How to Choose and Manage an Affiliate Program?

[Andy]

Sure, why not! I'm not really big on affiliate marketing, but I have a girl who's full time job is to recruit affiliates and then look after them As long as I get a positive ROI on her time I can spend my time doing more productive things such as browsing forums (lol) and working on other projects. It's rarely worth your own time sitting down and emailing 100s of people, so why not get someone to do it for you

Thomas

So, in a sense, she's your affiliate manager. I'm catching on. Really.

For sending 100's of emails I like my autoresponder account. :-)

Andy

[meathead1234]

So, in a sense, she's your affiliate manager. I'm catching on. Really.

For sending 100's of emails I like my autoresponder account. :-)

Andy

Pretty much - although as we're still relatively small I get her to do other stuff as well like make me coffee (okay that part was a joke...)

Haha - I like the personal touch. I find you're far more likely to get positive responses that way

[benitez17]

No worries - I'm no real expert myself am just speaking from my experience recently.

If you could get into a good CPA network you would expect to start making XXXX a day with the site - the problem is getting in in the first place. Most networks will require an introduction from another publisher or an upfront fee just to get in the door. I don't have too much experience with this myself but I was under the impression you're talking about 10k to get in and then you'll need to be able to have a mid 5 figure float or a very reliable merchant processor. I'd tweak the offer for yourself first before taking the plunge. Optimise the conversions and tweak it so you max revenue per customer.

I quite like the recurring payments, especially if you are offering a lot of value. If you can afford to offer a one-time $90 CPA this would be far more profitable for you than 40% monthly assuming you can manage the cashflow.

I would recommend hiring someone to do a lot of the contacting for you as I'm assuming your time is worth more to you than sending emails all day Hire someone in the US/UK for say, $8 an hour as you're more likely to get better quality of work. Put them on a trial and hopefully you'll start seeing a positive ROI on their time as they recruit more affiliates.

The down payment and cashflow management aren't a problem. However, I don't know if the market is big enough to make that many sales per day over the long term.

I agree that offering a larger single payment for a sale would be better for me. I was offering the recurring payments solely to entice affiliates, but it sounds like I would have better luck with a high percentage of the initial sale. That's something simple that I can try to start.

[Rover]

1. What affiliate programs would you suggest to someone with a product like mine?

I don't know of a great affiliate program for you. The problem is that most of them don't seem that reputable, in this area, and I think it scares off people.
2. What do you think of my payout to affiliates?
I think the payout is pretty good. There are affiliate programs that pay more, in your niche, but I think it's pretty good.
3. What do you do to attract and retain high quality affiliates?
I like to get to know people, in my area, that are into web marketing. Some of your good contacts will take it and run because they trust you and that's half the battle of the affiliate program.
4. Do you think it is worthwhile to hire an affiliate manager, or should I rely on the affiliate network to handle this?
Someone could make a few phone calls, for a few weeks, and sign up a lot of affiliates. If you meet with people that trust you, the results will be a lot greater.
5. Who is responsible for creating ads for the site?
I think you would be responsible to put out some ads that can easily be copied and pasted into html. I would also let someone create their own ad and use their own ad network.
6. What are your other suggestions and comments?
A good ranking will certainly help and an area devoted to affiliates. Many of the affiliate programs offer little information and you always wonder what support you will get. I would show the affiliates exactly how you are going to help them. I think there are lots of people that want to be in a real affiliate program and the problem is people can't tell what affiliate programs are real opportunities. I need five more characters.

[jamesuk]

Hi Benitez. I happened over to this web-site almost by accident whilst doing (of all things) some keyword research. I generally make most of my money as an affiliate marketer and your question was interesting enough to make me want to join the forum and reply. So here's my two pennneth worth in no particular order of importance-

