How Does Affiliated Web Business Work?
1.1 Affiliate Programs – What are they?
Affiliate programs (also called Referral Programs or Partnership Programs) are essentially commission-based sales schemes. You recommend a site to your users and pick up a percentage of any sales those users generate. You benefit from the commission and the site benefits from sales it wouldn’t otherwise have made. If you’ve ever gone to a website and seen links to Amazon, those were affiliate links.
You can link to an affiliate program from a site you’ve already set up, or create a site specially to promote a product. As long as it brings in more cash than you spend on building it and buying traffic, you’re laughing.
1.2 Using eBooks for Affiliate Marketing
eBooks can generate huge income for you when exposed to a bigger audience. This can be achieved very well with affiliate programs. Here’s how!
If you've been delving into affiliate marketing at all, you're no doubt aware of the potential for eBooks, first of all as affiliate products. It's the affiliates who would market your eBook, after all, passing the word about the product to their website visitors, e-zine subscribers, and clients, in hopes of earning a commission from a sale.
Then, reseller licensing of the eBook product, or allowing those who buy the books to give them away, adds another layer to the promotion. In either case, there's now even more incentive for the book to be pushed along.
The possibility of re-branding the eBook (that is, customizing certain portions of it, or changing the affiliate link coding so that the current host of the download can gain from the affiliate commissions) also adds pass-along momentum. Re-branding might be offered for a low cost or even for a free eBook.
Let me explain the concept of re-branding further. If you've created a useful eBook which also promotes your products or services and where affiliates can change the links in your book to point to their affiliate links, you can let your affiliates give this book away to their visitors and subscribers, so that they are giving their visitors something useful and they have the chance of selling your other eBooks and products to them as well.
A merchant's affiliates, or an affiliate's sub-affiliates, could use their own links instead of the author's. If there's another goal that overrides the affiliate commission, or perhaps if only some of the affiliate links will be re-brandable, or the downloader who re-brands a link will have to purchase the product first in order to use or evaluate it, then the loss of immediate affiliate commissions can be amply made up for by the spread of the book.
Your eBooks might be used by affiliate merchants to promote their offerings. An e-book can be a report, a catalog, a sales presentation, a detailed list of features, and so much more – the possibilities are endless. It could be whatever that is helpful to your visitor and your customer. It can contain graphics, hyperlinks and, with some compilers, even animated graphics and multimedia stuff.
You might create eBooks around a subject that pertains to the your affiliate program/s. Your affiliates can then create "adjunct" e-books around your program offerings. For instance, a businessperson whose core is consulting of some kind might produce a book that elucidates the importance of his service in achieving clients' greater success. Another could write a book on how to use her product to its fullest advantage. Or an in- depth discussion of an interesting issue could lead into a mention of the product or service "in the background".
Either an affiliate or a merchant can use downloadable eBooks to enhance the attractiveness of his/her website or e-zine, of course, as an incentive, or to engender a feeling of trust in his/her visitors/readers, by providing good information and advice therein.
Using eBooks as a source of affiliate marketing can only increase traffic and in turn profits for your website. The strategies mentioned above can successfully double your business through referrals.
You can either choose to promote your eBooks by joining other affiliate programs, or you could create your own affiliate program and have your affiliates market your eBook.
Creating your own affiliate program is not at all difficult. There are many tools available that allow you to set up your own program. The key is to maintain your program and get a higher number of affiliates to promote your eBook. In this guide we take a look at how exactly one can achieve this.
1.3 Creating a successful affiliate program – Guaranteeing higher income through your affiliate program
The internet is full of affiliate programs promising you anything from a simple regular income to millionaire status! How do you create your own successful affiliate program? If you're going to put a lot of time, effort and probably money into creating your affiliate program you've got to be sure that it can guarantee a high income otherwise it'll all be wasted. This section tells you what features you should incorporate into your affiliate program.
The product must be desirable
Obviously, if you want to make any money from an affiliate program you have to sell the product to a lot of people. Therefore the product, more specifically eBook, you are trying to sell has to be desirable. People must want it! If the product is good then it will almost sell itself, all you have to do is present it to the consumer. A bad product won't sell no matter how hard you push it.
The website must have an online presence
Make sure the your affiliate program has a presence online. People wouldn’t want to sign
up to untrustworthy programs.
