Affiliate network, web-based system or do it yourself?
If you want to have hundreds or thousands of affiliates promoting your products for you, you have many options.
You can hire affiliate networks such as Commission Junction (now owned by ValueClick), LinkShare or Performics. They handle the tracking and money - and charge you a healthy percentage. Those companies charge a few thousand dollars to get your affiliate program established.
There is also a wide range of smaller affiliate networks to choose from. They charge smaller fees.
You can hire someone to put their affiliate tracking software on your server. You can buy a CGI tracking script - or you can start an affiliate program by writing your own script.
You can also use web-based tracking systems which charge a monthly fee.
One thing to ask affiliate networks is who owns and controls the email addresses of affiliates. If they're YOUR affiliates, you want to be in control of those valuable names.
If you're thinking of using any of the networks as a merchant, I strongly recommend you sign up as an affiliate first - free - and test the service your affiliates will be receiving.
Want to do more research on how to start an affiliate program? Here are the main options:
Quick, easy and budget priced: AffiliateShop
AffiliateShop offers an easy, quick and effective way to set up an affiliate program.
It offers you the ability to pay-per-lead, pay-per-click, pay-per-sale, or pay using several of these methods (e.g. pay 5% on sales and $0.05 per lead). It also can pay out step wise (e.g. pay 5% for less than 100 sales and 10% for above 100 sales).
AffiliateShop has anti-fraud protection, so that affiliates cannot generate fraudulent click throughs. The software has full tracking and real time statistics for you and your affiliates, and can easily track two-tier programs.
AffiliateShop is partnered with TroySystems to allow you to cheaply send bulk checks to your affiliates. The US Treasury has printed checks on TroySystems equipment since 1984.
AffiliateShop can quickly integrate with most third party shopping cart systems, Microsoft ASP scripts, UNIX and NT Servers and can easily export data to other databases such as MS Access and MS SQL.
All software is hosted on an AffiliateShop server meaning the set up time is minimal. You can have an unlimited number of affiliates, even multiple affiliate programs.
Affiliate Shop is good value for money, with a setup fee of $395 and a monthly fee of $45. AffiliateShop offers a 30 day free trial, and can typically be set up in less than a single day.
AffiliateShop is very quick to set up and easy to use and I highly recommend it.
A popular budget-priced option: Interneka
Tomas Brikman of Interneka has a popular, budget-priced third party tracking solution.
Tomas says it isn't as advanced as MyAffiliateProgram but it has all the features that AffiliateShop has.
"Our customers are small to medium web sites that can't pay $500 for affiliate software. That's why we are offering a really good deal for merchants who are in need of affiliate software," he says.
Check it out here
Popular with affiliates: ShareaSale
Your affiliates will approve if you choose to go with ShareaSale. It's a large network offering hundreds of programs - pay-per-sale, pay-per-lead, and pay-per-click programs. More than 700 merchants. It has a strong pro-affiliate attitude and despises parasites. Has lots of datafeeds. Highly recommended.
Large network: Commission Junction
Commission Junction, launched in 1998, has a large network of merchants. You can quickly establish a pay-per-lead or pay-per-sale program, and benefit from publicity generated by this prominent affiliate network. Here's the description from the site:
"With a pay-per-lead program, you pay a commission when an authorized affiliate refers a customer to your site and that customer fills out a form or performs another action that allows you to follow up on the sales process.
"With a pay-per-sale program, you pay a commission when an authorized affiliate refers a customer to your site and that customer buys a product or service. The purchase may occur when the visitor is at your site or it may occur at a later time.
"Whether you want to start a new program or upgrade your existing program, we can get you started in a matter of days at a price that any organization can afford. We professionally manage all the details of your revenue sharing operations including affiliate sign-ups, approvals, tracking, reporting, and commission payments."
The system works well. A huge advantage of using a large network is that it promotes your program for you. Also, Commission Junction consolidates payouts (payouts from other CJ programs get lumped together into one large check), making it a favorite of affiliates.
However, you will still have to promote your affiliate program yourself. A large percentage of the affiliates who sign up through a major affiliate network will be newcomers who don't know how to sell on the Net.
If you want to pay someone a commission for taking care of most of the details, this is a good option.
Check out Commission Junction here
Performics
Performics is a highly professional, large affiliate network with some well known brands. Performics' clients include: America Online, Blair Corp., Bose, CompUSA, Eddie Bauer, HP Shopping, Kohl's, L.L.Bean, PC Connection, RedEnvelope, Verizon Wireless, and more than 200 others. Performics is owned by DoubleClick.
LinkShare
LinkShare is a large network which handles revenue sharing arrangements.
LinkShare Corporation has created a software solution to track leads that result in immediate or long-term sales. As well, it has established a network to help publishers of sites and online retailers. The software enables merchants and sites to share feedback information and customer analysis. It costs several thousand dollars to set up. LinkShare organizes things, does the tracking and handles payments. LinkShare offers consolidated affiliate payments, direct deposit for U.S. affiliates, and user defined minimum payment thresholds. LinkShare has attracted many big names, including Dell. You benefit from the publicity it generates.
More networks
ClickBank allows sellers of information products to set up a simple affiliate program very quickly, easily and very cheaply. Because it is so easy, you will be sharing space with a fairly mixed crowd. ClickBank accepts payments by credit card for you, and charges a percentage of each sale. It has about 100,000 affiliates. This is a very popular solution.
PayDotCom is a budget-priced ClickBank competitor, offering some features not offered by ClickBank.