1. A lot of affiliate marketers at clickbank (CB) are "newbies" who have been sold on the dream of becoming overnight millionaires simply by promoting a few (mostly crappy) products on CB. They have often bought the dream through some over-hyped and over priced course which tells them to pick products based on what CB calls "Gravity". This is perhaps THE most misunderstood subject in the whole of CB affiliate marketing. In essence,Gravity is an indication of how much competition there is. It measures the number of affiliates who have each made one or more sales over the previous 8 weeks. I would need a whole book to explain properly, but suffice to say that most of the affiliates on CB will have been taught to only promote products with a high Gravity. This in fact turns out to be entirely wrong. But it's worth bearing in mind that if your offering has a low Gravity rating on CB, this in itself will be enough to put most (98%) of affiliates off.
2. There are super affiliates out there. These guys can (and will, if the deal is right for them) bring you massive traffic. And I mean massive. To attract the big affiliates, it's actually simpler than you think - concentrate on 1. having a mass market appeal product (and I mean mass market - free competitions, net detectives, earn money doing surveys, win a house for £1 etc), and 2. Having good salescopy that CONVERTS and that you can prove converts. If an affiliate is going to bother to send you streams of traffic, you will need to prove to him that you have GOOD SALES COPY THAT CONVERTS.
3. $40 a pop recurring is good money. However, if I can only sell 2 of those a month vs 100 doowaps @ $10 a month, guess which one I would put my effort into? Again - all down to conversion rates. How well does your sales page convert? In general, recurring pay checks are always more preferable than one off payments. IMO, you are wrong to be thinking of changing from recurring to (albeit higher) one off payments
4. I personally would not promote a product that doesn't allow me to capture email addresses before sending them on to the vendor. Simple thinking here is that if you have an autoresponder series that captures email addresses and then spends 6 weeks selling the customer on your membership site, I will lose my commission - you will make the sale long after my cookie has disappeared from their home drive.
5. The best affiliates actually don't need or want "affiliate packs" or banners or even much advice from you on how to sell your product. Show them a good product that you can prove CONVERTS WELL and that's all they will need. Bear in mind that they may be using PPC to get you that traffic - they might spend $2 per click through, but if your offer converts well and makes profit for them, they will do it.
6. Final thought - if you are confident in this product, you can always pay for traffic yourself either through PPC or Google's paid content network or even through paid banner advertising on appropriate sites which you can locate through various free means. Paying for traffic in this way is like a tap - you can turn traffic up, down or even off completely, depending on (yes you guessed it) HOW WELL YOUR OFFER IS CONVERTING!

Hope this helps. Please do contact me if you think I can be of any further use! I'd be happy to give your site the once over if you think it might help.

[hooperman]

Hi jamesuk and welcome to the forums

That's a great first post!

4. I personally would not promote a product that doesn't allow me to capture email addresses before sending them on to the vendor. Simple thinking here is that if you have an autoresponder series that captures email addresses and then spends 6 weeks selling the customer on your membership site, I will lose my commission - you will make the sale long after my cookie has disappeared from their home drive.

Is it typical for vendors to state that affiliates can't capture emails? I don't know much about affiliate marketing so forgive the newb question.

[jamesuk]

Hi Hooperman. No it's not typical, it's just something I personally do. I have heard of affiliate schemes where the vendor is sent a lot of traffic only for them to capture the potential customers in an autoresponder series that runs for 6 weeks before the customer then buys. Of course, by then the affiliate has lost the sale as the vendor claims it as his own. Just something to consider really if you are thinking of setting up an affiliate scheme for your product(s)...

[Clinton]

jamesuk, a welcome to experienced-people.net from me too. That was an excellent post - I'm upgrading it to a front page article shortly.

I have heard of affiliate schemes where the vendor is sent a lot of traffic only for them to capture the potential customers in an autoresponder series that runs for 6 weeks before the customer then buys.

Sneaky bast*rds!

[hooperman]

Hi Hooperman. No it's not typical, it's just something I personally do. I have heard of affiliate schemes where the vendor is sent a lot of traffic only for them to capture the potential customers in an autoresponder series that runs for 6 weeks before the customer then buys.

As an affiliate, how do you get around that, even if you have the email addresses? I would imagine having the email addresses is a good thing, as you then have a customer/product match - can you then use them (ethically/legally) for your own purposes?

Sorry for the bombardment of questions!

[jamesuk]

Hi Clinton - thanks for the welcome!

Hooperman - let's say you decide to become an affiliate for a Forex membership site. You set up your own Forex based web site and drive traffic to it. All potential customers first hit a page that offers some free information in exchange for their email address. You end up building, completely ethically, a list of people interested in making money with Forex trading. You then email that list a mixture of (hopefully) good and useful information intertwined with marketing offers, one of which will be the opportunity to join the Forex membership site that you have decided to promote. A couple of points here - 1. a lot of affiliates just send rubbish in their emails and spam their list with offer after offer - nobody buys and eventually everyone unsubscribes from the list. 2. I think it is important that you actually own and/or truly believe in the value of the product(s) that you promote as an affiliate. For me, this is what keeps everything ethical. Unfortunately, you will find many affiliates have hardly even heard of the products they promote, let alone used them. I know that as an affiliate you might not be the supreme expert in the topic at hand, but you can still assess a product's value to the potential customers it will target, perform a useful role in passing on the research you have undertaken in the given niche and by pointing potential customers through to who you believe the real experts are!

Many affiliates don't capture email addresses - they simply pass the traffic straight on through to the product vendor, but the age old saying is "The money is in the list"

Hope that helps! James