We're paying $100 commissions--but now what?

[edthomas]

This is a strange problem, and I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on it. After a lot of internal haggling, my company decided to offer an almost 10% commission on all affiliate sales --- $100 per sale. We absolutely love the idea of making some great affiliate marketers rich, but the problem we're having is getting the word out about our program --- we've had few signups in the first couple weeks of our program.

We've listed in all the major directories we've heard about, and the program is linked prominently from our root page. I'd hate to have to pay a third party to bring us affiliates, since that would just take away money from the people that deserve it the most---our affiliates. What have been the best strategies that others have used to get traction with their affiliate programs?

Ed Thomas
General Manager, Harken Home LLC
(http://www.harkenhome.com)

[Linda Buquet]

Hi Ed,

I'm one of those "3rd party recruiters" so I can give you some tips.

Pay $50 to announce your program over at AbestWeb.com
that's where some of the top affiliates are. Be sure to put $100 commish in the subject line to get their attention.

Most people do email recruiting - I don't due to spam concerns. But the way most companies do it is to seek out affiliates in the search engines who market a competitive or complimentary product to yours. Then send them a short, personalized email saying you are interested in exploring a rev share opportunity with them. Use the word partner - not affiliate in emails. Many SPAM filters block emails with the word affiliate, money, free and many other words, so be careful. Also be prepared to get SPAM complaints regardless of how friendly and inviting your email is.

[Karen Hudgins]

Dear Ed,
Here is my two cents:

1. List with every affiliate directory that you can think of.

2. Participate on the affiliate forums such as:
ABestWeb.com
AffiliateBoards.com
SeoChat.com

3. Get in touch with other affiliate program managers and set up cross promotion deals.

4. Reach out to webmasters who sites rank very well for terms related to your site. As Linda indicated, email is not always the best way to approach these people. Be direct... Mail them informational packages and call. Remember you're recruiting so your job is a sales job.. Think like a salesman selling your program

5. Who are your competitors? Who links to them? Find these guys and go after them.

6. Run a two-tier program and pay your affiliates for each new affiliate they refer to your program or a percentage of any sales their referred affiliates bring on board.

7. Pay Per Click- Be careful, it can get expensive. However, if you run campaigns for less popular keywords, it can be cost effective and give you a very good ROI.

8.Look into programs such as ABestWeb.com and CashPile who will send a promotional email to their members.

9. Start your own private forum within a Forum such as AffiliateBoards.com and ABestWeb.com.

10. 3rd Party Recruiters- We worked with Linda in the past and had a great experience. I"m not sure that you would need that indefinitely, but if you're looking for a boost, that's a good way to go.

11. Network- Attending conferences and seminars is a great way to get your name out there and actually meet people.

12. Lastly, run the best darn program that you can. You reputation will carry you further than you think. Do good by your affiliates and they'll do good by you.

[edthomas]

Wow, that's great advice---thanks to you both. It sounds like marketing our affiliate program is much the same process (with all the same issues and difficulties) of marketing our site and service itself.

I'm curious about running a two-tier affiliate network though. How are these typically structured, and what are common payout levels? what would be an attractive/competitive structure that would get us a lot of new affiliate referals? Thanks!

[ryan4jeep]

That is good advice... Thanks guys! I will recomend these solutions to my network of affiliate marketers.

[Linda Buquet]

Ed,

I'm not a big fan of 2 tier programs although we offer them many times, because some affiliates like it that way. Typically 2nd tier is very small - maybe 5-10% if your 1st tier is around 30%. Just rough numbers. Really depends on your avg sale, avg commish and profit margins.

[damarzee]

I just signed up and ended up sending an e-mail with comments about the program and i would like to share that here as well.


******************************************
COPY OF E-MAIL
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Just a few FYI's about your affiliate program.

I signed up since I have a Home and Garden Resource site. I read your terms of use and they state that I can only use the affiliate linking information you provide, but all you provide is a text link. That's hardly adequate.

Having created the link and followed it, the page you arrive at is very unexplained.


https://host.apollohosting.com/harke...liate=damarzee

There is no indication of where you are or even that you have arrived where you belong. Lack of direction and clarity is nearly suicidal on the internet.

Also, the contact information link at the bottom of the Basket Contents column takes you to a 404 error (page not found).

Saying that you'll give $100 for a sale is fine, but you also have to spend some time to make this worth anybody else's effort. At this point in time the setup screams of get-rich-quick on your part, like you want to do as little as possible and spend as little as possible while others work to drive people in. The setup as it stands would require appreciable effort on our part to even hope that enough people would stick around to make a sale.

I'll put one link in place within my Link pages, but I can't send people from my Home Page to the setup you currently have in place.

You can contact us if and when you enhance your program.

David Nelmes
Designing Online, Inc.

http://www.designingonline.com
http://www.dreamsalivemagazine.com
http://www.emporiummall.com

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END COPY OF E-MAIL
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[patrox]

Hi

We offer 30% on our products, that's $1200 commission for our most expensive product.
I have to say that it really motivated the affiliates :)

Patrice.
http://www.phelios.com
http://www.phelios.net

[dannyg]

Hi Ed,

We have lots of experience in this field and I would offer the following simple but effective advice.

