If you have a shopping cart on your site and you are not involved in affiliate marketing than you are missing out on one of the strongest online marketing techniques available to you. Affiliate marketing is a proven success and it is responsible for millions of dollars in sales for a great many websites.
In fact, affiliate marketing is one tool that levels the playing field for smaller online retailers. A tiny site can work day to day and gain thousands of affiliates in a short period of time. A thousand affiliates in six months for someone working an hour or two a day, a few days a week, is very realistic.
A rough definition of an affiliate program is simply a program that allows webmasters to display your ads on their website and get a cut of the sales generated from the traffic that they send to your site. So, if webmaster Joe puts an ad on his website for your product and a hundred people click that ad and go to your site and three people end up buying your product, Joe will earn a percentage of the money you make from these sales. At the end of each month, you send Joe his check.
One great aspect of the affiliate marketing campaign is that you pay for the advertising only if it is effective and you pay the affiliates only after you have received payment for the sales made. You can’t beat that!
The up front cost is generally under a couple of hundred dollars. This is to buy the affiliate software and install it on your server. This is an inexpensive way to begin and it also has advantages over the other option of joining an affiliate network.
There are a few big affiliate program networks that charge five grand or more to join and will integrate your site in to their network and expose it to their base of thousands of potential affiliates. This is a tempting way to spend five grand and it seems to makes sense that the exposure to the affiliates will be worth the large set up fee. But unless your site is truly unique you will also encounter serious competition within the network. Because of this, every time you recruit a valuable affiliate they will join the network and be exposed to your competitor’s offers plus those of a thousand other affiliate programs. Very distracting and not exactly preferable.
This is the advantage of an independent program. The affiliates you recruit will be focused on your program alone. Why spend so much money and so much time bringing in affiliates who are immediately directed to other programs as soon as they join? This is a big negative for affiliate networks that makes a strong case for running an independent program.
Setting up an affiliate program is very easy. You need some good affiliate software installed on your server and you need the ads. For the software, iDev has a great program for only a hundred dollars. They will install it for you for an additional fifty. For a great affiliate program software package, check out iDev’s at: http://www.idevdirect.com/affiliates/idevaffiliate.php?id=906
The ads you can create on your own. If you are uncomfortable creating your own ads, look for a good art forum and post with a request for help from a graphic artist. Usually you can find a good artist for an affordable amount.
Once your affiliate software is set up and you have loaded a few ads, you can begin to recruit affiliates. The first thing to do is to submit your program to affiliate program directories. Simply search “affiliate program directories” and you will find a nice list. The directory traffic will bring in some nice affiliates but your own efforts in recruiting will generate the best results.
To recruit affiliates is a simple procedure. Search the web the way you would expect your customers to and go to the sites that come up in the top of the search results. Check the site out and if it looks good send the webmaster an email or a letter, or both. The letter is mentioned because spam filters have begun to block a lot of legitimate email and letters have had fantastic response rates. Working the phone is always good too.
As your affiliate base builds so will your sales. Run weekly or monthly specials, create new ads consistently and communicate with your affiliate using a newsletter and/or a blog. Keep the communications professional and consistent and you will see your program grow every month.
For a small investment you buy a lot of potential. It’s not a get rich quick scheme and it does take a serious effort on your part but the nice thing about affiliate programs is that if you have a good product, and you put the effort forth, you can build an online sales force consisting of thousands of websites helping you sell your product. You only pay for results and only after you get the cash. Few marketing programs compare.
8/16/2009
@5 Tips For Greater Affiliate Marketing Success
1) Follow The Leaders
Stay in affiliate marketing for long enough and a familiar pattern starts to appear. The first thing that you notice is that the same names keep cropping up on other affiliate programs that you might have an interest in. This pattern continues if you sign up to the various news letters that these names promote, but the most revealing secrets are in the emails that they send to you because they contain the news of what product they are about to promote and why you should also consider promoting the same product.
2) Your Commissions
A good affiliate program should pay you commission upwards of 40% depending on the price of the product or service in question, it should also have a two tier system in place. This means that you get a percentage of profits earned from all affiliates who have signed up under you in the same affiliate program.
