chat system and the phone numbers that they see. Basically, we want to make it as transparent and as clear as possible to our affiliate partners that when they sent traffic our way, they have the best opportunity to turn that into a paying commission.

And to assist in the uptake of the new program, Vashi says The Planet is launching two promotions for new affiliates. He says the customer responsible for referring the largest volume of business in the month of February will receive a bonus commission of $1,000. And the affiliate responsible for sending the single largest transaction will receive a bonus commission of $250.