This document provides 15 tips for optimizing an affiliate marketing program to improve affiliate engagement and earnings. It recommends communicating regularly with affiliates, paying them quickly, incentivizing performance, and making the affiliate experience seamless by allowing direct linking to products and long cookie durations. The overarching goal is to optimize the affiliate marketing program for high conversion rates that benefit both the business and its affiliates.

1. Joris Toonders [ Yonego ] “ Understanding the Affiliate Mindset to Grab Attention for your Affiliate Programme…”

3. This is Chris. He is an affiliate and wants… to earn much money when he earns money for YOU!

4. What really counts for Chris, is your… € CPC E ffective C ost P er C lick

5. € CPC (example) ◘ Chris sends 10.000 visitors to your website ◘ These visitors are spending €8000 on your website ◘ Chris gets an percentage of each sale from you (10%), so he earned €800,00 by sending 10.000 visitors to you. ◘ € 800,00 / 10:000 = €0,08 (€CPC) . Chris earns €0,08 on average by sending visitors to your website.

6. 5. Add datafeeds to your program! ◘ Datafeeds “facilitate” affiliates to create added value with their own websites while they are promoting you. ◘ It’s just an easy way to link to actual offers. Some advertisers are afraid that their affiliates become “competitors” when they can use their datafeeds. My answer to that is quite easy: “ When you’re NOT using datafeeds, you have a very big disadvantage against your real, daily competitors. Just think about that. “

7. 15 Tips & Tricks To optimize your € CPC and grab attention to your affiliate programme (!)

8. 1. Your commission is important ◘ See an affiliate as a smart sales guy that wants to work at your company at his own risk and investment (car, phone, laptop etc) and without having a fixed salary. How much percent of your revenue would you pay him for each sale? ◘ Work with percentages instead of fixed fees for e-commerce sites. Stimulate affiliates to also promote your more expensive products!

9. 2. Start your program with a fixed CPC! ◘ You can minimize the risk of an affiliate and stimulate him to invest in sending visitors to your website… Start with a fixed CPC in the first month of your affiliate program!

10. 3. Use a maximum of 3 affiliate networks! ◘ Use both national and international networks, to grab attention from affiliates in other countries as well. ◘ Affiliates are also using tools like affspy.com to search for offers that they can promote.

11. 4. Talk to your affiliates! ◘ Mail, call or Twitter your (key) affiliates and plan meetings with them! Would you generate a lot of money for somebody you haven’t spoken? ◘ Ask them what they need, what they miss and how you can “facilitate them” in general to earn more money for both parties. Update them personally about (new) products, product changes, price updates and market developments!

12. 6. Work on your conversion rate! ◘ Use analytics tools to analyze the behavior on your website. ◘ Use A/B- and multivariate testing to maximize your conversion. ◘ Update affiliates when you’ve succesfully made big differences in the conversion rate. They love that, because you’ve also improved their €CPC! ◘ Working on your conversion rate will also maximize the ROI of other online marketing activities.

13. 7. Pay your affiliates FAST! ◘ Understand that affiliates invest a lot of time and money in generating money for YOU! ◘ Approve / disapprove new sales from your affiliates as fast as possible. Affiliates wants to know their €CPC based on the revenue of approved orders. They want to know their real ROI. ◘ Pay the affiliate marketing invoices fast. For some affiliates (like affiliates that are using PPC) this is very important for their cash flow.

14. 8. Communicate via forums! ◘ Affiliates stay in contact via forums. They are hanging out there, so be there as well! Communicate new developments in your affiliate program at the biggest affiliate forums and ask the community for feedback! ◘ Use affiliates4u.com (from Matthew Wood), affiliateforum.nl, webmasterworld.com, digitalpoint.com and wickedfire.com.

15. 9. Make deeplinking possible! ◘ Make it always possible to place deeplinks for affiliates, so they can link to specific products/pages within your website! This will have huge impact on the conversion rate.

16. 10. Set goals and give incentives! ◘ Set goals with (big) affiliates and give them incentives when they reach them. Most advertisers are giving away gadget stuff etc. Give (also) financial incentives to really influence their performance! or… are you giving your best sales employees also a gameboy as a bonus instead of a financial bonus?

17. 11. Use Google to find new affiliates! ◘ Search in Google for your most important keywords and look for websites that have affiliate links! Feel free to send them an e-mail and ask them to join your affiliate program.

18. 12. Add an affiliate page to your website! ◘ Add an affiliate page to your website and use it to tell about your commissions, add some examples and give them the possibility to directly signup to your affiliate program!

19. 13. Your cookie time is important! ◘ Think about the cookie time you want to use. 30 till 60 days is normal. If you use a longer cookie time, you are helping your affiliates to earn a better €CPC. Affiliates love merchants that use long cookie times.

20. 14. Don’t add your phone number! ◘ Affiliates want to get paid for the traffic they are sending to your website. Don’t use phone numbers on your affiliate landingpages without tracking them and paying for it. ◘ Use call tracking software to track the calls on affiliate landingpages and give your affiliates a fee for each call!

21. 15. Share important information! ◘ Affiliates want to have information about your affiliate program / website, so give it! Tell them about your average order value, conversion rate, the reason of disapproved sales and tell them more about how they are performing, compared with other affiliates in your program!

22. “ It’s all about CONVERSION” Joris Toonders [email_address] Mobile: 06 - 28 42 65 60 Office: 076 – 5 246 246