Why Online Merchants Must Have An Affiliate Program

Written by Craig Jessen Tuesday, 29 March 2011 04:25

Building a web site is an important 1st step to having an online presence. But after that the real work begins in terms of promoting it. It's a large job in the vastness that is the Internet. You will need some help. Get yourself a ton of affiliates and incentivize them to drive traffic (and sales) to you. There are many third party affiliate management programs available that make it easy to set up a program. If you look around you will see that all of your competitors have tapped into this valuable channel so you need to, too!

Building a web site is an important 1st step to having an online presence. But after that the real work begins in terms of promoting it. It's a large job in the vastness that is the Internet. You will need some help. Get yourself a ton of affiliates and incentivize them to drive traffic (and sales) to you. There are many third party affiliate management programs available that make it easy to set up a program. If you look around you will see that all of your competitors have tapped into this valuable channel so you need to, too!

What is it that motivates good partners? The most critical thing is they want to promote a product or service that sells. Why should they send you traffic if you can't convert it into sales commissions for them? In addition to converting well, they will want a good size commission on each sale. It's not worth their time if they're only making pennies on each conversion. Be generous. Their success is your success. They will need many different banners to promote your products. Give them lots of banners in different sizes. And once they've produced some sales commissions be sure you pay them on time. Pick a schedule and stick to it. Regular checks (even if tiny) make for happy partners. Delays in payment make for unhappy (read: canceled) affiliates. Keep your partners happy and they will keep you happy.

It's possible to add a little multi-level marketing to your affiliate program by designing it to be multi-tier. This gives your partners incentive to recruit additional partners under them. And then the referring partner gets a % of whatever the partners they recruit for you get. For example, if affiliate Bob signs up affiliate John for your program then not only will John get paid for business he brings you but Bob will get a % of what John earns. You can pay John in several ways: for each sale, for each lead, or a % of whatever the customers he brings you spend. It may sound like a lot to manage but it's really easy with modern software. Use something like ShareASale or LinkShare and they handle all of the partner sign up, affiliate codes, and payments. Couldn't be easier.

Another item to keep in mind is that you need to treat your affiliates like people. How would you want to be treated? You'd want to receive your paycheck on time, and get occasional emails so you know the merchant remembers you exist. You'd also want to receive new graphics from time to time that you could use to promote the merchant's products.

Having an affiliate program is crucial for merchants selling on the Internet. Amazon was one of the first and they have executed amazingly well. Today they have tens of thousands of partners sending them traffic. Imagine 1000 other sites all giving positive reviews and promoting your products and company. It can happen with a solid program.