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3 Keys
To Success With Your Affiliate Program
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by:
Andy Murray
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Copyright
2005 Andy Murray
Affiliate programs (also called Referral Programs or Partnership
Programs) are essentially commission-based sales schemes.
Joining an affiliate program is a neat way to make money from your
users. But just as you can join someone else's affiliate program, so
you can set up your own program and invite webmasters to sign up. Here
are my top 3 tips to succeed with your own affiliate program.
1. How to attract affiliates
One of the biggest fears new Affiliate managers have is in finding new
affiliates. This fear is a stumbling block that stops many site owners
from getting started with affiliate marketing. Interestingly, with a
proper marketing strategy, getting affiliates may not be very
difficult. Given below are some tips that may help in attracting new
affiliates.
Find complimentary sites - "Complementary" sites are sites that sell
products or services that compliment your offers. If you sell
"gardening tools", a site that sells books on "gardening tips" would be
a perfect affiliate.
Find content sites - There are many sites that do not sell any kind of
product or service but are mainly content oriented sites. Such sites
promote an idea, concept, study or belief. Content sites that are used
as a resource for your target market are ideal affiliates.
Finally, there are several sites on the Internet dedicated to listing
affiliate Programs. Get your program listed in these directories.
2. Classifying Affiliates for Better Management
The hardest part of administrating an Affiliate Program is deciding
what your affiliates need to help make the sale. But, by carefully
categorizing your affiliates, you can easily determine what their needs
are and how to accurately meet them.
The first step is to pick at least three types of affiliate. Take a
look at your affiliates and try to determine one outstanding
characteristic that can easily be compared across the board and choose
at least three types of the characteristic.
The Second Step is to determine the needs of each type. Each of your
affiliate types will have different needs; some of their needs will
overlap, but you should find a distinct difference in many of their
needs. If you find that all of them have the same needs, go back to
step one and re-think your types.
The Third Step involves the process of creating and compiling linking
methods for each group of affiliates. Based on the needs you identified
in Step two, create and compile linking methods for each type.
3. Safe Guarding Against Spam
Any time you run a program where your affiliates rely on other signups
to generate profits, you will eventually have a problem with spam. One
of your affiliates will inevitably get it into their head to blitz the
Web with unwanted garbage.
When this happens you need to be ready to take action otherwise it will
cost you! Your Internet company can boot you off your server and you
can find yourself blacklisted. Not good for business. If you get an
email from someone claiming they received spam with your URL, then take
it as an early warning.
I am not advising you to immediately terminate the affiliate's account,
but be sure to contact them to follow up on the complaint. Let your
affiliate know you received a complaint and advise them to remove this
person from their list.
If you only get one or two complaints, it's probably not spam, the
complainants might simply have signed up for an email list and
forgotten all about it. You will know when one of your affiliates is
spamming, because you will get anywhere from 10 to 100 complaints in
the same day all regarding the same URL.
The best thing to do in this case is to immediately terminate or
disable the account of the affiliate URL that was spammed.
Running your own affiliate program can become an extrememly profitable
venture for your business. You can recruit a HUGE sales force promoting
your products for you, and ONLY pay them when you make a sale!
Andy Murray is a marketer and publisher writing informative reports to
help grow your online business. Get his latest offering "Get Stinking
Rich From Affiliate Programs" for FREE by simply following this link: http://www.zerohourmarketing.com/Affiliate-Marketing-Report.htm
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