Why Online Merchants Should Have A Great Affiliate Program

You spent a lot of time and money setting up your web presence. But if you don’t take advantage of affiliate programs then you are not optimizing your investment. With today’s third party management companies there is really no reason not to offer a state of the art affiliate program. They make it so easy. Imagine hundreds of people and web sites saying beautiful things about your products and your company. You’d pay them if they brought you actual paying customers, right? One thing for certain, your competitors are. So you need to get with the program and set up some partner-based marketing.

The number one thing affiliates want to have is a product that sells like hotcakes. If you have a good product then you will attract a ton of partners. If your product sucks you will only get the lowest quality of under-performing partners. For each sale a partner makes you should pay them well. Probably want to be a little overly generous here. If they make a lot they will promote you more; and that leads to even more free traffic and sales for you. Give them tons of banners they can use to advertise your product. And don’t just pick one or two sizes; give them 12 different sizes. Spend a few hundred on banner designers and give your partners lots to work with. Lastly, be sure and pay them on time. Nothing motivates affiliates more than a regular paycheck every month.

In the beginning (late 90s) affiliate programs were pretty straightforward — partners would earn a percent of whatever sales they brought to you. Today, the plans vary quite a bit. You can incentivize 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 recurring subscription product). There are also multi-tier programs where partners earn fees from other partners that they recruit for you. This can be a great 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 ShareASale or LinkShare. They have all these rules programmed in 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 newsletters, pay them on time, and give them solid creatives (banners, text ads) they can use to sell your product or service. Make their job as easy as possible and pay them well — they will then go the extra mile to promote your product for you.

Using affiliates and an affiliate network to increase your sales online is standard operating procedure these days. If you don’t do it then you are at a competitive disadvantage. It is the perfect use of the Internet: Get a thousand people to promote your products and then have a systematic way to pay them for that behavior. Affiliates should be a must-have part of any online marketing program.

For more information on the high paying investment affiliate program for a service that shows how to earn consistent monthly income please take a look at the web site Born To Sell.