Promoting Your Affiliate Program
| Category: Affiliate Marketing - Development | Date: 2003-04-28 |
12 October 2000
Your affiliate marketing options include an online marketing campaign, a one-to-one marketing program and a combination of both.
* ONLINE MARKETING
Marketing your affiliate program online will recruit mostly smaller, mom-and-pop sites. To get A-list sites, such as high-traffic portals and online communities, you’ll need to proactively call ON them and negotiate special compensation packages.
Start with sites that will list your affiliate program for free. Most of these sites attract companies interested in affiliate programs, so they are good places to advertise your affiliate program with banner ads.
These sites include:
AdGuide www.ad-guide.com/Affiliate_Programs
Affiliate Trade Links Network http://atlnetwork.com
Associate Cash www.associatecash.com.
Associate-It http://associate-it.com
Associate Programs www.associateprograms.com
Cash Pile www.cashpile.com
ClickQuick www.clickquick.com/affiliate.htm
Clicks Link www.clickslink.com
Refer-It www.refer-it.com
Revenews www.revenews.com
SiteCash www.sitecash.com
Large online communities like theGlobe.com and Geocities offer a way to promote your affiliate program to a large number of websites. You can offer your affiliate program to their thousands of member homepages. The potential audience is large; theGlobe’s member homepage network generates more than 50 million page views per month.
To offer your program to theGlobe members, include it in its Money Makers area of the Homepage Builder. Youll be in good company; Beyond.com and Cyberian Outpost were recently promoting their affiliate programs there.
Of the two, its less expensive to offer your program via theGlobe, which is also more flexible. Geocities requires a long-term commitment.
After including your affiliate program in free or low-cost listings, if there is money left in your budget, use permission email marketing or banner advertising to promote your program.
* ONE-TO-ONE MARKETING
The more time-intensive option is to put together customized affiliate programs for sites that draw users matching your customer profile. The first step is to identify such sites. That task is much easier for companies like Amazon.com and Beyond.com because their products--books and software--are easily tailored for just about any website.
Even marketers with some niche products can readily find appropriate websites for their programs. For example, if you have an affiliate program offering cookbooks, cooking software or cooking products, you can pitch your affiliate program to cooking websites.
But for a merchant that sells something like consumer electronics, it may be more difficult to determine what sites to approach as affiliates. Sites that offer a good fit for a consumer electronics product don’t come readily to mind. Maybe consumer report sites, local sites, music sites, or maybe a big portal that has an electronics channel.
Here’s another challenging one: a merchant that sells educational products for kids. I would target online communities and sites catering to parents. Sites for children would also be good candidates, because parents will most likely be surfing with their children.
To identify appropriate affiliates, ask yourself, "If I was in the market for this product, where would I be surfing the Internet?"
This question can help you develop a list of your top 100 sites. Send the sites an email that describes your affiliate program, the offer, and what the affiliate prospect needs to do if they are interested.
Your top sites may require you to expand your payment options. If you currently offer a bounty (a flat payment per sale), you will most likely have to develop a hybrid offering of a bounty plus a payment per click, or a bounty and a payment per prospect. But the high traffic from these custom sites should be worth the premium. Make sure they are worth it by monitoring your back-end reports.
Keep in mind that it is the quality, not the quantity, of your affiliates that matters most. Better to have 10 sites that are working harder than 100 sites that are barely working. Your affiliate results will probably follow the 80/20 rule: 80% of your business will come from 20% of your affiliate members. So cultivate the higher performing affiliate member relationships, and reward them for their performance with additional compensation.
About the Author
By Michelle Ellis, with contributions from Michael Aaron
Ellis is director of account planning and media, and Aaron is online marketing
manager at M2K,
:To contact see details below.
contact@m2k.com
http://www.m2k.com
Your affiliate marketing options include an online marketing campaign, a one-to-one marketing program and a combination of both.
* ONLINE MARKETING
Marketing your affiliate program online will recruit mostly smaller, mom-and-pop sites. To get A-list sites, such as high-traffic portals and online communities, you’ll need to proactively call ON them and negotiate special compensation packages.
Start with sites that will list your affiliate program for free. Most of these sites attract companies interested in affiliate programs, so they are good places to advertise your affiliate program with banner ads.
These sites include:
AdGuide www.ad-guide.com/Affiliate_Programs
Affiliate Trade Links Network http://atlnetwork.com
Associate Cash www.associatecash.com.
Associate-It http://associate-it.com
Associate Programs www.associateprograms.com
Cash Pile www.cashpile.com
ClickQuick www.clickquick.com/affiliate.htm
Clicks Link www.clickslink.com
Refer-It www.refer-it.com
Revenews www.revenews.com
SiteCash www.sitecash.com
Large online communities like theGlobe.com and Geocities offer a way to promote your affiliate program to a large number of websites. You can offer your affiliate program to their thousands of member homepages. The potential audience is large; theGlobe’s member homepage network generates more than 50 million page views per month.
To offer your program to theGlobe members, include it in its Money Makers area of the Homepage Builder. Youll be in good company; Beyond.com and Cyberian Outpost were recently promoting their affiliate programs there.
Of the two, its less expensive to offer your program via theGlobe, which is also more flexible. Geocities requires a long-term commitment.
After including your affiliate program in free or low-cost listings, if there is money left in your budget, use permission email marketing or banner advertising to promote your program.
* ONE-TO-ONE MARKETING
The more time-intensive option is to put together customized affiliate programs for sites that draw users matching your customer profile. The first step is to identify such sites. That task is much easier for companies like Amazon.com and Beyond.com because their products--books and software--are easily tailored for just about any website.
Even marketers with some niche products can readily find appropriate websites for their programs. For example, if you have an affiliate program offering cookbooks, cooking software or cooking products, you can pitch your affiliate program to cooking websites.
But for a merchant that sells something like consumer electronics, it may be more difficult to determine what sites to approach as affiliates. Sites that offer a good fit for a consumer electronics product don’t come readily to mind. Maybe consumer report sites, local sites, music sites, or maybe a big portal that has an electronics channel.
Here’s another challenging one: a merchant that sells educational products for kids. I would target online communities and sites catering to parents. Sites for children would also be good candidates, because parents will most likely be surfing with their children.
To identify appropriate affiliates, ask yourself, "If I was in the market for this product, where would I be surfing the Internet?"
This question can help you develop a list of your top 100 sites. Send the sites an email that describes your affiliate program, the offer, and what the affiliate prospect needs to do if they are interested.
Your top sites may require you to expand your payment options. If you currently offer a bounty (a flat payment per sale), you will most likely have to develop a hybrid offering of a bounty plus a payment per click, or a bounty and a payment per prospect. But the high traffic from these custom sites should be worth the premium. Make sure they are worth it by monitoring your back-end reports.
Keep in mind that it is the quality, not the quantity, of your affiliates that matters most. Better to have 10 sites that are working harder than 100 sites that are barely working. Your affiliate results will probably follow the 80/20 rule: 80% of your business will come from 20% of your affiliate members. So cultivate the higher performing affiliate member relationships, and reward them for their performance with additional compensation.
About the Author
By Michelle Ellis, with contributions from Michael Aaron
Ellis is director of account planning and media, and Aaron is online marketing
manager at M2K,
:To contact see details below.
contact@m2k.com
http://www.m2k.com
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