ClickXchange will enable you to build your own affiliate program paying per-click, per-lead, per-sale, or per-impression. ClickXchange has over 150,000 affiliates in its network, and all advertiser accounts include a customized affiliate sign-up process that merges into your site.
DoubleClick Direct advertising network works with direct marketers on per-lead and per-sale advertising solutions. It's also a useful resource for online advertising information.
I want to do it myself: QuickPayPro
QuickPayPro is an advanced shopping cart system with affiliate tracking built in. It is a hosted solution with a MySQL back end. It is completely automated, freeing up your valuable time and resources that can be better spent marketing your products, rather than wasted doing paper work.
The program automatically accepts new affiliate sign ups, and provides detailed and useful stats, including click throughs, conversion rates, expenses, profit and more, for both you, and your affiliates. Referrals are tracked reliably, using both cookies and IP address association.
The system also allows you add unlimited products to your catalog, and both you and your affiliates can link to specific products and track the effectiveness of those links.
The system can integrate with Authorize.net, InstaBill, PayPal, and ClickBank, enabling you to automatically process sales, and send out electronic checks to your affiliates with the click of a button.
The system costs $37 per month, with a trial for the first month costing only $1.
So far, I'm very impressed with this system. This is one you should seriously consider.
Click here to find out more about QuickPayPro.
Ultimate Affiliate 2000 script from Groundbreak
"Simply one of the most fully featured affiliate program scripts on the Internet," says the creator of the CGI script, Steve Miles of Groundbreak.
Steve says the Ultimate Affiliate 2000 is possibly the only affiliate program which reports affiliate statistics graphically. The program has detailed affiliate and administrative control panels as well as a complete statistical reporting system for referrals, unique referrals, and commissions. It can be used for one-tier, two-tier or three-tier programs.
Web-based system: My Affiliate Program software
My Affiliate Program software is made by KowaBunga! Technologies, a sister company of Invisio.
Features include: Fully-automated setup; admin and members' page; banner location tracking and verification; email your affiliate members; monthly account statements; export your affiliate information; tracking click-throughs, sales and commissions; automatic reminders; SMART sales report; online sales history; variable commission structure; two-tier commissions and lifetime commissions support. Perl/cgi, runs on Unix/NT.
Major improvements were made to this software in 2001, adding even more useful features and options, too many to list here. The company is well known for its superb support. Take a close look at this option.
Thousands of merchants are using this My Affiliate Program.
Leadhound: Affiliate tracking software for PayPal users
You can have your own affiliate tracking software online and operational within a couple of hours, says David Kassar of Leadhound. Designed specifically for PayPal users this version of Leadhound comes configured to pay affiliates via the "mass-pay" feature within your PayPal account that eliminates the need to pay affiliates by check saving you hours of time. You pay a monthly fee.
Learn more about Leadhound here
AssocTrac
Internet Marketing Center, founded by the late Corey Rudl, has the biggest-selling marketing course on the Internet. His two-tier associate program works well. Affiliates like the tracking system because they can find the information they need quickly and easily. To them, it appears very simple.
I recommend AssocTRAC software. You don't just get the software installed. The package also includes a heap of advice from MarketingTips, a true Internet pioneer. That's a huge bonus.
Check out AssocTrac here
Another good do-it-yourself option: Paul Galloway
Paul Galloway can supply you with everything you need to start your own associate or affiliate program - a complete software package which includes a new associate "Sign-Up" and automatic web site replication program, an "Order Processing" program (with credit card syntax checking), and administrative functions, including monthly/yearly commission reports, instant associate web site updating, associate record maintenance, and more.
Paul's clients include Internet marketing veteran Jonathan Mizel.
Jonathan comments: "Paul is great. His products are well priced and well designed. He's willing to listen when you have a suggestion, and for a modest fee, modify his program to suit your needs. I'm going to be working with him and selling his product for substantially more than he sells it for. He receives my highest recommendation."
Paul's system costs only $US199. Installation is extra, but most people should be able to install it themselves. Paul prides himself on his high quality support - the sort of support that is often lacking in large companies.
When affiliate programs consultant Declan Dunn wanted an expert, this is the guy he chose.
For more details about Paul's software see Your Own Affiliate Program. Recommended.
Another option Paul offers is Synergyx, full-featured two-tier affiliate program software with an e-commerce platform. It's perfect for anyone selling digital products because it offers a "time-expired-authentication" digital product download system. For those who need it, a shopping cart is included as well. Everything resides on your server, so you maintain complete control. Highly recommended.
AffiliateTracking
Craig Belcher's AffiliateTracking charges a flat rate - $104.95 the first month and $29.95 a month thereafter. "It's a good choice for small webmasters," Craig says. "If you're planning to have over 50,000 affiliates we can set you up with a dedicated tracking server as well. Pricing starts off at $700 a month for a dedicated tracking server and tops out at around $3000 a month . . . we don't charge 20% of the affiliates' commissions either. A flat monthly fee for both pay per sale and pay per click programs."
AffiliateGuerrilla
AffiliateGuerrilla software is installed on your own site - not a 3rd party solution. It is designed for Windows hosted web sites. It allows up to 5 levels of commissions, fixed or percent. It allows both standard products and subscriptions. It is integrated with PayPal so website owners can start their own affiliate program without a merchant account or shopping cart.
You can add affiliates or sales manually. It is only $89.
Australian network - CyberAffiliates
CyberAffiliates launched in 2001. It was the first large-scale Australian affiliate program manager to offer a turnkey solution to online businesses looking to gain an edge by reducing online customer acquisition marketing costs.