There's nothing more frustrating for your customers than investing a lot of time and money in promoting a program only to find that your company has gone to the wall and you have to start all over again. Of course there are good new businesses with sustainable programs, but as a rule it's safer to put across a message to your customers that you know what you are doing.
Create a multi-tier program
Your customers would want to make as much income as possible from fewer products. One strategy that has been extremely successful in attracting a large number of visitors is by offering them multi-tier affiliate programs.
You're probably familiar with a simple single-tier affiliate program and how it works. Your customers get paid a percentage for every product that they sell. A multi-tier program works in the same way but they also get paid a percentage for sales made by other people that they recruit to the affiliate program. This means that if they want they can simply concentrate on recruiting new affiliates to the program and simply earn from the sales that they make.
The benefits of a multi-tier (3-tier) program for your customers are illustrated below:
Their own earnings = $50
Level one (5 referrals) = $20 x 5 = $100 (Assuming $20 commission for each referral)
Level two (25 referrals) = $10 x 25 = $250 (Assuming $10 commission for each referral)
Total earnings $450. Earning effort $50
Thus, reward both the affiliate responsible for bringing visitors to your website as well as the other person who had originally referred this affiliate. Let me illustrate this strategy further. Let us say John referred Max to your website and your affiliate program. Max liked your affiliate program and joined it and eventually bought your product or service offered on your website. In this case, John would get a percentage of the profit. Now let’s say, Max referred your website to a friend of his – Harry. Harry visits your website – likes your product – and buys it.
A single tier incentive program would reward Max by giving him a percentage of the profit generated. A two tier incentive program would offer Max a percentage of the profit as well as John a percentage of the profit because John referred Max in the first place. This strategy is expansive but very fruitful.
The above point can be explained in simple terms as “Make it as easy and as natural for affiliates to promote your product or service as possible, by letting your affiliates benefit those whom they refer”. This will encourage your affiliates to convince more people to join your affiliate program.
Offer a higher number of incentives
The most important aspect of any affiliate program is the incentive. You should offer better incentives than your competitor sites. Money is the biggest and best form of incentive you could offer your customers. Offering a percentage of your sales revenue resulting out of each successful hit can be a great incentive.
Apart from the normal incentives offer something unique such as cash awards and bonuses for three customers who are responsible for bringing in the highest traffic or highest business to your website. This would provide greater motivation for prospective customers to not only join your affiliate program but also refer your website to more people.
You need real-time online stats
If you're serious about an affiliate program and you're going to put a lot of time and effort into attracting more affiliates then you need to provide your customers with real-time online stats. If they have to wait a month for their stats to come by email then they are more than likely going to lose interest in the program.
There are many different affiliate software packages from which you can choose. Furthermore, you can either choose to manage the software yourself or pay a company such as Clickbank or Clicktrade to manage your affiliate software for you. You software package for tracking all kinds of statistics for not only your affiliates but for you as well should be comprehensive. It should have the ability to support a huge affiliate database.
Create an affiliate program which provides real-time, instantly updated stats that your affiliates can access online at any time. It's amazing the morale boost they get when they see how the sales (and their commissions) are stacking up. It will give them the determination to promote the program further.
Have a reasonably priced eBook
It's a popular misconception with affiliate programs that the more expensive the product is the greater your monthly income will be. Sure, you'll be making a greater amount from each affiliate but you'll find that your affiliates would be making only a few sales a month. Not exactly the regular income you were after is it?
Have an eBook with a lower price. Your affiliates won't make as much from each sale but you will find that they make sales more regularly and will generate a much steadier income from it for themselves as well as you. You will also build up a greater number of customers who can then be approached for those all-important follow-up sales.
Provide affiliates with an opportunity to earn residual incomes
Most affiliate programs are structured in such a way to benefit the merchants more than the affiliates. An affiliate will only earn commissions on sales transacted by people who follow his link to the merchant's site. He will not earn any commissions if the same person goes to the merchant's site directly on subsequent purchases. This is unfair to the affiliates who may have spent considerable time and money to drive visitors to the merchant's site.
To maintain a large affiliate base and earn higher income, you should create programs that offer affiliates an opportunity to earn residual incomes from the same customers. In other words, they will earn commissions on the monthly subscription fees for as long as the person they referred remains a customer with the merchant.
Do you pull your weight?
