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The productThere is a time element in this. In the short run you have a product, you want it sold. So from an affiliate point of view it is one-size-fits-all. But, over time products can be reframed or recreated to match particular segments. If you had a financial information product that required examples from real businesses, it would be entirely possible (and perhaps desirable) to offer your affiliates in different sectors different versions with different examples in them. This would be easy for you are 90% of the book would remain the same but hugely useful for the affiliate and end reader if it made your concepts easier to understand! CommissionsDifferent affiliates want different things out of your product. For some it is just a filler in amongst many others in a theme site. For others it may be a serious money maker in its own right. You may wish to vary your commission structures based on volume sold or make it multi-tier – there are many solutions. Sales ToolsDifferent affiliates will want different types of tools. Banners, ads, ezine text, articles or other content, signature files, guest books, product images, email ads and so on. They may even want pre-written reviews and email texts. In practice, analyzing the affiliates will give you a feel for what they need, but you will end up creating one ‘toolbox’ that everyone can dip into. MotivationsAffiliates are a sales force. As such they require motivating with special offers, incentives, and special products and so on. Think about any physical world sales campaign. The web world is no different. Be availableYou must also make yourself available, either through email, phone or a member’s support forum, to help your affiliates implement these tools and to answer any questions they might have. Administering an Affiliate ProgramThe starting point is having your own product to sell. If you don’t then an affiliate program is, by definition, not for you. Assuming you have, you will need to set up a system to manage the mechanics of the program. Today, there are fully-featured and powerful programs that track sales and deal with payments. For example AssocTRAC will integrate payment methods, run down-line commissions, and handle all the necessary volume. It is editable for ‘look and feel’, creates reports, and allows your affiliates to check their positions with you. Additionally it has a full statistics package. Finally, it makes payment easy through PayPal or other systems you may have. AssocTRAC requires software on your website or server, but there are full-service systems from organizations like 1ShoppingCart.com or ClickBank.com that will do everything for you. The primary difference is in how you pay - with AssocTRAC you buy it and move on, with 1ShoppingCart you pay a regular fee, and with Clickbank you pay a commission on sales.
Modern affiliate programs and services are able to manage all the variations and complexities: single programs to a single network, multi-programs to multi-networks, simple commission structures and multi-period payments, plus residual income programs and virtually anything else you can conceive. On one issue you must be really clear. How people will be paid. It is best to pick a method early on – check, online payment, and direct bank deposits – and to stick with it. This is what they signed up for, the best approach is consistency.31 -
Spam is a potential disaster. If your program is at all successful you will be faced with one or more of your affiliates spamming customers. This could get you blacklisted with your ISP. If spam happens, and you will know when a rash of complaints come up attached to one URL, act immediately. Contact the customers and apologize. Contact the affiliate and require an end to the practice. If necessary suspend, disable or terminate the account. Your spam policy should be laid out in your affiliate terms. Stick to it rigidly. Measuring PerformanceYou need to know how well your business is operating. This requires collecting statistics to measure performance. Remember our remarks about de-averaging – they also apply here. Remember, when you measure performance you are looking at both the performance of your affiliates in bringing you traffic and YOUR performance in converting that traffic into sales. Finally, you will need to look at the sales/customers to find out your performance in retaining them and on selling etc and making repeat sales. The #1 statistic is the traffic to sales conversion. It should be in the range of 0.5 to 1.5% or better. Find out the traffic that comes from affiliate programs (de-average!) Find out the revenue from each sale – after any discounts and all commissions The list is endless Affiliate Networks
There are two major affiliate networks (structured systems where you can sell your product through affiliates) – LinkShare and Clickbank – that we can thoroughly recommend. LinkShare.com is a source of thousands of affiliate marketers looking for products to sell. It provides excellent service to the affiliates and the merchants with a full range of statistics. ClickBank.com is the top affiliate network selling only digitized products. Clickbank is as simple as you can possibly get with no need to install scripts. It has a fully integrated payment system, sign-up is quick and the cost at under $50 is very low. If you have a digit product (e-book or software) Clickbank is the place to go. It doesn’t interfere with your own sales page and own sales – you simply integrate Clickbank into your page as if you were your own affiliate – it’s so easy. This is one of THE fastest and easiest ways of making money on the web with instant access to thousands upon thousands of potential affiliates.
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Top Clickbank Sellers on Traffic Type the word Affiliate into the search box below and find the best selling books and tools on traffic sold through ClickbankFor those of you who are not aware, Clickbank is the web's leading supplier of digital products and is an enormously powerful affiliate engine. If you join nothing else, seriously consider becoming an affiliate of Clickbank.To find out moreCLICK HEREIf you have a digital product, CLICKBANK is the place to sell it with over 100,000 affiliates and a strong administrative system to deal with returns.CLICK HERE |
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