Tired of the same old tips and tricks about web affiliate marketing programs? “Communicate with them, treat them with respect†yada-yada. What about what really works? I pulled together a group of my most experienced, thought-leading colleagues to find out what’s moving the needle in affiliate marketing today. The below innovations are what I discovered. I’m happy to share these best practices. Yes, they can be quickly and easily applied—helping you manage your affiliates and extract maximum sales efficiency. Stay tuned to Electronic Retailer’s blog for candid interviews with these experts where they’ll “go deep†to reveal their secrets to success.
1. Allow affiliates to access a knowledge-driven feedback loop to improve their ROI and, as a result, increase yours.
a. Let affiliates “connect the ROI dots†between their investments (media spending) and your ultimate success (sales or new customers).
b. Provide select, trusted affiliates with limited, yet unfettered, access to your internal metrics and customer behavior data.
2. Strengthen relationships with superstar affiliates and open doors for potential superstars by actively, yet cautiously, investing hard and soft dollars in them.
a. Invest in affiliates: Underwrite affordable, educational opportunities and conferences for them. Sponsoring affiliates is very popular in the European realm.
b. Sponsor low-cost, virtual innovation forums and webinars that offer training opportunities for top affiliates.
c. Provide limited access to web metrics (i.e., Google Analytics, Omniture) and optimization tools that are already at your disposal, yet possess a high perceived (and applied!) value among affiliates.
d. Invest in affiliates: Subsidize the media buying of select, high-value affiliates by providing matching contributions to their expenditures or allowing access to your media buying prowess.
3. Develop and communicate a clear, well-reasoned search marketing policy to affiliates.
a. Audit your affiliate program for confluence with paid (PPC) search advertising efforts.
b. Understand value driven by affiliates across various categories based on audit results that demonstrate “triggers†of sales transactions.
c. Create business rules that negate and approve affiliate commissions based on logical rules that are shared openly and pro-actively with affiliates.
d. Understand where your search engine optimization “sweet spot†is by identifying where you want to spend time, energy (money). Assign “long tail†search terms/keywords (those able to generate less referral volume) to affiliates for their monetization efforts.
4. Experiment with social media affiliates.
a. Scale your most precious resource, time: Use new tools, such as Syntryx, to rapidly prospect for qualified affiliates.
b. Provide affiliates with access to helpful, innovative Web 2.0 linking technologies like Linkshare’s FlexLinks or Amazon’s various tools ranging from “SiteStripe†to widgets.
c. Give affiliates access to product data, coupons and other content via flexible, RSS-enabled technologies.
5. Consider creative, new approaches to paying and bonusing affiliates based on performance.
a. Throttle up payouts among performers who drive volume at a reasonable cost, considering channel confluence issues, etc.
b. Throttle down payouts among under-performers who’ve been given a fair chance, but are not performing on a quarterly basis.
Stay tuned for more actionable tips and interviews with experts in a variety of performance-focused web marketing strategies.
Jeff Molander is a leading Web marketing expert, author and speaker. He is CEO of Molander & Associates Inc.
Tags: affiliate, affiliate marketing, amazon, blog, drtv, Electronic Retailer, flexlinks, jeff molander, molander & associates, syntryx, web marketing
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How could we verify the effectiveness of such a possibility?
I wish all affiliate program managers thought like you. I would be blown away if my affiliate program spent some efforts in providing training, a bonus wouldn’t hurt either.
Kudos, Jeff!
As a 10 year IM (affiliate marketing primarily) veteran, it is my job to stay on top of things, and frankly I was getting a little tired of the self-declared experts spitting out the same old drivel about how to be successful in affiliate marketing.
Your post is refreshing, relevant, and has clear easy to implment steps.
Ron
Hi,
Lots of great information here.
i am just starting out with affiliate marketing. i have signed up with Clickbank and Amazon. i am still reading lots of stuffs on the net about how to be successful on affiliate marketing.
It is very refreshing to hear something this different as an approach to affiliate marketing. Thanks for the insights and the new ideas! I would think some split testing between standard methods and the ones you discuss would give a good comparison of the results.
Affiliate Marketing pays much higher than adsense or adbrite. i signed up with Amazon affiliate program and also on some health stores.
One of the best ways to learn how to make lots of money online is to interact with like-minded individuals who are equally dedicated to making money on the internet. Nobody knows every single trick in the book and making sure your efforts are profitable in the long run requires some knowledge of proven strategies or methods for optimum results.
i am interested in earning money through Affiliate Marketing and i just joined amazon affiliate programs, clickbank and others. they say i need lots of US and UK traffic to earn decently on Affiliate marketing.
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I’m very grateful to the author for having written an article containing precise and useful information on Affiliate Marketing. I’m also fully sure the secrets described in the article will really help lots of people to achieve success. So thank you, it will help me write my custom term papers.
i signed up with the Amazon Omakaze affiliate program. i am not yet earning from this affiliate program because my blog is still very new.`;,
I use both Adsense and Adbrite and i can say that adbrite is also a good source of income but not as good as adsense.~’.
i have just signed up with the amazon affiliate program and i am still not earning a good deal of cash from them.“;
Amazon affiliate program seems to be the best among affiliate marketing programs out there.;-:
Amazon Affiliate program pays much better than other affiliate programs out there.,*’
Adbrite is the ppc program that is second to adsense, i like adbrite.:`