Ten Practical Tips to Help You
Create a Profitable Affiliate Program

Neil Durrant

Imagine hundreds maybe thousands of websites advertising your site and only ever being paid on results. That's the Affiliate Marketing promise.

The inclusion of an affiliate program is becoming commonplace in many sites' marketing plans. However, the concept of 'mass affiliation' can be misleading, a successful program doesn't require an army of affiliates.

Instead, profitable programs are being created by those who understand the importance of creating strategic relationships with key properties. Affiliate relationships will allow you to tap into existing traffic flows and target sites able to influence your potential customers buying decisions.

Affiliate marketing can be one of the most effective online marketing methods providing you with a valuable new sales channel.

So what can you do to ensure your affiliate program's success?

1) Treat your affiliates as partners

If you plan and operate your program with the philosophy that affiliate marketing is a great way to get cheap advertising or free branding then ultimately your program will fail. The long-term success of your program will depend upon the ongoing support and loyalty of your key partners.

Remember affiliate marketing is about performance. Help your affiliates to succeed and take delight in issuing their commission cheques in the knowledge that every penny in commission represents a profit for you.

2) Focus on quality not quantity

The often quoted '80:20 rule' is in fact a bit of a myth. Surveys have shown that typically the top 5% of a program's affiliates will drive 95% of a program's revenue. It's quality not quantity that counts when it comes to affiliate partners. Concentrate on developing relationships with key sites that have the attention of your potential customer base.

3) Activate and motivate with regular communications

Build on your relationships with regular communications. Publish an affiliate newsletter offering promotional advice, product training and affiliates success stories designed to motivate your inactive partners.

Some programs have had great success in developing very loyal affiliate communities by providing forums for them to share ideas and advice. Aim to respond to all your affiliate queries promptly. Send thank you notes and pay special attention to your top performers.

4) Pay on time

An obvious point perhaps but paying commissions on time is critical to maintain the level of trust you have worked hard to develop with your partners.

If you operate your program through an affiliate network make sure you approve pending transactions promptly. Also ensure your accounts department issue payments to the network on time - exceed the standard terms and it could mean the network delays payment to your affiliates.

5) Actively recruit the best, targeted affiliates

No matter which solution powers your program you will still need a pro-active campaign to recruit new strategic partners. Create a page designed to sell your affiliate proposition, submit your program to all the affiliate directories, or alternatively use Affiliate Announce to do this for you.

Use the search engines to discover sites likely to have the attention of your potential customer. I find the Linkspider tool particularly helpful to aid this research. Make personal contact to introduce these potential affiliates to your program.

6) Understand your performance metrics

'Super Affiliates' will analyse your performance metrics closely. They will watch your conversion rates while experimenting to improve click through ratios to your program.

By dividing commissions earned against the number of visitors sent to your site, they will identify the value of each individual visitor (known as EPC or Earnings Per Click). This provides a useful benchmark to compare your program against your competitors.

Strive to improve your key metrics and watch your individual affiliates statistics. An unusual performance spike can be an indicator of potential fraud or a novel marketing method that's proving very effective.

7) Provide proven link assets

Encourage the placement of your offering in context with the affiliate's site content. An affiliate's endorsement of your products will not only send large numbers of their loyal readers to your site, but these visitors will have a greater propensity to buy having had initial sales resistance overcome by the original recommendation.

Provide tested link assets including text links, banners, product shots and sample newsletter adverts. Be creative by offering dynamic search functions, auto responder reports, articles and pop-up adverts. Create specific offers tailored to a particular product or market niche and ensure affiliates can deep link directly to the relevant landing page illustrating this offer.

8) Help your affiliates to merchandise your offer

Even the most experienced affiliate will not find the most effective method to present your offering straight away. As you manage your program examine your top performer's sites, experiment with new strategies and share this knowledge with the rest of your affiliates.

9) Be prepared to negotiate hybrid offers for key partners

Many larger properties simply will not accept pure performance only offers. However armed with a thorough understanding of your performance metrics, negotiate placement of your offer with a hybrid mix of CPM plus additional performance based rewards.

10) Monetise back end traffic

Merchants can be affiliates too.

Affinity relationships between suppliers of complimentary but non-competing products or services can often prove very profitable for both parties. Your next 'Super Affiliate' could be a retailer displaying your offer on their receipt page.

Likewise by promoting carefully chosen offers in the same way, you too can generate additional back end profits by recommending your customers to other sites post-sale.

For more Neil Durrant articles and resources, click here.

• Business and Marketing • Affiliate Marketing • Information Marketing
• Network Marketing • Work At Home • Money Management
• Debt Management • Investing

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