Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is one of the best forms of e-marketing. This type of advertising is very cost effective as you only pay for the results that you receive. Your affiliates send you traffic using banners, text links or even offline methods such as flyers. In return you reward your affiliates by either giving them a small amount per click (PPC), or more popularly, giving them a percentage commission (PPS). If a visitor an affiliate sends to your site makes a purchase, then the affiliate get's a small percentage of that sale. Building up a strong team of affiliates can become one of the main traffic sources to your site.

Starting an affiliate program

When setting up an affiliate program you have two main options. You can either setup in house and run the affiliate program yourself. Or you can join an affiliate network. Each has it's own advantages and disadvantages. The table below outlines some of the key points:-

Either option, you get out of affiliate marketing what you put in. If you do the minimum to promote your affiliate program yourself, then you'll get the minimum out of it. If you put a lot of time in gathering new affiliates, updating linking options, monitoring results and contacting affiliates, you'll get a lot out of affiliate marketing. We recommend setting up an In House affiliate program. Whether you want to join a network or not, having your own affiliate program has many advantages. Running the program and dealing with affiliates will give you a closer view of your market. Also, if you purchase affiliate software to run off your own server there are no monthly fees. So you can afford to take your time to learn about affiliate management and how to get the most out of your affiliate program. Getting an affiliate program setup early is vital. An affiliate program is like a money tree, the longer you have it and feed it, the more it'll grow and generate you traffic and revenue.

Step 1. Setting up your affiliate program

Let's start by setting up your in house affiliate program. You'll need to get your hands on some affiliate software. If you want to run the software on your own server then you won't have to worry about any monthly fees. There are lots of affiliate software packages out there, in varying quality. Out advice is, if the deal looks to good to be true, then it probably is. There is a good chance you'll need a bit of support to get your affiliate program setup properly. If you've found some very cheap software then you're not going to get much in the way of support when you hit a problem. It's worth spending a bit more to get a quality system in place. Don't forget this is a one off cost, and you stand to make a lot of money from your affiliate program in the years to come. Some feature rich affiliate software will also help you attract new affiliates, and get the most out of current affiliates. The only affiliate software we recommend and use is AllAffiliatePro. It's by far the most feature rich affiliate software you can get for the price they charge, making it the best value for money. Visit their site to order your affiliate software. Our members get a 10% discount. They'll give you documentation and free support to get your affiliate program setup and running. Once your affiliate program is setup follow the steps below get the most out of your affiliate program. Don't forget that you'll also need to create banners and text links for your affiliate to use to promote your site. It is possible to get free banners designed by companies such as Ad Designer, so long as you keep their logo intact (the design company usually state that their logo must be kept on the banner in their terms and conditions of use). Although this creates the impression that your site is cheap and cannot afford professional designs. Avoid free banners if at all possible. It only costs a few dollars to get personalized banners made, which will indicate to people that your site is professional. CosmicSiteDesign.com offer banner design services.

Step 2. The affiliate directories

Now you have your affiliate program in place you need to launch your program to the internet community. The first place to do this is to list yourself on the affiliate directories. We have comprised a list of affiliate directories, including their Alexa traffic rank (correct at time of creation). You need to visit each directory and submit your affiliate program to be listed. This can be time consuming, so we also offer a service where we will do this for you. Check out our submission services.

Step 3. Searching out affiliates

There are software packages designed to help you search out affiliates. One of which is a program called Super Affiliate Tracker, you can purchase a discounted copy of Super Affiliate Tracker from AllAffiliatePro. Otherwise you can search out affiliates using Google and the other search engines advanced lookup features. Run searches on your keywords and look at every site, not all of them will be competitors. Look several pages into results. Do reverse search lookups for your competitors. Type 'link:competitorsdomain.com' (no spaces). See who is linking to your competitors and tempt them over as an affiliate. You need to take caution when contacting people for an affiliate opportunity, make sure each email is individual, do not bulk email. If you can use a contact form from their site. This shows that you were on their site and didn't just buy an email list. Another great place to find affiliates are on affiliate marketing forums. We have comprised a list of affiliate marketing forums, complete with Alexa traffic rank. Many of the forums will allow you to post your affiliate program details. But check the forums rules first, and always check your post a few days after to see if there any any questions or replies.

Step 4. Getting more from your affiliates

It's always good to signup new affiliates. But once you have an affiliate pool it's more important to make sure your getting the most out of your affiliates. There are techniques you can adopt to make sure your affiliates are performing as well as they could. These are:-

• Keeping affiliates up to date with monthly bulletins.
• Keeping banners and linking methods fresh.
• Checking to make sure affiliates are actually linking.
• Phoning affiliates that have high traffic.
• Negotiating better link/banner placement.
• Requesting feedback on what linking methods are wanted.

If your affiliate program is powered by AllAffiliatePro then you'll have a very useful function for PageRank and SiteMatch reporting. Running this report will let you know exactly which affiliates have high traffic and best match your products or services. These are the affiliates that it's worth going that extra mile for, as they could potentially be sending you a lot more traffic.

Step 5. Considering affiliate networks

Affiliate networks can become tempting. With lot's of promises of higher numbers of affiliates waiting to join your program. But be careful. There are often high setup fees, and high monthly fees. It may well be several months before your network affiliate program comes in to profitability, in the mean time you'll still have the monthly fees. We recommend that before joining a network you check what contact details you will have for your affiliates, and how long the contract will be for. Make sure you have an in house program setup first which offers a slightly higher percentage than the network. If you get some high performing affiliates on the network lure them over to your in house program. That way when you leave the affiliate network for whatever reason you'll still have the affiliates, and won't have lost everything.