An Introduction to Affiliate Programs
What Are Affiliate Programs?
Affiliate programs (also called "associate," "reseller,"
and "partnership" programs) are revenue-sharing systems
used by companies to market their products and services. The company
with which you partner supplies the products and services and handles
order fulfillment. You supply the marketing. And, you get paid for
sending customers to your partner's Web site. In essence, affiliate
programs are a simple way to create and maintain online joint venture
and reseller relationships while paying only for results.
The primary reason that affiliate programs are so popular is that
they are easy to join. In most cases, they're also free. All quality
affiliate programs provide you with marketing material such as banner
ads, graphics, sales letters, and, most importantly, a guide on
how to best market their products and services.
Why Should a Small Business Care About Affiliate Programs?
First, because they drive online traffic, and second, because they
drive sales. Forrester Research, in its April 1999 report "Driving
Site Traffic" identified e-mail campaigns and affiliate programs
as the two "best ways to drive online traffic today."
Forrester addressed the sales issue in its October 1999 report "New
Affiliate Marketing Models", noting that affiliates deliver
13% of online retail sales today, and by 2003, the number is expected
to grow to 21%. Personally, I think this projection is too conservative,
given the online world we live in — a world that is all about
partnerships and strategic alliances. You can expect affiliate programs
to be a standard component in the majority of all Web businesses
by 2001.
Can You Make Money with Affiliate Programs?
The simple answer is that "it depends." You can improve
your chances of success by closely matching the needs of the people
who visit your Web site with the affiliate products and services
that you feature. Providing the proper context and content, as well
as effective personal endorsements of the affiliate programs you
list, can also boost your program revenue.
A quick note about content: I tend to think of content as the "hard
currency" of the Internet. Just this past week the Web reached
1 billion pages. If you want your site to attract new customers,
and, more importantly, attract repeat customers, you must create
interesting content that gets updated very frequently.
How much can you make? Ultimately, it's up to you and how hard
you want to work. Some small sites make very substantial dollars
from affiliate programs; others make little or no money. As a general
rule-of-thumb, I tell small businesses to view affiliate programs
as an opportunity to supplement the revenue their sites generate
from core products and services, not as the principal revenue stream.
As discussed earlier, one key ingredient to success is joining
affiliate programs of companies that cater to the needs and wants
of your site audience. For example, if your visitors are family-oriented,
you can add toys, children's books and clothing, and even family
travel programs. If your site targets Webmasters, consider Web-related
software tools and books, popular computer hardware sites, and even
interactive online games (they don't manage the Web all the time,
you know). For a list of affiliate program directories that I personally
use, go to affiliatetips.com.
What's Ahead?
In future columns we'll look at case studies of how small businesses
have used affiliate programs to increase their revenue. We'll show
you how a small business can start and implement its own affiliate
program, creating a worldwide online sales force, but paying only
for results. We'll identify the most important factors you must
consider before joining an affiliate program, point out the most
common mistakes and how to avoid them, and more.
The Basics to a Successful Affiliate Marketing Web Site
A First Impression is Everything!
One of the most important aspects of a successful web site, is the
overall look and feel of the site. A web site should be aesthetically
pleasing, easy to navigate and be of value to your visitors. This
means useful, current, neatly displayed information. A web site
that is not too flashy and is limited on the number of banners.
Black, Arial font on a white background is suggested for text.
Domain Registration
You'll probably also want to register your own domain name. Free
hosting is not a professional hosting solution and many times free
pages are cluttered with banner ads. This will very quickly make
visitors want to hit the back button. You can register a domain
name with Register.com or Register4less.com for only $14.95 and
get your site hosted for as low as $6.95 per month with HostSaveFast
and $5.00 per month with Your-Site.com.
If you are new to building web sites and working with HTML, you
probably want to use a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) product
like MSFrontpage. A great book for learning HTML is HTML for Dummies.
This book comes with a CD-ROM with several examples of HTML code
and is highly recommended. It's also a good idea to search online
for HTML code snippets and examples or visit sites like DynamicDrive.com.
However, make sure you don't go overboard and that your site remains
simple and clean.
Content Keeps Visitors Content
Once you have an affiliate program that has proven to be a success
for your web site, you can continue receiving quality traffic by
adding more and more relevant and useful information. By adding
value (new and quality information) to your site, you will become
trusted by the visitors to your site. This will surely increase
repeat visitors...and traffic equals commissions! As you add content
to your site, you will also be increasing your sites visibility
online by having more web pages available to the search engines.
Educate Yourself
Getting your site up and runnin is not the end, you must stay current.
There are many helpful email newsletters that you can sign up for
related to your sites content. If your sites content deals with
finance for example, be sure and frequent sites such as CNNfn.com,
Etrade.com and other highly visible financial resources.
Web Site Design and Promotion
Getting traffic to your site is always a challenge. Your web sites
design is extremely important. The PROPER use of meta-tags is essential
and can greatly improve your ranking in search engines. (For more
information on using meta tags, read this article.)
It is important to submit your site(s) to the major search engines
consistently on a monthly basis. SearchEngineBlaster is one of the
world's leading online promotion services and will submit any URL(s)
to more than 400,000 search engines and directories worldwide EVERY
day. There are also many different types of software packages that
you can purchase to submit your web site yourself.
Helpful Tools
Email
A great feature for any web site is an email list. Your site should
provide visitors with a link for signing up on your email list.
It can be as simple as, "email me at you@yoursite.com to be
added to our email list."...or you can use services like Microsoft's
bCentral.com which is a great email list managing tool that allows
you to design custom email list sign up forms. As your email list
grows, you can email members of updates, specials etc.
Bookmarks
Reminding visitors to Bookmark (add to favorites) your web site
can be a very useful tool in getting visitors back to your site.
DynamicDrive.com offers a simple "copy and past" script
that will enable you to place links on your pages allowing a visitor
to bookmark the page with a simple click. DynamicDrive.com also
offers many other great tools, ideas and simple "copy and past"
scripts and HTML code that can greatly enhance your site.
Targeted Email
Targeted email is a super tool for marketing products and services
online. Targeted email marketing is emailing product/service information
directly to people that have signed up (opt-in) to receive information
on specific topics of interest. For example, I want to send an advertisement
for women's shoes, so I purchase a list of email addresses targeting
women...or women who shop online. SendMoreInfo.com is a great service
for targeted email marketing and is surprisingly inexpensive in
comparison to other targeted email services.
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