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Continued ...
MISCELLANEOUS CONSIDERATIONS
To finish off, here's a few miscellaneous considerations to take
into account when selecting your affiliate programs.
How Long Do the Cookies Last?
Always go for programs that will credit you with the sale even
if the customer doesn't buy on the first visit. That high paying
program I mentioned above? 90% of the sales come from the
follow-up messages sent by the owner of the program once I
give him the lead.
That's pretty typical of all affiliate programs. You've heard that
it takes an average of seven exposures to a message before a
prospect will buy, right? Well, what happens to your
commissions if you only get paid for direct sales (i.e. where the
customer buys on the first visit following a direct link from your
site)? Right. You get maybe 10% of the commissions you
would have earned from the program if the customer was tagged
as yours for a period of time (and preferably for life).
Always read the terms and conditions of the affiliate program
carefully before investing your time and effort. If it says
anything like "if customer later makes a purchase on a repeat
visit that does not originate from your link, you will not qualify
for a commission on such sale" keep looking.
Some programs will place a cookie on the customer's hard disk
for 45 days or so which means that if that customer returns in
three weeks to eventually make a purchase, that customer will
be identified as "yours" and you will get the commission. Some
programs even offer "lifetime customers", that is, the customer is
yours for life even if they come back in three years time and buy
a completely different product.
Stats Reporting
Look for real-time reporting of statistics including hits and sales.
Then check to make sure that the hits the affiliate program
records are in line with your own stats tracking. This is easy
to do. I use Roibot to track all clicks I'm interested in
monitoring whether it's a program I'm promoting or whether I'm
just interested in how many people click on a particular link to
an article, for example. (To check out the Roibot suite of
marketing tools, click this (Roibot) link:
http://www.roibot.com/w.cgi?R5469_roibot ).
Frequency (and Amount) of Payments
Some programs will only pay once you accumulate a certain
amount of commission dollars. That's OK ... it keeps admin
costs down and therefore makes more of the profit available
for payment of generous commissions ... but if it's
disproportionately high compared to the amount of the base
commission, consider another program.
If it takes you a year to accumulate $50 in commissions, ask yourself how
likely is it that this particular company will still be around in one
year? Even if you have no concerns on that score, if it's
taking you a year to accumulate $50 worth of commissions,
this is not a program that's giving a particularly good return
on your investment of time and effort. Look for something
more productive.
How Long Established?
Related to the previous discussion, think twice before investing
too much time and effort on newly established programs. Add
these to your portfolio by all means, but make your staple
programs the tried and trues.
What is Their Policy on Spam?
Nothing irritates me more than to receive spam from someone
promoting one of the programs that I promote (well, OK, other
things do irritate me more but you get my point). Not because I
get into a tizz about spam per se (unlike apparently 90% of the
internet population I have more important things to worry about),
but such tactics bring the program into disrepute because it
suggests that the owner of the program condones spam and if
the owner of the program condones it, how much value does
he or she place on the program? Not much.
So look for programs with strict anti-spam policies.
SLOW AND STEADY WINS THE RACE
Finally, a word about patience. This is a slow and steady wins
the race game as well as a numbers game. Don't spit the
dummy, throw in the towel, chuck the Glomesh onto the shagpile
(or whatever your vernacular equivalent of a dummy spit is)
because you don't make a single sale in your first month with a
new program.
By all means take a closer look at how well the product fits in
with the demographics of your audience (website and ezine) but
if it's a good fit, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater
(enough with the metaphors already, OK).
Instead, refine your marketing approach, tweak your ads,
brainstorm for more creative ways of promoting the program.
Don't just write the program off as bad until you're sure it's not
going to work for you. There may be some peculiar demographic
factor common to your group that you're not aware of but until
you've given it a good try, don't assume that's the case.
As a general rule, so long as you're sure that the product is a
good fit, work with it for a year to give it a real chance of
performing for you. The internet landscape is strewn with the
carcasses of would-be successful entrepreneurs whose only
mistake was giving up too soon. Don't be one of them.
_________________________
Elena Fawkner is editor of A Home-Based Business Online ... practical
ideas, resources and strategies for your home-based or online business.
http://www.ahbbo.com
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