Affiliates always look for an affiliate program where owner puts as much effort into your success as they do. No one would like to go for a program where the owner just sits back and lets affiliates do all the work.
The least you can do is provide your affiliates with quality text links and banners for them to use to promote your program. A selection of promotional emails and sales letters for affiliates to use is also nice.
You should also operate a follow-up email system to convince people to buy and also use a 'back-end' system to sell further products to existing customers. Such a system would immensely help your affiliates in promoting your product.
At the end of the day, the more successful they are the more successful you are so you should make every effort to help your affiliates.
Is your program 'foreigner friendly'?
At some point in time you may target affiliates from other countries. Many affiliate programs do not accept people from other countries. However, with a little more investment you can gain access to a huge base of affiliates from different countries. If you decide to make your program foreigner friendly, you need to set up payment systems so that you could pay your affiliates in their currency.
There have been cases where foreign affiliates received payment in US dollars and it took them weeks to get it converted. This would only frustrate affiliates. To eliminate such problems have a reliable payout system for your overseas affiliates. An online payment system like PayPal is always good as your affiliates get their money immediately and are then free to do what they wish with it.
Is your program reliable?
Imagine the scenario, you spend some money for a big promotional push, attract a huge number of affiliates, then just as your blitz is about to start the program server falls over for 48 hours and your money is wasted. You eventually loose your affiliates and your credibility. Ensure you have back up systems in place. Have a reliable host server. You should always make certain that you do not have any technical difficulties.
The program should have a clear pay structure
Any legitimate affiliate program should spell out exactly what affiliates will receive for their effort. This seems basic enough, yet there are many programs that present very nebulous pay rates. Unless you spell out exactly what your affiliates will receive for their efforts, you may not be able to attract them.
Offer marketing support
Amazingly, many affiliate programs have little or no marketing support. This is counterintuitive considering it is in the merchant's interest to help the affiliate succeed. Fortunately, some programs do offer marketing support. Create a program that gives affiliates the most tools to succeed. Your success lies in your affiliates’ success.
Have community support
Again, it is in your interest to foster support for your affiliates, yet many affiliate programs offer no community support. Community bulletin boards tend to foster information exchange between affiliates and usually offer news and expert advice. Following these guidelines will dramatically improve the quality of your affiliate program. The more favorably a program stacks up against the criterion above, the more chances for success you have.
Have a reliable support area
You should have tested and proven endorsements, testimonials, ezine ads, and other unique tools and techniques to help motivate your affiliates. You must also make yourself available, either through email or the phone, to help your affiliates implement these tools and to answer any questions they may have.
Test your campaigns
You may have employed a number of marketing strategies for your affiliate program. However, these strategies would mean nothing unless they are effective. It is crucial that you test each and every strategy for effectiveness. You should know which banner ad is fetching you the highest number of affiliates, and which is useless. The key is to eliminate all campaigns that do not justify the investment you put into them.
Testing will allow you to differentiate the effective campaigns from the not so effective ones.
Update content of your eBook regularly
Keep updating the content of your affiliate program. Make sure that you update the topics and content of the eBook constantly. The content should always be informative and unique.
1.4 Getting affiliates to sell your product
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 a sites that sell products or services that compliment your offerings. If you sell "gardening tools", a site that sells books on "gardening tips" would be a perfect affiliate. If you sell software, try looking for sites that sell computers or computer parts. Finding sites that already attract your target market, and can benefit from recommending your product or service to their visitors, is the goal.
• 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.
1.5 Affiliate Management Services
Managing your own Affiliate program may take up a lot of effort and time on your part. Besides, wouldn’t you want to focus your energy on doing something more productive such as marketing your eBooks? If this is the case, Affiliate Management Services would surely be a good investment. For a reasonable cost, such services handle all the details of managing affiliate programs such as assigning affiliate codes, who earned what, sending out letters to new affiliates and more.