3) Membership Websites
These type of websites have gained rapid popularity and for good reason, they offer you the chance to earn almost a regular monthly wage from all people who sign up under you. The secret of membership websites is in the quality of the products and services offered which you would normally find to expensive to purchase individually, you get full access to the website so long as you pay the monthly fee which can range from anything from $10 to $100 plus a month.
4) Check Cookies
An often over-looked but very important point regarding Internet marketing, how long does your affiliate cookie last? If your not sure what a cookie is, It is basically a harmless code embedded in your browser every time you visit a website. The cookie tells the website owner information about you and your surfing habits, but what's really interesting is the length of time attached to each cookie. You may be asking yourself "how does this effect me" Well let's say as an example that you decide to promote broomsticks as your affiliate product and the website gives cookies for a one month period only
Each new person that you send to the broomstick website would have to make a purchase within a month, but no later, for you to earn a commission which believe me is a hard thing to do even with a website with great ad copy. So what you need to look out for is affiliate programs that offer cookies for a minimum period of three months which will increase your chances of making a sale by at least 40%
5) Customer Care
The customer care that I'm talking about here concerns you as an affiliate marketer. Any website which you decide to promote should be willing to bend over backwards to help you succeed. There should be pre written solo ads, emails, videos, etc. Everything that you need to sell your product or service if you do not get this, then you are promoting the wrong affiliate program.
This is the end of the article and I hope you find the above five tips useful and profitable in the future. Just remember that great reward does not come without great effort on your part, no matter how much hype you hear about the easy money that can be made on the Internet. If you continue to work hard you will be rewarded.
Stay in affiliate marketing for long enough and a familiar pattern starts to appear. The first thing that you notice is that the same names keep cropping up on other affiliate programs that you might have an interest in. This pattern continues if you sign up to the various news letters that these names promote, but the most revealing secrets are in the emails that they send to you because they contain the news of what product they are about to promote and why you should also consider promoting the same product.
2) Your Commissions
A good affiliate program should pay you commission upwards of 40% depending on the price of the product or service in question, it should also have a two tier system in place. This means that you get a percentage of profits earned from all affiliates who have signed up under you in the same affiliate program.
3) Membership Websites
These type of websites have gained rapid popularity and for good reason, they offer you the chance to earn almost a regular monthly wage from all people who sign up under you. The secret of membership websites is in the quality of the products and services offered which you would normally find to expensive to purchase individually, you get full access to the website so long as you pay the monthly fee which can range from anything from $10 to $100 plus a month.
4) Check Cookies
An often over-looked but very important point regarding Internet marketing, how long does your affiliate cookie last? If your not sure what a cookie is, It is basically a harmless code embedded in your browser every time you visit a website. The cookie tells the website owner information about you and your surfing habits, but what's really interesting is the length of time attached to each cookie. You may be asking yourself "how does this effect me" Well let's say as an example that you decide to promote broomsticks as your affiliate product and the website gives cookies for a one month period only
Each new person that you send to the broomstick website would have to make a purchase within a month, but no later, for you to earn a commission which believe me is a hard thing to do even with a website with great ad copy. So what you need to look out for is affiliate programs that offer cookies for a minimum period of three months which will increase your chances of making a sale by at least 40%
5) Customer Care
The customer care that I'm talking about here concerns you as an affiliate marketer. Any website which you decide to promote should be willing to bend over backwards to help you succeed. There should be pre written solo ads, emails, videos, etc. Everything that you need to sell your product or service if you do not get this, then you are promoting the wrong affiliate program.
This is the end of the article and I hope you find the above five tips useful and profitable in the future. Just remember that great reward does not come without great effort on your part, no matter how much hype you hear about the easy money that can be made on the Internet. If you continue to work hard you will be rewarded.
@How To Avoid Embarrassing Mistakes When You Set Up Your First Program
My first affiliate program was up and running. Or so I thought. Instead, I found myself with a whole lot of egg on my face.
I’m glad to say that by now it’s all sorted out. I figured out what went wrong, why it went wrong, and how I could have avoided it even though technically it wasn’t really my fault. Yet it was. As you’ll see, there was one simple thing I could have done that would have prevented the whole problem.
And now that I’ve moved from being very embarrassed to appreciating the learning lesson, I decided to share it all with you so you won’t have to learn it the hard way.
