How To Setup An Affiliate Program To Promote Your Website

Affiliate programs allow other people to sell or promote your products and services for commission. If you have multiple websites and distributors promoting your product, you have a much greater potential for sales than otherwise. Affiliate programs are very cost-effective because you only pay when a sales is made. An additional benefit to setting up your own affiliate program is that with a lot more websites linking to yours, your link popularity will increase in search engines, leading to increased website traffic and more sales.
However, there are so many affiliate programs competing for the interest of affiliates that you need to offer a very attractive commission for selling your product. This is particularly true if you are selling a digital product such as an e-book which is mostly all profit. For example, if your digital product is sold for and you are offering your affiliates a 50% commission, your program will be very attractive to affiliates as long as you provide a high quality sales page and offer a good quality product.
Before you even begin to set up your own affiliate program, you need to make sure you have a quality product, a website that is set up to maximize search engine marketing and is easy to navigate and a professional sales page. Before you involve others in selling your product, sell it for yourself for a little while so you can iron out any problems that might crop up while the customer base is still small. Once you are confident that there are no problems with the product, you need to decide how you want to set up your affiliate program.

Before you begin, it is a good idea to ask yourself these questions:
What do you want to pay affiliates for – leads, clicks or actual sales?
Do you want to give your affiliates their own website that is a replica of yours?
Or do you just want to give your affiliates their own unique ID to track sales?
Will you commission be a flat rate or a percentage of sales?
Do you want to sell all your products and services through affiliates, or just certain ones?
Do you want to create a single tier program that pays for sales only, or do you wish to set up a two tier program to pay the affiliate for referrals as well?
Do you wish to limit your affiliates to your own country or are you happy to go global?
Once you have made these fundamental decisions, you need to consider whether you want to run your own CGI scripts and administer your affiliate program yourself. However, this is a lot of work and you will be responsible for the security, testing, promotion and commission payments etc.

If you have a downloadable product such as e-books or software, http://Clickbank.com might be a good option. Clickbank charges an initial fee of .95 and allows you to process credit cards and online checks for .00 per transaction and 7.5% of sales. You also get a built in affiliate program. Clickbank lists your product and program on their website and visitors can either buy your products or join your affiliate program. You choose the commission rate and all commission payments are handled by them. The only real downside is that it doesn’t allow for a two-tiered system.

ClixGalore.com on the other hand does allow for two tiers, however they are much more expensive both to join and in ongoing costs. ClixGalore is an affiliate network and as such could provide you with beneficial exposure to potential affiliates.

As you can see, there are many options available to you if you want to set up your own affiliate program. There is only time to mention a few in this article, but do an internet search and take some time to explore the choices available to you in terms of computer software, third party providers and affiliate networks.

Once you have set up your affiliate program, the promotion is up to you. A good starting point for promoting your own affiliate program is to list your site . Blogs, forum posts and article marketing can also be used to attract interest in both your products and your affiliate program.

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10 Affiliate Marketing Management Tips

Discover The Answer To The 10 Most Common Affiliate Marketing Management Questions

1. Is affiliate marketing right for my business?

Affiliate marketing is one of the most powerful and effective means of gaining new customers, regardless of your product or service. Affiliate marketing exposes your business to new customers and can get you out of your marketing rut. Additionally, when you initiate an affiliate marketing campaign, you’re in control. You determine the commission rate you pay and pay only when your affiliates make a sale. It’s a no loss operation for you because you only pay when a sale is made. 

2. What are the startup costs?

When you start an affiliate program you have the choice of handling the operations yourself or having it managed by an affiliate network. The costs for either choice are reasonable and generally start around a few hundred dollars. Additionally, as a business owner don’t forget that many of your costs may be tax deductible. To start an affiliate marketing program in house, costs will include:

Affiliate management software

Affiliate marketing support including a website that answers affiliate questions and a means for them to contact you if any issues arise.

Affiliate marketing materials including banner ads, copy, coupons, and promotional content.

An affiliate marketing contract agreement

Tracking software to track cookies, click through, payments, etc…

If you choose to hire an affiliate network to handle your program they generally charge a flat fee or a percentage of what you pay out each month.

3. How much time will it take out of my workday/workweek?

Most experts agree that it will take you about an hour and a half each day to manage your affiliate program. They also recommend you to budget more time in the first few months of your program, approximately two to three hours a day. Even the most efficient affiliate managers spend about 45 minutes a day managing their affiliate program. 

Professional affiliate managers generally spend an average of 40-80 hours a month dedicated to managing, tracking and promoting your affiliate program. 

4. Should I use an affiliate network?

Do you have an extra 3 hours a day for the next two or three months? Do you have an hour a day to devote to managing your program after the initial three month program is complete? An affiliate network, while it may be a bit more expensive on the outset, can help you focus your time on other profit generating tasks. Additionally, an affiliate network can help expose your affiliate program to a wide variety of experience affiliates, which means more money in your bottom line and more exposure overall. 

5. How should I pay affiliates? What type of commission works best?

This is a very important decision because it not only affects your profits, the right commission rate will help you recruit top-notch affiliates. The general rule of thumb is to set your default commission rate at a rate you can afford to pay while leaving room for time limited commission increase offers, promotions, and private offers. For example, if you can afford to pay 50% of your gross profit margin, pay 25% instead and tier it so that after a sales goal is reached they earn 30% or you can bump it up to 50% during the holidays or during typically low sales times. 