Owned and operated by Pinpoint (which also has CyberRewards.com.au, an online rewards program, and manages many Visa offline rewards programs) CyberAffiliates takes care of everything for you as it recruits affiliates, provides real-time reporting and is the clearing house for commission payments. These are aggregated and paid to affiliates monthly, provided the $A25 minimum threshold has been achieved.
There are no set-up or annual fees, and the transaction fee is 25% of whatever commission is paid.
CyberAffiliates uses proven and reliable tracking technology powered by ConnectCommerce from Performics Inc. (formerly Dynamic Trade).
You can enrol FREE as a merchant and/or affiliate.
ProTRACK from Pathfinder Software
There are two versions of Pro-TRACK, which was launched in September, 1999:
Pro-TRACK Standard is for the affiliate program owner that wants to keep track of sales and wants to know from which affiliates the sale originated. Although the Standard version will not compute any sales data (owners manually keep track of sales), it is an excellent way to track and compensate your affiliate sales, says Normand Charette of PathFinder Software.
Pro-TRACK Pro will not only track where your sales are originating from, but also provide you with the statistics you need to track how well your affiliate program is doing. At a glance you will be able to spot which ones are your hottest affiliates, the amount of click-throughs per banner views, and the average sale per click. These are only a few features that are included in the Pro version. The new Pro-TRACK version 1.4 costs $597.
CyberTrakker
CyberTrakker is the tool to help you build and manage your own affiliate distribution network, e-commerce and opt-in mailing lists without having to rely on other parties, says Ian Lauder, President of Cyber Sea Inc.
"CyberTrakker gives you total control of your affiliate and marketing tracking systems. Integration of e-commerce, shopping cart, affiliate tracking, hit tracking and site administration all under your control," he says. "The CyberTrakker system is also designed for small to medium sized businesses who cannot afford the high cost of a large scale e-commerce and affiliate tracking system. As your needs grow scale up the system rather than being tied to someone else's servers and systems for your tracking."
Yahoo Stores
Yahoo Stores tracking system is said to assure accuracy and honesty in reporting. A store using it is Thom Reece's On-Line Marketing Group.
DirectTrack Systems
DirectTrack is the software that was originally developed by advertising network DirectLeads to track their own affiliate program, and is now being marketed as a hosted tracking solution.
The set-up cost is $750 and they charge a "nominal fee for bandwidth and traffic".
SalesDoubler
Affiliate software SalesDoubler from Commercial Networks hires, spreads and keeps track of your advertisers/dealers and their sales.
Vilo Ivanic of Commercial Networks says its main features are:
Standard or two-tier commission setup calculated either in % or $.
Sales Tracking
Banner Impressions Tracking
Banner Click-Throughs Tracking
Emailer - Send email messages to ALL of your dealers from one place.
Product Database - Use it as a Shopping Cart
Ability to replicate whole site, not just one page
Search Engine submitable Dealer's HTML links
Dynamically generated pages.
Advertisment banner code generator
Dealer's statistics
Easy to use owner's Administration windows
Export commissions data to off-line database
SalesDoubler costs $395 (US).
AffiliateWindow
UK based AffiliateWindow is a complete affiliate tracking and management software suite. "The program can be easily installed into existing e-commerce solutions in a matter of minutes," says managing director Kevin Brown.
AffiliateWindow.com Ltd manages the affiliate relationships, "taking away much of the financial cost and administration of running an affiliate program allowing the affiliate merchant to focus revenues and staff in other areas".
AffiliateWindow was launched in 2000. Pricing: ?999 followed by support at ?300 a month.
PDG Shopping Cart software
PDG Shopping Cart software is a fully featured shopping cart software with affiliate link tracking piggy-backed on to it. An SSL-enhanced version costs $US750.
Affiliate Scripts
Pierre Rodrigues of Affiliate Scripts offers a variety of scripts enabling you to start and manage an affiliate program for your site.
Set up your own affiliate network
Affiliate Network Pro software enables site owners to start their own affiliate network site "just like CJ and LinkShare", says John Ross of AlstraSoft.
Affiliate Network Pro was launched August, 2004.
You can see the full features of the software at AlstraSoft and do a test drive.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
28 ways to inspire affiliate loyalty
Affiliate loyalty isn't easy to win. To encourage affiliates to be loyal to your affiliate program, you have to do something really special to stand out from the crowd.
Some of the the techniques I describe here require considerable time and effort. However, they're a wise investment because the alternative is so much worse - spending time and money hunting for super affiliates, who then switch to other programs.
If you succeed in creating loyal affiliates, they will not only stick with your affiliate program and promote it enthusiastically, they'll recommend it to other top affiliates.
Just in case you're wondering how important these tips are, consider this...
I learned many of these tips by studying an affiliate merchant who pays me four-figure and five-figure monthly commission checks. Yes, affiliate loyalty IS very important!
Here are 28 ways to win affiliates' loyalty and boost their sales.
(I'll assume you're selling an EXCELLENT product and have a site that SELLS - a site with a high conversion rate. Without those, your program might as well be dead.)
Most important of all, HELP your affiliates
Give them all the tools they need to succeed. Provide lots of precise, detailed, "how-to" marketing info online. Keep them enthusiastic with tips in your affiliate newsletter.
Help your affiliates by writing emails they can publish - or adapt and publish - in their newsletters. Some will will be prepared to use a hard-sell message while others want something more low key.
Give them sales messages and graphics they can paste into their websites. Provide a wide variety of banner sizes, ezine ads, forum signatures, articles and rebrandable reports for them to give away.
While providing these materials, teach them the enormous power of writing personal endorsements and saying things in their own words.