Here’s what happened:
First of all, I decided to upgrade my shopping cart to the professional version. I had gone back and forth between whether I should do that or whether I should go with one of the programs that had the possibility for affiliate programs built in.
I decided to be optimistic: If I could recruit lots of affiliates and they really started selling lots of my ebooks, having my own program would be far cheaper.
Once I had upgraded, I found the affiliate program easy enough to set up. There were videos to guide me. All looked great. I set up a number of accounts for my friends online and off, looked up their affiliate links, and each one their links, ready for use. After all, customer service rules, right?
And now it was time for the pay-off. I eagerly waited for the sales to roll in.
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
Eventually, one of my new affiliates asked me why her link had expired. She wrote that when she clicked on it, she got an error message that told her that. So I clicked on her link, and sure enough: there was the error message. That wasn’t good at all.
It was late at night, so I had to wait till morning to really do anything about it. Meanwhile, I worried how many of my other new affiliates had actually sent their links to their lists and spent an hour sending out individual alerts.
In the morning, I called the help desk. It turned out that my shopping cart service had somehow forgotten to turn on a switch. The affiliate program looked great to me, but it wasn’t set up to work all the way through. Well, they fixed it right then.
So it seemed like it wasn’t my fault. But it was, at least in part. And there was a big lesson in it for me:
What could I have done to avoid this snafu? I’m really embarrassed I didn’t think of it earlier. I could have taken some of my friends’ affiliate links, copied them into a browser window and hit return. If I had done that, preferably before mailing them out, I would have discovered the problem immediately.
So then I had to set up my affiliate auto-responder in a big hurry (which should have been in place before I mailed out that first link, come to think of it), and broadcast apologies and updates.
Well... everything is working now. And to be safe and be instantly alerted to any possible troubles, I set myself up as my own affiliate and plugged a couple of banner ads with my link into my own blog. You better believe I will click on them regularly, and I’ll double-check any link I’ll send to my affiliates in the future.
By: Elisabeth Kuhn
I’m glad to say that by now it’s all sorted out. I figured out what went wrong, why it went wrong, and how I could have avoided it even though technically it wasn’t really my fault. Yet it was. As you’ll see, there was one simple thing I could have done that would have prevented the whole problem.
And now that I’ve moved from being very embarrassed to appreciating the learning lesson, I decided to share it all with you so you won’t have to learn it the hard way.
Here’s what happened:
First of all, I decided to upgrade my shopping cart to the professional version. I had gone back and forth between whether I should do that or whether I should go with one of the programs that had the possibility for affiliate programs built in.
I decided to be optimistic: If I could recruit lots of affiliates and they really started selling lots of my ebooks, having my own program would be far cheaper.
Once I had upgraded, I found the affiliate program easy enough to set up. There were videos to guide me. All looked great. I set up a number of accounts for my friends online and off, looked up their affiliate links, and each one their links, ready for use. After all, customer service rules, right?
And now it was time for the pay-off. I eagerly waited for the sales to roll in.
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
Eventually, one of my new affiliates asked me why her link had expired. She wrote that when she clicked on it, she got an error message that told her that. So I clicked on her link, and sure enough: there was the error message. That wasn’t good at all.
It was late at night, so I had to wait till morning to really do anything about it. Meanwhile, I worried how many of my other new affiliates had actually sent their links to their lists and spent an hour sending out individual alerts.
In the morning, I called the help desk. It turned out that my shopping cart service had somehow forgotten to turn on a switch. The affiliate program looked great to me, but it wasn’t set up to work all the way through. Well, they fixed it right then.
So it seemed like it wasn’t my fault. But it was, at least in part. And there was a big lesson in it for me:
What could I have done to avoid this snafu? I’m really embarrassed I didn’t think of it earlier. I could have taken some of my friends’ affiliate links, copied them into a browser window and hit return. If I had done that, preferably before mailing them out, I would have discovered the problem immediately.
So then I had to set up my affiliate auto-responder in a big hurry (which should have been in place before I mailed out that first link, come to think of it), and broadcast apologies and updates.
Well... everything is working now. And to be safe and be instantly alerted to any possible troubles, I set myself up as my own affiliate and plugged a couple of banner ads with my link into my own blog. You better believe I will click on them regularly, and I’ll double-check any link I’ll send to my affiliates in the future.
By: Elisabeth Kuhn
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)