The Three “P’s” of Affiliate Marketing

PARTNER, PROMOTE, Get PAID

“When it comes to creating a viable marketing program, affiliate marketing has become a major ingredient in promoting your products and services on the net.” Heidi Richards Mooney

  This past week I have been doing a lot of research on affiliate marketing for a new Gift Guide being created by WE Magazine for Women. I have signed up with several affiliate publishers (companies that sell products and want people like me to promote them) via Linkshare, Clickbank, PayDotCom and Commission Junction. In fact, when you click on any of the links above, it has the potential to produce income for me via their generous affiliate platforms.  And for you too when you sign up with them. BY the way, there are many many individual companies you can sign up with to promote their products to your audience, these are just my top four because they have so may publishers just waiting for people like you and me to promote for them.

In fact, when it comes to creating a viable marketing program, affiliate marketing has become a major ingredient in promoting your products and services on the net. More and more companies and individuals are getting into affiliate marketing as a means of creating a robust income stream. Amazon.com, and eBay are both good examples of distributors that have built an incredible arsenal of “salespeople.”  In fact, in most major industries it has become the norm to have an affiliate program. And you don’t have to be a BIG company to make money in affiliate marketing.

Just what is Affiliate marketing and how does it work? According to Wikipedia (the online encyclopedia), “affiliate Marketing is a popular method of promoting web businesses in which an affiliate is rewarded for every visitor, subscriber and/or customer provided through his efforts. It is a modern variation of the practice of paying finder’s-fees for the introduction of new clients to a business. Compensation may be made based on a certain value for each visit (Pay per click), registrant (Pay per lead), or a commission for each customer or sale (Pay per Sale).”
 
Affiliate marketing is, in essence a partnership.  The partnership is between the advertisers or merchants also referred to as affiliate merchants or distributors (those selling the product or service) and the salespeople also known as affiliates.  The affiliates are the ones who publish and sell other people’s products, either on their website, on their blog, in their ezine or by way of other email marketing venues.

There are many benefits of affiliate marketing which includes creating a sales force beyond ones own capabilities and reach, the ability to automate the process to make tracking and reporting easier and the fact that the affiliate merchant need only pay for the performance of affiliate partners. The main responsibility of the affiliate is to direct traffic to the site of the distributor.  The distributor then handles the order, the payment and shipping of product. .. and pays the affiliate for finding the customer.
 
Finding the Right PARTNERS

The real job in becoming an affiliate is much more than simply signing up for a program.   It begins with finding the right partners’ products and services to promote via your circle. This is the key to making lots of money in the affiliate marketing business. 

What should you look for when checking out affiliate opportunities?  It’s important to learn what you can about the distributor before signing up with their program. Without doing your due diligence beforehand, you may find yourself with a company that does not pay on time, is unreliable, doesn’t have the supporting materials and infrastructure necessary to help you promote their products and services or they simply go out of business. 

Is the product one that is in demand?  Is it something you can easily market?  Is it congruent with the means to which you will promote it such as your website, your email newsletter, etc? One of my five websites is a retail flower site (www.EdenFlorist.com).  I have joined several affiliate programs and marketed them through that site.  One of them is Ice.com. Why?  Because they sell jewelry and flowers and jewelry naturally go together.  I probably wouldn’t sell a water softener solution or barbeque grills because to my customer base, there is not an obvious connection.

Is there a cost to become an affiliate?  The cost of becoming an affiliate can vary from free to a one-time payment or even a monthly subscription.  Make sure that if you are paying to belong to an affiliate program the potential for making money is greater than the cost to be an affiliate.  This is something that you may have to “test” for a couple of months to see if the commissions start “rolling in.”  If not, move on to a more profitable program.

Before joining an affiliate program, make sure they have a great payment structure.  Is it 1%, 10%, 50% or more?  The amount of money you can make will be in direct proportion to the demand for the product and the means in which you promote it. Although I would not entirely discount a program where the commission is 10% or less, the effort to make a sale is the same as with high-commission programs, therefore wouldn’t it be better to put your efforts in marketing a program where you have the greatest opportunities to make the most money? Equally important is how often you get paid.  Is it monthly, quarterly or when you reach a certain dollar amount?

How are the statistics reported to the affiliates?  Is there a thorough statistics page that lists the number of click-throughs, number of sales and amount earned?  Is it broken down per month?  Is it updated automatically and frequently?  If you join an established, reputable program, these things should already be in place.

Are there some examples on the distributor’s site of how these affiliates are marketing their products? Another site I run is a membership site – the Women’s ECommerce Association, International – www.WECAI.org – our mission is to help women do business on and off the WEB, therefore two of the more than a dozen affiliate programs we promote are a domain seller (with their program, we are known as resellers) www.wecaidomains.com and an email distribution service called Group Mail Pro. Each of these companies provides me with the tools I need to promote and sell their products. And WECAI makes money.

Does the distributor provide affiliates with a wide variety of text links, banners and graphics for the affiliate to use to market their products?  How are other affiliates doing with the distributor program?  Are there testimonials; and is there a way to contact these affiliates to see how they are doing? Does the distributor offer other support such as monthly or weekly tips in the form of a newsletter or email campaign?  How is the customer support?  You can test this by sending the distributor a message or query to see how long it takes for them to respond. If they do not respond within 48 hours, consider another program.

In my next post I will share 13 Tips to PROMOTE the Distributor (or Publisher)

Julia Baril said,

January 4, 2010 @ 3:35 am

Hi Speakingwithspirit.com owner,

My name is Julia Baril and I am Joel Johnson’s
affiliate manager for his Lazy Cash Formula.
(www.lazycashformula.com)

Joel told me to contact you personally to see
if we can develop a joint venture business
relationship together…

I understand you have a high-traffic site in
the biz opp niche.

We have a product that converts VERY WELL
for biz opp traffic.

In fact, we have one affiliate that logged
over 100 sales in 3 days…

We were also able to drive 100+ sales
to ONE of our jv partners with 2 emails.

Let me know if you’d like to work with us.

I have a few ideas on how we can help each
other increase the value for our visitors,
your customers and both our bottom lines.

Regards,

Julia Baril
Affiliate Manager for Joel Johnson
1-888-556-5216

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