Consider adding a toll-free number for affiliate support.
Put someone knowledgeable in charge of answering affiliates' questions - promptly, in simple English.
A classic example of someone who went to extraordinary lengths to help affiliates succeed is the late Corey Rudl. Study how his company does it. He was running an affiliate program before Amazon.com and his company owes a lot of its $6 million a year revenue to the fact that it provides heaps of practical, helpful affiliate marketing advice. His company has a huge number of loyal affiliates, and has more than 100,000 affiliates.
Show your affiliates how your top affiliates achieve sales
Give your affiliates concrete examples.
Show them step-by-step, with all the precise details they need, how your top affiliates earn a good living. (Work with your affiliates on this. Not all affiliates will want such publicity. If so, respect their right to privacy.)
Pour special recognition on your high-earning affiliates
Send them flowers, champagne or chocolates. I still think very fondly of the affiliate merchant who gave me my first taste of Tattinger champagne.
Horrified at the thought of the cost? You'll spend a LOT more finding new super affiliates.
Create friendships and win enthusiastic supporters
The first time Ken Evoy phoned me from the other side of world for a friendly chat I was very impressed. That friendly phone call helped win my loyalty.
Phone calls can turn business relationships into lasting friendships. Turn your top affiliates into loyal friends. Remember, you don't want just a collection of affiliates. You want enthusiastic supporters.
You'll need to understand the difference between shallow flattery and sincere appreciation. Read or re-read Dale Carnegie's book, How to Win Friends and Influence People.
Encourage your affiliates to speak up
You'll learn what they REALLY think about your affiliate program, and you'll learn how to make it better.
Praise your top affiliate marketers on your site
This serves three purposes. It teaches other affiliates what works. It rewards your top affiliates by sending them traffic. The public recognition increases affiliates' loyalty.
Recommend your top affiliates in email discussion groups
This is a way to build affiliate loyalty which won't cost you anything except a few minutes of your time but will have a dramatic effect on how loyal your top-earning affiliates feel.
Write to a popular email discussion group such as LED Digest and recommend your affiliates' sites or something they wrote.
Your affiliates will love you for this! (I'm extremely grateful for the public praise which AssociatePrograms.com and PayPerClickSearchEngines.com have received from affiliate merchants.)
Set those cookies fairly
If a customer returns the next day, the next week, or even a year later and makes a purchase, the affiliate should receive a commission. Track your customers in every way possible to make sure the affiliate receives the commission.
This is vitally important. If your "return days" period is set at zero, many good affiliates won't even sign up for your program. The absolute minimum "return days" period should be 30 days. The longer the better.
Consider paying lifetime commissions
Imagine the power of saying to your affiliates, "They're YOUR customers for life. Sell once, earn indefinitely." That's a powerful drawcard which will keep your affiliates loyal and enthusiastic.
See the article by Christopher Pearce How to start a lifetime commissions affiliate program. It also describes how to set up a residual income program - another excellent idea.
Pay your top affiliates bonuses
I received a pleasant surprise when veteran marketer Jim Daniels, author of Make a Living Online, sent me $250 for being his top-earning affiliate one month. That helped him retain me as a loyal affiliate.
I really appreciate the hundreds of dollars worth of Amazon book vouchers I receive from other merchants and the Flash memory stick I received recently from Neil Shearing.
Pay special affiliates a special high commissions
You know that key affiliates in key positions of influence are very valuable. Pay them accordingly. Don't embarrass them by forcing them to ask for the special rate which they deserve.
Residual commissions and two-tier commissions also win favor with affiliates.
However, don't assume that a high commission alone will be enough. You have to get everything else right, too.
Before you launch a two-tier program, ask yourself if there are affiliates in key places of influence who are likely to want to recommend your program to other affiliates. If there aren't, forget the idea.
Two-tier commissions aren't nearly as effective as they were several years ago. This is because these days affiliates tend to switch rapidly from one program to another, always looking for something better. Instead of having two tiers you might be better to pay one large commission.
However, affiliates are always going to be interested in earning residual income or lifetime commissions. I can't imagine them ever going out of fashion.
Let them buy at discount prices
Give all your affiliates favored treatment. Give them special discount prices. However, don't allow them to buy your products through their own referral links. That's not fair to the affiliate who sent them to your site.
Provide individual product links
If you sell more than one product, provide individual product links. Don't force your affiliates to link only to the main page of your site.
Mention loyal affiliates at affiliate marketing conferences
Give them a warm glow. Use their site as an example in your presentation. I love it at conferences when speakers recommend AssociatePrograms.com to the crowd.
Learn from your inactive affiliates
Do a survey of your inactive affiliates. Ask them what is wrong. Until you know why they're inactive, you won't know what to fix.
Inactive affiliates and under-performers could be next month's or next year's winners.
Learn from your best affiliates
You'll probably receive a far more useful response if you ask your loyal super affiliates how to improve your program. Many of these winners will know the best features of the best affiliate programs on the Net. They'll be happy to give you useful tips on how to improve your program.
Study what your top affiliates do
You'll probably find that they're earning money in all sorts of creative ways you've never thought of. Their knowledge can help your affiliates earn more.
Make affiliates feel part of your team.
Find ways to build a sense of community. Consider setting up a forum for your affiliates. However, be aware that this can be very time-consuming. You don't want to have your forum ruined by a disgruntled former affiliate. Don't start one unless you have someone available to moderate it.
Visit your affiliates' sites
Here's a good tip from Joel Gehman.
