Why Online Merchants Must Have A Great Affiliate Program
Building a web site is an important first step to having an online presence. But after that the work begins in terms of promoting it. It’s a large job in the vastness that is the Internet. You need some help. Get yourself a ton of affiliates and incentivize them to drive traffic (and sales) to you. There are many third party affiliate management programs available that make it a snap to set up a program. If you look around you will see that all of your competitors have tapped into this valuable channel so you need to, too!
What motivates partners? The most important thing is they want to promote a product or service that sells. Why would they send you traffic if you can’t convert it into sales commissions for them? In addition to converting well, they’ll want a good size commission on every sale. It’s not worth their time if they’re only making a few pennies on each sale. Be generous. Your affiliates’ success is your success. They will need many different creatives (banners and such) to promote your products. Give them lots of banners in different sizes. And once they’ve earned some sales commissions be sure you pay them on time. Pick a schedule and stick to it. Regular checks (even if tiny) make for satisfied partners. Delays in payment make for unsatisfied (read: canceled) affiliates. Keep your partners happy and they will keep you happy.
In the late 1990s affiliate programs were pretty straightforward — partners would earn a % of whatever sales they brought to you. Today, the plans vary quite a bit. You can pay your partners for things other than sales (i.e. leads) and in ways other than a percent (like a fixed fee per lead or sale, or even every month if you’re selling a subscription product). There are also multi-tier programs where partners earn fees from other partners that they bring you. This can be a good way to get a lot of partners in your program. It may sound like a lot to manage but its easy once you set up the rules and use a service like LinkShare or ShareASale. They have all these rules set up already; you just tell them what kind of plan you want to offer to your partners and they do the rest.
Be sure and treat your partners well. They are real people with families. Communicate with them via emails, pay them regularly, and give them good creatives (banners, text ads) they can use to sell your products. Make their job as easy as possible and pay them well — they will then go the extra mile to advertise your product for you.
If you’re selling online you need an affiliate program. You may not achieve the results that Amazon achieved with their program, but you can still have a very good program that brings in new customers regularly. Think about having a thousand people out there advertising your service or product. Many online merchants do just that through their programs. It’s one of the most logical uses of the Internet.