Affiliate programs are a good way of generting business both new and repeat but they need proper planing. Traditionally they are 1 or 2 levels deep but we have found that this simply isn't enough. Ideally, you need at least 8 or 10 levels or the numbers just don't work for either the merchant or affiliate.

Total automation is essential. Ensure that your program handles every aspect from, sign-ups to code and link generation to payment. Support of the PayPal Mass Pay feature is a must.

Offer good back up and support. keep in regular contact and make your affiliate feel important.

Pay generous commissions. With a 8 or 10 level referral scheme you should ideally give away 50% of your purchase price. Ensure that you can make a healthy profit on the other 50%.

Promote your scheme to everyone. Google AdWords is a good place to start. The right kind of program with good commissions will have people joining in no time.

I hope this helps.

Regards,

Danny Grant.
Marketing Advisor.

[OutsourcingDoug]

WOW, What a great thread!

Somewhere out there is a way for me to find out the best way to "own my own affiliate program" which I can promote my products.

I have 10-20 proven products that I would like to "load" in to my affiliate program which I host and administer for others to promote.

What kind of programmer would even write my program?
Does an off the shelf program exist? Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Doug

[acornwebworks]

I thought 'wow, maybe I'll sign up!' until I read damarzee's comments. If they were correct (and I had no reason to doubt them), he brought up numerous reasons to be hesitant. I clicked on the link he provided and, yup, his assessment was 100% correct.

Not only that, but as I went through your website, I was struck by just how careless it seemed. It's like whoever maintains your website only checks to see what it looks like on his/her computer and not how it appears to the rest of the world.

It's mostly just little stuff, but there's a lot of it. For example...

The font swaps back and forth between Verdana and Times New Roman with no meaning to the changes. (Heck, just look at the top navigation on the home page and the collections page.) I think the webmaster is assuming that your CSS is taking care of everything, but it's not.

The Privacy page indiscriminately roams between indents at the beginning of paragraphs or not, before headings or not, and there are no breaks between paragraphs.

The bottom navigation is not aligned, and the alignment is different on just about every page. Some pages include an affiliate link, others don't, but the affiliate link is not underlined as in the privacy statement link right next to it (or where it would be).

I wouldn't think wanting to sign up affiliates and then restricting them a text link to a really strange page on your somewhat careless website is going to have them beating down your door.

Hopefully the powers-that-be will understand that there's more to having an affiliate program than trying to sign people up.

Good luck! I've always liked Harken Home's plans.

Best regards,
Kendall

[zeiyon]

Hey this page is quite a bit I was looking for, I had knocked the doors of many affiliate third party vendrs, they all had their doors shut, dont really know for what reason. May be I am new to this field and its is quite usual.

I had hooked up on web hosting, ur informations were very useful. If u have any suggestions specific for web hosting it will be of great help.

[dannyg]

For free and low cost programes, try:

http://www.hotscripts.com/PHP/Script...ams/index.html

[edthomas]

Wow, first off, thanks everyone for all of the great advice, this has been incredibly useful.

When I got damarzee's email after this initial thread got started, I was up the entire night addressing his concerns and getting things back in proper shape. His thoughts and some other rough edges that we caught have now been fixed, and I'm glad he posted his thoughts publically, since I'm sure it'll help get other merchants up to speed on what affiliates are looking for.

One of the walls that we've hit is the back-end software that we're using --- Miva Merchant v.4.2. We went with it initially since it was a cost-effective way to meet the bulk of our needs (order processing, checkout, customer tracking, affiliate tracking, etc), but we're finding that a lot of the added functionality that would be preferable (customizable links, for instance) just isn't there.

Can anyone recommend a 3rd party module that works well with Miva for an affiliate program?


Thanks again for all of your help and advice---just drop me an email if you have any additional feedback. We're at a couple dozen affiliates now and growing every day! BEst --Ed

[Linda Buquet]

Hi Ed,

Glad the advice you got from the forum has been helpful.

Any GOOD 3rd party affiliate tracking software will work with any cart. DirectTrack and MyAp are considered the top 2. If they are too pricey there are some other much lower cost options that are good on my site.

Dedicated affiliate software will always have better options included for affiliates than an add-on module like Miva. Affiliates also want to know you have a tried and trusted solution and if you get one of the top 2 above chances are they will be familiar with it so it will be easier for them to use.

[voasi]

Hi Ed,

If you haven't already, submit your affiliate program to: http://www.associateprograms.com . That site is one of the biggest directories and best for affiliate programs.

After that, I would advertise your program to real estate directories and real estate agents. Try to target that niche of people and sites. Go and talk on several real estate forums and offer your program there as well.

On the design, I would really try to cosmetically beef up the site. Make your site sell, as famous affiliate industry leader Ken Evoy would say. Affiliates are going to be bringing traffic to your site and are wanting to see conversions. Have good copy on all your pages that really pre-sells your product.