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| Relevant Links: |
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Affiliates4U Forum
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| - Affiliate marketing forum with a membership containing some of the best affiliates in the business. Great tips for merchants and affiliates alike. |
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Leadhound.com |
| - A little known affiliate software company with a great product. Don't pay over the odds, this is a great value product that will even act as a general marketing tracking tool.
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Webmasterworld |
| - This is the affiliate forum on webmasterworld. Affiliate marketing with a global perspective, but you can still pick up some handy hints for the UK from here. |
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Affiliate Marketing |
| - Neil Durrant's superb resource for learning everything there is to know about affiliate marketing. He's been busy lately so the newsletters have slowed down, but you'll still find all you need to know here. |
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Affiliate Management
Thinking about running an affiliate scheme? Here are some preliminary thoughts...
How Affiliate Programs Work
- Per Lead
Companies with these programs pay their affiliates based on the number of visitors they refer who sign up as leads. This usually means the visitor fills out some requested information at the merchant site, which the merchant site may use as a sales lead or sell to another company as a sales lead.
- Per Sale
Companies with a pay per sale arrangement pay an affiliate when the affiliate sends them a customer who purchases something. Some merchant Web sites pay the affiliate a percentage of the sale and others pay a fixed amount per sale.
- Per Click
In these programs, the merchant site pays the affiliate based on the number of visitors who click on the link to come to the merchant's site. They don't have to buy anything, and it doesn't matter to the affiliate what a visitor does once he gets to the merchant's site. This type of program is starting to dwindle in popularity due to the lack of qualified traffic and poor conversion rates that are often the result of this type of incentive based affiliate program.
Affiliate Networks
Affiliate networks boast access to 10,000's of affiliates through whom - for a fee - you can push your products to. Little do they let on that actually most of their sales are generated by a very small percentage of their affiliate network - the so-called "super affiliates".
Super Affiliates
You've heard of the 80/20 rule. With affiliate marketing, it's more like 90/10, or even 95/5, but the principle's still the same: The bulk of all affiliate sales are produced by a small subgroup of a company's total number of affiliates. These high performers are known in the industry as super affiliates.
These super affiliates didn't reach that status by chance, or by dumb luck. Super affiliates have carefully selected their affiliate programs very wisely. Not every affiliate program is a good fit for every site, targeting an affiliate program to your site's visitors is essential.
Independent Affiliate Schemes
Affiliate software doesn't cost very much. But when you join an affiliate network, they say the main reason for the cost is access to the 1000's of affiliates. But as we've just discussed you don't need access to all of them. So what are you paying for?!
You'll then need to recruit & manage your own affiliates to run your own independent affiliate scheme. The Affiliates4U forum is the best place to start. You'll find most of the UK's best affiliates typing away in there.
Your Virtual Sales Force
You wouldn't have a bunch of telesales people working for you without talking to them. This is exactly the same with affiliates. Regularly keep them in touch with offers, new products, incentives for selling more of your products. Hey, you could even buy them a beer once in a while! You'll reap the rewards from giving personal service.
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