"We have someone on our affiliate marketing team personally visit the site of every super affiliate every month. All super affiliates get a personal email with specific comments and suggestions. We offer tips on which links are performing best and propose new placements on the site for our links. We also try to broaden the depth of the affiliate's relationship with our program by suggesting new products or services for possible inclusion."
Add new items automatically
When you add a new product to your product line, make sure your affiliates are rewarded when someone they refer buys that product. Don't force your affiliates to sign up individually every time you launch a new product.
I love it when I see in my stats that I'm earning commissions from the sale of a product that they havebn't even started promoting.
Piggy-back on the winners
Some affiliate merchants provide excellent resources for their affiliates. Encourage your affiliates to sign up with those merchants and learn from their tips. You can even earn a commission when your affiliates make sales in those programs while learning how to help you - and saving you time!
An excellent place to start is: SiteSell.
Imagine you're an affiliate
See things from the affiliates' point of view. Visit the Associate Programs Affiliate Forum and read what affiliates complain about. They're worried about lack of response to emails, late payments, bait-and-switch tactics, high payment thresholds, low payouts.
Do whatever you can to avoid those mistakes, or your affiliates will dump you fast.
Don't send them junk. Every time you contact your affiliates, sending them something useful, such as new artwork, a search box, top-performing links, search engine hints, and other tips on how to maximize their earnings.
Now that you're imagining you're an affiliate, have another look at your affiliate agreement. Is is fair? Would you want to sign a contract like that?
Notify them of sales
Provide immediate email notification when the affiliate makes a sale. This reinforces good behavior and encourages more sales.
Give busy affiliates the option of switching off these messages. One affiliates merchant often sends me 30 or 40 email sales notifications at once - and no way of switching these off.
Send a weekly stats report
Affiliates find it terribly time-consuming checking stats on many sites. Make it easy for them. If you provide complex stats, make sure there's a link which gives the most important stats at a glance.
Consider emailing affiliates a weekly report of click-throughs, sales and commissions.
Pay affiliates in two ways
Consider paying them per click and a commission. For example, you could pay your best affiliates pays 5 cents per click and 20% commission on sales.
Pay affiliates for position
Persuade your top affiliates to promote you "above the fold" on their main page. Offer them 5% or 10% more if they'll do this.
Pay them monthly - or more frequently
Don't make your affiliates wait three months for a check. Pay them monthly - or even twice a month for your super affiliates.
Pay them promptly
After the end of the month, pay your affiliates as quickly as you possibly can. Imagine the powerful impression you'll make if YOUR check is the first one an affiliate receives after the end of the reporting period. Paying fast shows you care about your affiliates.
Some affiliate merchants have even experimented with daily payout via PayPal. This impresses some affiliates but may not please really successful affiliates who don't want the added "paperwork". If you plan to pay daily, give affiliates the option of receiving monthly payouts.
Allow affiliates to set minimum payments
Affiliates in many countries have to pay hefty bank fees on U.S. commission checks. Frequent, small checks can actually annoy these affiliates.
Give them the option of setting a minimum payment amount, for example $50 or $100, to minimize their bank fees.
Avoid making silly mistakes
I know you're in a hurry. Mistakes are understandable. However, if you make too many silly mistakes, affiliates will dump you. See Silly mistakes affiliate merchants make.
Treat your affiliates as business associates
Respect them or they'll switch to someone who does. Don't siphon off some of the traffic they send you to products on which they don't earn a commission. When referred customers arrive at your site, all money-earning links on that page should earn a commission for your affiliate.
Provide real-time statistics
Serious affiliates need to know immediately whether their promotions are achieving results so they can test repeatedly, fix mistakes and maximize their sales.
Make things easy for your affiliates
They get discouraged fast. Some things are just too darn complicated for many affiliates. Keep your instructions simple and easy to understand.
Don't have time to coach affiliates? Get expert FREE help
Ken Evoy provides more useful affiliate marketing support for his affiliates than any other affiliate merchant I know. Ken provides an incredible amount of useful information for affiliates: THREE practical newsletters, a 224-page free affiliate marketing manual, and an "80-20 Report", and the newly revamped and enlarged "Affiliate Masters" course.
Now he's ALSO helping affiliate merchants.
Be sure to visit the special section of SiteSell: For affiliate managers only.
I strongly recommend it.
(This is the affiliate merchant who regularly pays me four-figure and five-figure monthly commission checks. Get his expert free help now.)
It helps your affiliates while you earn substantial lifetime commissions.
Related Articles
How to find and recruit super affiliates
How to find and recruit affiliates
How to start an affiliate program
Tracking affiliate commissions
Comments
Comment #1 (Posted by Charlie) |
"Recommend your top affiliates in email discussion groups"
I understand what you are saying, Allan, but I think it's always best to check with the affiliate first. I know a couple of people who like to keep what they promote to themselves, if you see what I mean.
Some people are shy, others just promote competing products and have to play a political balancing act.
As an extreme example of "publicity we can do without", a certain prominent marketer once named all his top affiliates together with details of their sales. I think he was trying to motivate them, but it caused a few ruffled feathers.
I realise this isn't what you're advocating here, but the privacy principle remains the same. Worth asking first, I reckon.
[Charlie, Excellent points! The relationship between the affiliate and affiliate merchant should always be win-win. They should help each other while making sure they don't harm each other. Allan.]
Some of the the techniques I describe here require considerable time and effort. However, they're a wise investment because the alternative is so much worse - spending time and money hunting for super affiliates, who then switch to other programs.
If you succeed in creating loyal affiliates, they will not only stick with your affiliate program and promote it enthusiastically, they'll recommend it to other top affiliates.
