The Truth About Affiliate Marketing

The Truth About Affiliate Marketing
Do you have what it takes to be a successful Affiliate Marketer?
Is your company ready to Launch an Affiliate Program?
What are the key elements to be successful?
Copyright 2011 - Betty R. Hakes - bettyhakes.com

Affiliate
Affiliate Program
A person or company who markets Merchants products
Publisher
Content Provider
A Merchant (service or product provider) who offers compensation to affiliate marketers to promote their products
Definitions

What is Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is when an affiliate aka: publisher/content provider (i.e. GourmetBetty.com) is paid when a lead or sale happens at the advertisers, aka: merchant, website (i.e. LaTienda.com) when the end user comes to the merchant’s site through an affiliate link (URL or image).

Affiliate Myth’s BUSTED
Affiliate marketing is NOT Multi-level marketing
Commission tiers are only on a some programs and not the same as MLM
Affiliate marketing isn’t going to make your rich overnight
You don’t have to invest thousands of dollars to be successful – in fact, you may burn through thousands IF you decide to invest heavily from the start
Don’t worry about not having niche interest
It is FREE to join an Affiliate program

How do you become an Affiliate Marketer?Publisher/Content Provider/Affiliate
Content Provider who owns/manages a website
Find products to promote
Promote the product on your site to the best of your ability
create landing pages, write about it, etc
Use Social Media to support, not as a sole medium to sell products
Email Marketer
Same process as above but you would insert text links into your emails.
Must have a large niche market you are emailing
Pay Per Call Affiliate (Ringrevenue)
Driving audience to call merchant
Mobile Affiliate
Need to know technology and industry
Couponers & Datafeed driven sites

Easy Process to Promote Products
Sign up &
Grab Link
Insert onto
your website

Key to being successful at Affiliate Marketing
Ability to reach a large audience
Focus on products that will convert to your niche audience
Ability to launch innovative ideas that add value for the end-user
Explore other ways to market products (pay per call, search, etc.)
Leverage your personal brand
Create Landing Pages that are optimized in SEO for each product you promote
Use Paid Search & make sure that you are not paying over your profits AND make sure to learn the advertisers paid search restrictions

Key to being successful at Affiliate Marketing(continued)
Create a relationship with Affiliate Program Managers
Negotiate higher payouts when you start showing results
Analyze products
merchants’ landing pages
EPC* (average earnings per one hundred clicks)
Conversion Ratio*
Reversal Rate*
Average Order*
Average Commission*
* http://www.amnavigator.com/blog/2010/10/22/5-kpis-for-affiliates-to-analyze-while-evaluating-programs/

I want to become and Affiliate Marketer! Now What?
What is my niche?
Determine how you are you going to reach the target market
Find Products to promote
Determine how you are going to promote the product
Dedicate time to this and be patient.
Monitor results and TEST, TEST, TEST

How Does Affiliate Marketing Workbetween the affiliate and advertiser?
Affiliate/Publisher
Merchant/Advertiser
Affiliate Platform
Affiliate Networks:
Keep track of all transactions
Pay Affiliates
Warehouse all creatives & Provides tracking links

How do I launch an Affiliate Programto sell my products or services?
Competitive research
Find out what your competitors are doing and how much they are offering affiliates
Also take a look at how successful your competitors are - EPC
Consider hiring an OPM
(Outsourced Program Manager)

Launching an Affiliate ProgramNext Steps
After you decide the Affiliate Payout & Affiliate Network
Decide if you are going to hire an OPM or assign someone internally to launch program
Sign up with affiliate platform and apply to launch program
Make sure your website & landing pages are up and running **
Have someone that knows how to set up the technical implementation (fairly easy)
Create Banners
Create TOS (Terms of Service) and Program Terms
Deposit funds

STOP!Before moving forward ….
IS YOUR WEBSITE CONVERTING?
IF NOT, FIX THAT FIRST
MAKE SURE YOUR LANDING PAGE IS OPTMIZED FOR YOUR TARGET MARKET
MAKE SURE YOUR SHOPPING CART AND FLOW IS OPTIMIZED