Given here is a list of some popular affiliate management services
• Assoctrac – www.assoctrac.com
• The Affiliate Program – www.theaffilliateprogram.com
• YOAP – www.palis.com/yoap
• ROI Bot - www.roibot.com
• Affiliate Shop – www.affiliateshop.com
• Shop Cart – www.shopcart.com
• Click X Change – www.clickxchange.com
• Click Trade – www.clicktrade.com
• Commission Junction – www.commissionjunction.com
• Safe Audit – www.safe-audit.com
• Affiliate Zone – www.affiliatezone.com
• The Commish – www.solutionscripts.com
1.6 Promoting your eBook by joining other affiliate programs
You could also promote your eBooks through other affiliate programs. However, when you join other affiliate programs you need to promote their own products as well. The good news is that you obviously get to earn commission for every sale you make. Thus, promoting other programs have a two-fold benefit – you get to promote your own eBooks, and you get to earn additional income for your website by promoting other products on your website.
The key is to select the right affiliate program. Primarily you would like to select and promote an affiliate program that offers products that are similar to your eBooks. These could be other eBooks with similar subjects as well as other products that may compliment your eBook. Choosing the latter would be far more beneficial to you. For instance, if your eBook is about gardening, you could promote a program that offers various gardening tools, plant seeds, and so on and so forth. If your book is about dating, you could join a program that offers flowers, or even something like tickets to romantic cruises.
Apart from these there are various other factors that you need to consider before choosing an affiliate program. After all you would like to make money from promoting other products.
Here are a few tips:
• Firstly, can you add your own eBook to the product list so that other affiliates can promote your eBook. Without this option, the affiliate program would be useless to you, unless the purpose of promoting the program is only to earn additional income.
• What commission would you have to offer other affiliates/merchant account for each sale of your eBook?
• What commission would you get for promoting other products? Don’t accept less than 25% commission. You can find affiliate programs with great payment structures and high percentages of the purchase price in just about every field.
• Look for comprehensive statistics pages that list the number of click-throughs, sales and earnings so you can see how you’re doing. The information should be broken down by month.
• Find out how often you will be paid and make sure that the payment schedule meets your expectations. Some programs pay monthly, others quarterly; which is best for you?
• Look for examples of marketing methods that successful affiliates are using to get the best results.
• Make sure that top level support is given. If they can’t answer your questions promptly and intelligently, you don’t want to work with them.
• Think about the future. This takes some serious contemplation, sometimes with no result. But there can be great dividends for being first, possibly pioneering a niche. Study what differences do you see from six months or a year ago? What trends do you see?
• Does the affiliate program offer you a free way to join without buying the product or service?
• Contact other affiliates already in the program to see if they have had any problems.
• Can they notify you by e-mail when a sale is made?
• Do they offer backend products so you can get repeat sales from the same person?
• How often will you receive a commission check?
• Can you get around-the-clock help online or offline?
• Do you get a large percentage of each sale as commission?
• Do they provide you with proven sales material? (links, banners, classified ads, sales letters etc)
• Will they give you the leeway to create promotional ads?
• Do they offer you access to an online sales stats page?
• Do they use a reputable system to track your sales?
• Does the affiliate program pay commission for sales of people who sign up under you?
• Can they offer customers a lot of different ordering options, so in return you won't lose sales?
• Will they keep in contact with you on a regular basis by e-mail?
1.7 Avoidable mistakes
• Many affiliate marketers make a huge mistake of posting their ads on forums. Forums can be used to promote your affiliate programs and your website but in a proper manner. Posting banners is very similar to spamming and may easily upset forum administrators.
• Always do your research before promoting your affiliate program to a potential customer. Do not offer affiliate programs to visitors who are not at all interested in the products associated with the program. This is a futile endeavor.
• If you promote affiliate programs offered by other merchants, ensure that you develop your own advertising copy. Many websites commit a common mistake of using the same advertising copy as used by the merchant themselves.
• Avoid Copyright infringement in all cases. Always use original content or ask permission to use graphic images or text found on other websites.
• Do not submit your programs to free websites. These may be free but your programs would hardly ever be noticed, especially by Search Engines. Moreover, your own ranking would get lowered if you submit your affiliate programs to such websites.
• Avoid using caps on your web page or email ad. Using caps is symbolic to shouting, which never goes well with potential customers. A few words may be written in capital text to give them additional emphasis. However, such practice should be limited.
• Always respond to all queries sent by visitors as soon as possible. A slight delay in your response could easily result in loss of a potential client.
• Do not use pop-up ads along with your webpage. Most surfers are likely to close their browser if they come across pop-ups.
• Do not host your website on a free server or use free email accounts. This gives a negative impression to visitors. Using free hosts and email accounts looks cheesy and loses sales.