Just in case you're wondering how important these tips are, consider this...
I learned many of these tips by studying an affiliate merchant who pays me four-figure and five-figure monthly commission checks. Yes, affiliate loyalty IS very important!
Here are 28 ways to win affiliates' loyalty and boost their sales.
(I'll assume you're selling an EXCELLENT product and have a site that SELLS - a site with a high conversion rate. Without those, your program might as well be dead.)
Most important of all, HELP your affiliates
Give them all the tools they need to succeed. Provide lots of precise, detailed, "how-to" marketing info online. Keep them enthusiastic with tips in your affiliate newsletter.
Help your affiliates by writing emails they can publish - or adapt and publish - in their newsletters. Some will will be prepared to use a hard-sell message while others want something more low key.
Give them sales messages and graphics they can paste into their websites. Provide a wide variety of banner sizes, ezine ads, forum signatures, articles and rebrandable reports for them to give away.
While providing these materials, teach them the enormous power of writing personal endorsements and saying things in their own words.
Consider adding a toll-free number for affiliate support.
Put someone knowledgeable in charge of answering affiliates' questions - promptly, in simple English.
A classic example of someone who went to extraordinary lengths to help affiliates succeed is the late Corey Rudl. Study how his company does it. He was running an affiliate program before Amazon.com and his company owes a lot of its $6 million a year revenue to the fact that it provides heaps of practical, helpful affiliate marketing advice. His company has a huge number of loyal affiliates, and has more than 100,000 affiliates.
Show your affiliates how your top affiliates achieve sales
Give your affiliates concrete examples.
Show them step-by-step, with all the precise details they need, how your top affiliates earn a good living. (Work with your affiliates on this. Not all affiliates will want such publicity. If so, respect their right to privacy.)
Pour special recognition on your high-earning affiliates
Send them flowers, champagne or chocolates. I still think very fondly of the affiliate merchant who gave me my first taste of Tattinger champagne.
Horrified at the thought of the cost? You'll spend a LOT more finding new super affiliates.
Create friendships and win enthusiastic supporters
The first time Ken Evoy phoned me from the other side of world for a friendly chat I was very impressed. That friendly phone call helped win my loyalty.
Phone calls can turn business relationships into lasting friendships. Turn your top affiliates into loyal friends. Remember, you don't want just a collection of affiliates. You want enthusiastic supporters.
You'll need to understand the difference between shallow flattery and sincere appreciation. Read or re-read Dale Carnegie's book, How to Win Friends and Influence People.
Encourage your affiliates to speak up
You'll learn what they REALLY think about your affiliate program, and you'll learn how to make it better.
Praise your top affiliate marketers on your site
This serves three purposes. It teaches other affiliates what works. It rewards your top affiliates by sending them traffic. The public recognition increases affiliates' loyalty.
Recommend your top affiliates in email discussion groups
This is a way to build affiliate loyalty which won't cost you anything except a few minutes of your time but will have a dramatic effect on how loyal your top-earning affiliates feel.
Write to a popular email discussion group such as LED Digest and recommend your affiliates' sites or something they wrote.
Your affiliates will love you for this! (I'm extremely grateful for the public praise which AssociatePrograms.com and PayPerClickSearchEngines.com have received from affiliate merchants.)
Set those cookies fairly
If a customer returns the next day, the next week, or even a year later and makes a purchase, the affiliate should receive a commission. Track your customers in every way possible to make sure the affiliate receives the commission.
This is vitally important. If your "return days" period is set at zero, many good affiliates won't even sign up for your program. The absolute minimum "return days" period should be 30 days. The longer the better.
Consider paying lifetime commissions
Imagine the power of saying to your affiliates, "They're YOUR customers for life. Sell once, earn indefinitely." That's a powerful drawcard which will keep your affiliates loyal and enthusiastic.
See the article by Christopher Pearce How to start a lifetime commissions affiliate program. It also describes how to set up a residual income program - another excellent idea.
Pay your top affiliates bonuses
I received a pleasant surprise when veteran marketer Jim Daniels, author of Make a Living Online, sent me $250 for being his top-earning affiliate one month. That helped him retain me as a loyal affiliate.
I really appreciate the hundreds of dollars worth of Amazon book vouchers I receive from other merchants and the Flash memory stick I received recently from Neil Shearing.
Pay special affiliates a special high commissions
You know that key affiliates in key positions of influence are very valuable. Pay them accordingly. Don't embarrass them by forcing them to ask for the special rate which they deserve.
Residual commissions and two-tier commissions also win favor with affiliates.
However, don't assume that a high commission alone will be enough. You have to get everything else right, too.
Before you launch a two-tier program, ask yourself if there are affiliates in key places of influence who are likely to want to recommend your program to other affiliates. If there aren't, forget the idea.
Two-tier commissions aren't nearly as effective as they were several years ago. This is because these days affiliates tend to switch rapidly from one program to another, always looking for something better. Instead of having two tiers you might be better to pay one large commission.
However, affiliates are always going to be interested in earning residual income or lifetime commissions. I can't imagine them ever going out of fashion.
Let them buy at discount prices
Give all your affiliates favored treatment. Give them special discount prices. However, don't allow them to buy your products through their own referral links. That's not fair to the affiliate who sent them to your site.
Provide individual product links
If you sell more than one product, provide individual product links. Don't force your affiliates to link only to the main page of your site.
Mention loyal affiliates at affiliate marketing conferences
Give them a warm glow. Use their site as an example in your presentation. I love it at conferences when speakers recommend AssociatePrograms.com to the crowd.