Launching an Affiliate ProgramNext Steps
Set up your Affiliate Recruiting Strategies
How are you going to attract the right affiliates?
Affiliate networks may help
Program Manager needs to manage all those details
What to look for in an OPM
Someone who has experience in running programs, ask for references
A STRONG Sales person
Technical know-how to find high performing websites and their owners

Launching an Affiliate ProgramCosts
Program Manager:
OPM may vary, approx $2 – 5K/mo + commissions on payout
For example: affiliates payout was $2,000, and the OPM % is 3.5% you pay OPM: $70
Internal employee: $??
Affiliate Network
ShareASale: $550 start up fee
25% of affiliate payout monthly (low monthly minimum)
Commission Junctions: $3000+ start up fee
30% affiliate payout monthly. (Monthly minimum)
Make sure you have deposits ready (to pay affiliates) and available
ShareASale is about $100, CJ is about $1500

Launching an Affiliate ProgramCosts
Marketing Fees
Creatives
Copy Writer
Web developers (if needed)

Ongoing Management of Affiliate Program
Make sure your program terms clearly spells out what the affiliates can’t do and should do.
Don’t be negative with affiliates. They are not your employees but you want them to work FOR you.
Make sure you have the governance in place to manage affiliates’ activities
Deters fraud
FTC coming down on merchants when affiliates don’t clearly disclose they are being compensated for promoting products
Ann Taylor LOFT offered bloggers who attend fashion show & blogged about it gift card
Legacy Learning Systems, Inc., agreed to pay $250K for deceptively representing that endorsements of its instructional DVDs that were posted on blogs or other websites created by Legacy's affiliates reflected the views of ordinary consumers or “independent” reviewers.

Ongoing Management of Affiliate Program
Manually approve/deny affiliates
Don’t judge book by its cover (or country of origin)
Metrics
Clicks (Traffic to site)
Number of Sales
Sales Volume
Conversion Ratio
Commissions (paid to affiliates)
ACTIVE affiliates (80/20 Rule)
Recruited affiliates (include highlights, such as a top tier publisher/affiliate)

Resources
aBestWeb.com (website/forum for affiliate marketing)
Affiliate Marketing Blog by Geno Prussakov
www.amnavigator.com/blog
9 Internet Marketing Magazines to Subscribe To
http://www.amnavigator.com/blog/2010/07/25/9-internet-marketing-magazines-to-subscribe-to/
Affiliate Summit (2x year, strong conference for affiliates)
www.affiliatesummit.com
“Sugar Rae” - Rae Hoffman-Dolan
http://www.sugarrae.com/

Resources
To sign up for an affiliate network or purchase these products:
ShareASale.com (affiliate network)
Commission Junction (affiliate network)
Buy.at (affiliate network)
Infusionsoft (all-in-one software product)
1ShoppingCart (all-in-one software product)
* note: these are my affiliate links and I will be compensated if you purchase product using these links.

Decisions, DecisionsNow it’s up to you
Do I have what it takes to be a successful Affiliate Marketer?
Is my company ready to launch an Affiliate Program?

GourmetBetty.com Facebook Page:
Facebook.com/betty.r.hakes
LinkedIN.com/in/bettyhakes
Twitter.com/bettyhakes
Food and online marketing blog:
Bettyhakes.com
New venture (Still Under development) to help small business owners
Cheatsheetsmarketing.com
Connect with MeBetty Rodriguez-Hakes

http://newmediacincinnati.com	204
http://feeds.feedburner.com	7
http://feeds2.feedburner.com	1

The Truth About Affiliate Marketing

by bettyhakes on Apr 09, 2011

Accessibility

Categories

Tags

Upload Details

Usage Rights

3 Embeds 212

Statistics

The Truth About Affiliate Marketing — Presentation Transcript