6. How do I recruit affiliates?

Your customers may be your best affiliates. After all, they already appreciate and enjoy your products or services. A simple link on your website is a good place to start. Here are a few ways to find quality affiliates:

Online forums. These are excellent places to meet and greet and connect with like minded individuals. They’re also a good resource for affiliates who are interested in, motivated, and qualified to sell your products and services. Using a forum, you can announce your affiliate program. Be careful to not ‘sell’ on the forum as most forums look down on this and may kick you off. Additionally, you can include a link to your affiliate site in your signature. 

Find websites that link to your competitors and approach them about being an affiliate for you. Likewise, you can find affiliates using your favorite search engine and contact them about joining your program. 

One last way is to join an affiliate network or become listed on an affiliate directory. This will ensure that affiliate marketers who are searching for new products and services to promote. However, keep in mind that many beginner marketers also seek products and services to promote via affiliate directories and they may lose interest and motivation before they ever make a sale. This isn’t a strong deterrent because they don’t get paid unless they make a sale, however it should be noted. 

7. What is the best way to communicate with my affiliates?

Email is the general tool of choice, which makes an auto responder a fantastic tool for basic emails like the welcome email, introducing promotions, coupons, sending links and banner ads, and answering Frequently Asked Questions. It is also generally advisable to have an email address, fax number, and telephone number available for when affiliates have questions that are not answered by your frequently asked questions web page or when they simply want to speak with you. 

8. How do I motivate affiliates?

Money motivates no doubt about it. That being said, affiliates are also motivated by feeling that they’re important to you. This means when they ask for your time, you give it. Additionally, promotions, bonuses, prizes, contests, and commission increases are all tools to motivate and inspire affiliates. Constant communication, like sending a weekly or monthly Ezine, will also help remind your affiliates that you’re out there and invested in their success. 

9. Do I need to hire an affiliate manager? 

The answer to this question really depends on your needs. How large is your company? Do you have the time to manage your program? Do you have the skills to manage your program? An affiliate manager is the person that:

Recruits affiliates

Communicates with affiliates

Develops, tracks, and reports on promotions

Develops programs to enhance affiliate program

Motivates affiliates

Tracks sales and pays affiliates

Monitors your competition

These are all extremely important functions and if you have the time to handle them yourself, excellent! If you do not, then consider hiring an affiliate manager. 

10. How do I find/hire an affiliate manager?

Outsourcing an affiliate manager is fairly easy to do. There are hundreds available with a quick online search. You can ask associates, inquire at online forums, or post an advertisement seeking someone to fill the position. Depending on the complexity of your affiliate program, you could consider a well qualified virtual assistant for the job. The skills your affiliate manager will need are:

Organizational skills

Communication skills

Attention to detail

Knowledge of online business, internet marketing, and basic ecommerce operations

Basic html and graphic experience are a plus

Because they’re going to be representing you, you’ll want to make sure they’re personable.

How is PPC Different from SEO?

Pay per Click (PPC) is a model of advertising and marketing that uses ads on various websites on the internet. When an ad is clicked, the people advertising will pay the site hosting their ad whenever it is clicked; this is usually at a fixed rate, depending on a particular site or ad size.

The AdWords content network can make your advertisements really work for your website because the ads are displayed on sites that you chose from the thousands available in your niche. Out of these several thousands you can have choices on what are those most relevant to what you are offering on the net.

In the content network you have opportunities to show your ads across a wide range of popular websites spread across the globe but if you don't have the capabilities to offer your products or services globally it may be better to go regional or local. Having ads only on a specific geographical location can be a better optimization effort for your campaign.

There is also a new report that there will be a change in URL as domains will be changed with no capitalization anymore in the domain names. This may have some effect on some but for those who need that their domain names need capitalization; these may show greater effects in their ad performance.

Using both the Google AdWords content network and pay per click advertising on the search engine Bing may be something worthwhile for internet marketers to think about. For sure there are also Bing users and making your ads shown on this network may give better benefits to your website's promotional effort.

If you have a new website, you can probably start with PPC. This is because PPC gives you quick results. When you run a PPC campaign, you will see traffic pouring into your website from the next minute. After a week, begin with SEO.

Pay per Click is a marketing strategy. This is simply similar to putting ads. Your ads will appear on different websites, and search results. When people click on these links, you will have to pay. This is why it is called pay-per-click. Generally it is very costly and the traffic you generate is not targeted.

But if you hire someone to manage your PPC campaigns, you will have more time to concentrate on your business. These pay par click service providers will also make use of the most effective and efficient tools to ensure the success of your pay per click ad campaigns.

The trademark infringement complaint investigation process can apply not only to Google Advertisers but to non-AdWords advertisers as well, yet the complaint and the investigation will only affect ads served on Google.

This is one of the most important things you can do. Sure there are some free and paid software to make one AdGroup per keyword. Heck, you could even do that with MS Excel. But that easily exceeds your limits with Google. Best strategy is to start small and easy. Doing it manually is probably the option.