Learn from your inactive affiliates
Do a survey of your inactive affiliates. Ask them what is wrong. Until you know why they're inactive, you won't know what to fix.
Inactive affiliates and under-performers could be next month's or next year's winners.
Learn from your best affiliates
You'll probably receive a far more useful response if you ask your loyal super affiliates how to improve your program. Many of these winners will know the best features of the best affiliate programs on the Net. They'll be happy to give you useful tips on how to improve your program.
Study what your top affiliates do
You'll probably find that they're earning money in all sorts of creative ways you've never thought of. Their knowledge can help your affiliates earn more.
Make affiliates feel part of your team.
Find ways to build a sense of community. Consider setting up a forum for your affiliates. However, be aware that this can be very time-consuming. You don't want to have your forum ruined by a disgruntled former affiliate. Don't start one unless you have someone available to moderate it.
Visit your affiliates' sites
Here's a good tip from Joel Gehman.
"We have someone on our affiliate marketing team personally visit the site of every super affiliate every month. All super affiliates get a personal email with specific comments and suggestions. We offer tips on which links are performing best and propose new placements on the site for our links. We also try to broaden the depth of the affiliate's relationship with our program by suggesting new products or services for possible inclusion."
Add new items automatically
When you add a new product to your product line, make sure your affiliates are rewarded when someone they refer buys that product. Don't force your affiliates to sign up individually every time you launch a new product.
I love it when I see in my stats that I'm earning commissions from the sale of a product that they havebn't even started promoting.
Piggy-back on the winners
Some affiliate merchants provide excellent resources for their affiliates. Encourage your affiliates to sign up with those merchants and learn from their tips. You can even earn a commission when your affiliates make sales in those programs while learning how to help you - and saving you time!
An excellent place to start is: SiteSell.
Imagine you're an affiliate
See things from the affiliates' point of view. Visit the Associate Programs Affiliate Forum and read what affiliates complain about. They're worried about lack of response to emails, late payments, bait-and-switch tactics, high payment thresholds, low payouts.
Do whatever you can to avoid those mistakes, or your affiliates will dump you fast.
Don't send them junk. Every time you contact your affiliates, sending them something useful, such as new artwork, a search box, top-performing links, search engine hints, and other tips on how to maximize their earnings.
Now that you're imagining you're an affiliate, have another look at your affiliate agreement. Is is fair? Would you want to sign a contract like that?
Notify them of sales
Provide immediate email notification when the affiliate makes a sale. This reinforces good behavior and encourages more sales.
Give busy affiliates the option of switching off these messages. One affiliates merchant often sends me 30 or 40 email sales notifications at once - and no way of switching these off.
Send a weekly stats report
Affiliates find it terribly time-consuming checking stats on many sites. Make it easy for them. If you provide complex stats, make sure there's a link which gives the most important stats at a glance.
Consider emailing affiliates a weekly report of click-throughs, sales and commissions.
Pay affiliates in two ways
Consider paying them per click and a commission. For example, you could pay your best affiliates pays 5 cents per click and 20% commission on sales.
Pay affiliates for position
Persuade your top affiliates to promote you "above the fold" on their main page. Offer them 5% or 10% more if they'll do this.
Pay them monthly - or more frequently
Don't make your affiliates wait three months for a check. Pay them monthly - or even twice a month for your super affiliates.
Pay them promptly
After the end of the month, pay your affiliates as quickly as you possibly can. Imagine the powerful impression you'll make if YOUR check is the first one an affiliate receives after the end of the reporting period. Paying fast shows you care about your affiliates.
Some affiliate merchants have even experimented with daily payout via PayPal. This impresses some affiliates but may not please really successful affiliates who don't want the added "paperwork". If you plan to pay daily, give affiliates the option of receiving monthly payouts.
Allow affiliates to set minimum payments
Affiliates in many countries have to pay hefty bank fees on U.S. commission checks. Frequent, small checks can actually annoy these affiliates.
Give them the option of setting a minimum payment amount, for example $50 or $100, to minimize their bank fees.
Avoid making silly mistakes
I know you're in a hurry. Mistakes are understandable. However, if you make too many silly mistakes, affiliates will dump you. See Silly mistakes affiliate merchants make.
Treat your affiliates as business associates
Respect them or they'll switch to someone who does. Don't siphon off some of the traffic they send you to products on which they don't earn a commission. When referred customers arrive at your site, all money-earning links on that page should earn a commission for your affiliate.
Provide real-time statistics
Serious affiliates need to know immediately whether their promotions are achieving results so they can test repeatedly, fix mistakes and maximize their sales.
Make things easy for your affiliates
They get discouraged fast. Some things are just too darn complicated for many affiliates. Keep your instructions simple and easy to understand.
Don't have time to coach affiliates? Get expert FREE help
Ken Evoy provides more useful affiliate marketing support for his affiliates than any other affiliate merchant I know. Ken provides an incredible amount of useful information for affiliates: THREE practical newsletters, a 224-page free affiliate marketing manual, and an "80-20 Report", and the newly revamped and enlarged "Affiliate Masters" course.
Now he's ALSO helping affiliate merchants.
Be sure to visit the special section of SiteSell: For affiliate managers only.
I strongly recommend it.
(This is the affiliate merchant who regularly pays me four-figure and five-figure monthly commission checks. Get his expert free help now.)
It helps your affiliates while you earn substantial lifetime commissions.