• Many websites do not have an opt-in list. Create an opt-in and opt-out list for your visitors. Without these, there is no way of tracking potential customers. Visitors should be allowed to opt-in at any time as well as opt-out at any time.
• Most sites have a poor tracking mechanism. It is essential that you track all business activities. Accurate record keeping is crucial. There are many software tools, discussed earlier in this chapter, than can automate your record keeping process with minimal error.
• A 'mall' site is best used as a central hub to send visitors to your other domains. As a main or only site, unfocused mall sites don't get traffic from the engines, and they don't convert well to sales. Highly focused theme sites attract traffic and sales.
• Offline advertising may not be effective. A lot of money and effort should not be wasted on offline advertising. Most people rarely check websites that are advertised in local magazines or newspapers.
• Avoid focus on animated banner ads. These simply use up bandwidth, thus making web pages load slower.
• While advertising do not degrade other competitors. It is recommended that you highlight your products’ uniqueness and superiority but never mortify other products.
• Banners or text links that expire are guaranteed to eventually send your visitor to a broken link or show a broken graphic on your page. Time sensitive advertising is best used only in email advertising campaigns.
• Never put affiliate links on your homepage. This is similar to asking your visitors to leave immediately. Give them a chance to browse, sign up for your newsletter and decide that they'd like to come back to your place before introducing them to your affiliates.
• Technology changes with amazing speed. To keep up with this rapidly evolving industry, you must invest time and money in research. The investment is a tax write-off, and will pay you back many times over in additional revenue.
• Finally, persist with your plan. It might take you time to get established even if you have a solid marketing plan. Persistence is the single most important factor in determining success online or off.
1.8 Getting affiliate directories and networks to promote your eBook
Affiliate Networks act as brokers or mediators between affiliate merchants and affiliates. One of the major benefits of affiliate networks is that affiliates have access to a variety of affiliate programs at a single source. These can be good places to either submit your eBook for promotion (if possible), or join such affiliate networks and promote your eBooks and other products.
Given below is a list of popular affiliate networks:
• Affiliate Fuel
• Affiliate Traders
• BeFree (Reporting.net)
• ClickBank
• ClickxChange
• clixGalore
• Commission Junction (CJ)
• Commission Soup
• DarkBlue
• FineClicks.com
• LeadCrunch
• Linkshare
• LeadHound
• Quinstreet
• ReferBack
• ShareaSale
• WebSponsors
Similarly, affiliate directories are websites that list various affiliate programs. The programs are listed by category of product. Mostly, affiliate directories would list programs that are not associated with any affiliate network. These sites or directories may be a good source for promoting your eBooks. You should find directories which advertise similar affiliate programs and approach them to promote your own eBook as most of these are generally high traffic sites. A list of directories is given below:
• Affiliate-Options.com
• ClickQuick.com
• Refer-It.com
• Associate Programs.com
• Affiliates Directory
• Cashpile.com
• 2-Tier Affiliate Program Directory
• Adbility
BestCommissions - Lifetime & Residual affiliate programs
• Web Promotion Depot
• WSponsor.com
• 10-Best-Affiliate-Programs.com
• PetAffiliatePrograms.com
• Affiliates4u.co.uk
• Gr1innovations.com
• Access-Affiliate-Programs
• Affiliate-Programs-Guide
• Affiliate–Programs–Directory.com
• Brisney
• Affiliate-Life
• Affiliate-Programs.org
• AffiliateAdvisor.com
• AffiliateBroadcast.com
• Webmaster–Programs.com
• Affiliate Marketing Resource Center
• AffiliateMatch
• AffiliateFind
• ProfitsToGo.com
• AssociateCash
• AssociateSearch.com
• Click2Lead.com
• ClickAffiliate
• ClickQuick.com
• ClicksLink.com
• CreativeOpportunity.com
• IncomeMax.com
• Kresch Resources
• MakeMoneyNow.com
• MasterClick.8m.com
• MoneyMakingIndex
• OnlineBusiness.com
• PwdNet.co.uk
• ReferralIncome.com
• ReferralMadness.com
• ReveNews.com
• SponsorDirectory.com
• StartEarning.com
• WebAffiliatePrograms.com
• AffiliateOptions
• Webmaster–Opportunities–Affiliate–Programs–Make–Money.com
• Smokesoft.net
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