Related Articles
How to find and recruit super affiliates
How to find and recruit affiliates
How to start an affiliate program
Tracking affiliate commissions
Comments
Comment #1 (Posted by Charlie) |
"Recommend your top affiliates in email discussion groups"
I understand what you are saying, Allan, but I think it's always best to check with the affiliate first. I know a couple of people who like to keep what they promote to themselves, if you see what I mean.
Some people are shy, others just promote competing products and have to play a political balancing act.
As an extreme example of "publicity we can do without", a certain prominent marketer once named all his top affiliates together with details of their sales. I think he was trying to motivate them, but it caused a few ruffled feathers.
I realise this isn't what you're advocating here, but the privacy principle remains the same. Worth asking first, I reckon.
[Charlie, Excellent points! The relationship between the affiliate and affiliate merchant should always be win-win. They should help each other while making sure they don't harm each other. Allan.]
Your own affiliate program for maximum marketing leverage
You pay only for efforts that turn into sales
The math is simple. Having an affiliate program with an army of hard-working affiliates will maximize your leverage. And your profits will soar if you have a proven product and high-converting sales process.
It's an extremely cost effective method for advertising your products or services. You pay only for efforts that turn into sales.
But doing it right takes careful planning and execution.
Setting up your own affiliate system can be fairly straightforward or overwhelming. It depends on several factors such as the number of affiliates you want to have in your system, your product and market size, your payment processes and policies, and whether you use a stand alone system or a network service.
You have two options for your affiliate system. You can outsource the entire system or operate it through your own web host. Each has its good and less appealing points.
If you have a small number of affiliates, it would probably be much easier to use your own affiliate software. There are several applications available that will do a fine job of managing your affiliates. For a large number of affiliates, you may find outsourcing your affiliate management will help prevent some headaches. It’ll just be easier to deal with a higher volume of tasks such as sign-ups, payment tracking, monitoring and tracking clicks, etc.
Various affiliate models
There are various affiliate models available to you. The pay per sale model is probably the most popular. This can be unattractive unless your product has a high demand and your payout is good. One trend that has been around for some years is the two-tier affiliate model.
The two-tiered structure allows for your affiliates to recruit sign-ups, for your program, and the older affiliate receives a small percentage of revenue from the newer affiliate. This can be extremely powerful if your product is a proven winner. And for that reason this model is very attractive.
The pay per lead affiliate model is used when you pay only for leads generated from traffic. This particular method is extremely attractive to affiliates with experience in pay per click marketing, or those with established high traffic websites. But you’ll need to be very sure your marketing and conversion process is well optimized. The downside to this method occurs due to poor conversions to sales.
You’ll need to answer the question of approving your affiliates manually or automatically. The latter runs the risk of blindly allowing anyone to market your products. You’ll have no idea about the affiliate and whether or not your products will be ethically marketed.
Depending on your resources, you could waste them on potentially huge numbers of non-performing affiliates. Manual approval will require more time on either your part, or your hired help, but it could turn out to be profitable time spent.
When pay per click marketing is involved, one issue concerns the quality of your traffic. Hopefully they’ll be targeted but you really do not have any control if the traffic is generated from your affiliates. And this can be troublesome for your metrics and tracking analysis. Manually reviewing allows you to judge a potential affiliate’s website and overall ability. Then you can better determine what’s in the best interest of your company.
The math is simple. Having an affiliate program with an army of hard-working affiliates will maximize your leverage. And your profits will soar if you have a proven product and high-converting sales process.
It's an extremely cost effective method for advertising your products or services. You pay only for efforts that turn into sales.
But doing it right takes careful planning and execution.
Setting up your own affiliate system can be fairly straightforward or overwhelming. It depends on several factors such as the number of affiliates you want to have in your system, your product and market size, your payment processes and policies, and whether you use a stand alone system or a network service.
You have two options for your affiliate system. You can outsource the entire system or operate it through your own web host. Each has its good and less appealing points.
If you have a small number of affiliates, it would probably be much easier to use your own affiliate software. There are several applications available that will do a fine job of managing your affiliates. For a large number of affiliates, you may find outsourcing your affiliate management will help prevent some headaches. It’ll just be easier to deal with a higher volume of tasks such as sign-ups, payment tracking, monitoring and tracking clicks, etc.
Various affiliate models
There are various affiliate models available to you. The pay per sale model is probably the most popular. This can be unattractive unless your product has a high demand and your payout is good. One trend that has been around for some years is the two-tier affiliate model.
The two-tiered structure allows for your affiliates to recruit sign-ups, for your program, and the older affiliate receives a small percentage of revenue from the newer affiliate. This can be extremely powerful if your product is a proven winner. And for that reason this model is very attractive.
The pay per lead affiliate model is used when you pay only for leads generated from traffic. This particular method is extremely attractive to affiliates with experience in pay per click marketing, or those with established high traffic websites. But you’ll need to be very sure your marketing and conversion process is well optimized. The downside to this method occurs due to poor conversions to sales.
You’ll need to answer the question of approving your affiliates manually or automatically. The latter runs the risk of blindly allowing anyone to market your products. You’ll have no idea about the affiliate and whether or not your products will be ethically marketed.
Depending on your resources, you could waste them on potentially huge numbers of non-performing affiliates. Manual approval will require more time on either your part, or your hired help, but it could turn out to be profitable time spent.
When pay per click marketing is involved, one issue concerns the quality of your traffic. Hopefully they’ll be targeted but you really do not have any control if the traffic is generated from your affiliates. And this can be troublesome for your metrics and tracking analysis. Manually reviewing allows you to judge a potential affiliate’s website and overall ability. Then you can better determine what’s in the best interest of your company.
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