Going for the Gold!
Saturday, August 31st …Going for the Gold!…
…all’s well with the world, May and Walsh won their 108th consecutive game and took the Gold in Women’s Beach Volleyball (the first pair ever to win gold two Olympics in a row), tropical storm Fay has gone on her way after a brief stay, she rained for a few days on us at Disney World and Nitro’s Quattro launch went off like gangbusters!
I’m feeling a little scattered. My wife, Kate, told me I was obsessed with the Olympics. I really don’t think its obsession, a small fixation maybe but not really obsession. I will say that now that they’re over I am feeling a little anxious, distracted, and maybe a little twitchy but it was never obsession. I will miss; the sand and the sweaty bathing suits, the diving boards and the wet bathing suits, the flexible gymnasts and the abbreviated outfits…you know, all the amazing feats of…um…sportsmanship!
Ah well, on with the subject at hand…How to build a successful Affiliate Program. Michael asked me to explain TM Gold Marketing’s sure fire procedure to develop a
thriving and highly productive lineup of affiliates. Moreover, how to parlay that amazing group of people into a lean (but not mean) money making team!
You know when I sit back and think about the most popular procedures for building, maintaining and growing an industrious affiliate program I come to the conclusion that it’s a lot like the Olympics. No, no it’s not an obsession! Just look at Trafficology, issue # 8.
Their 3 Steps to Affiliate Success are:
1) Prepare Your Website For Affiliate Sales
2) Recruit New Affiliates Into Your Program.
3) Motivate Your New Affiliates Into Action.
To prepare your website, you need to do three things; evaluate your competition; calculate two important sales statistics; and set-up affiliate tracking software.
That’s just like the Olympics! When you prepare your website the 1st thing you’re going to do is evaluate your competition. Just like the great Olympians you gotta check out your fellow competitors in action and see their strengths and weaknesses. You need to know what they sell, how much they charge and what they pay their affiliates. You also have to study their training techniques like how they handle their backend sales process. The smart ones give their affiliates a big cut of their front-end products and then make a real killing on their backend proceeds!
Next, you need to, Calculate Your Competitors Statistics! Like Olympians you always check out your competitors stats, like their Conversion Rate (the number of sales they’ve gotten, divided by the number of visitors referred) and their Earnings Per Click (average money an affiliate will make, for each visitor they send to your website)
To find out the E.P.C. just divide the total commissions earned by the total number of visitors referred.
Trafficology# 8 also lists:
Quick Things you can do to improve your EPC:
1. Increase your average revenue per order by offering an up-sell option during checkout.
2. Encourage customers to order add-on and complementary products.
3. Increase the affiliate commission rate.
4. Improve your sale letter conversion rate. (a small increase in your conversion rate
will dramatically improve your EPC.)
When you understand these stats you will be able to upgrade them with your own creative techniques to improve on what your competitors our offering. So you attract only the most ambitious and determined affiliates and, more importantly, keep them motivated by providing them a steady stream of easy sales and high commissions. It’s up to you to have only topnotch products and a streamlined sales process that magically transforms the majority of your visitors into buyers. You’ll be like an ancient alchemist turning lead into gold! Gold! Just like Olympic Gold, only more of it!
Setting up Affiliate Tracking Software, is like establishing an Olympic training program. No really, it is! You need to, at the least, be able to track each affiliates referral and, ideally, be able to furnish your team members with a up-to-the-minute, timely and accurate account of how much Gold, they’ll be taking to the bank.
Trafficology # 8, lays out these three options:
1. Purchase software that runs on your server
2. Use a 3rd-party affiliate tracking service
3. Design and develop your own custom solution
This decision is one of the most important you’ll ever make about your affiliate program. There are several “entry level” options, but be careful. If you later try to upgrade to a more robust system you may not be able to. Often the tracking links provided by one system are not compatible the links from another…and it will be very difficult to get your affiliates to change links. Therefore if you later find your software does not meet your needs you may be forced to run 2-systems or lose all the affiliates who are still using your old links.
As you can see, like an Olympian, you need to decide how committed you are to your Affiliate Program. If you’re going to have just a casual campaign, you’ll probably be happy using an off-the-shelf or entry level software. But, if you’re going after the big bucks using a team of affiliates you’ll want to jump right into action using a third party service or, even better, create your own made-to-order tracking software.
If you have a domain name that you manage make sure your affiliates are linking to it.
Then if you’re running software on your own server, either self created or bought, or you’re using a 3rd-party service that runs links thru to your own domain. Your affiliates will always be able to keep their links working properly.
Alas, I seem to have run out of space…quite a bit ago. We’ll be looking at the Three Keys to Affiliate Activation in my next posting…until then, always remember to,
keep going for the Gold!!! TM Gold Marketing, that is!
It’s not obsession, really, it isn‘t. It’s more like…preoccupation.
A detailed review of affiliate tracking software options can be found on this site:http://AffSoftware.TrafficologyResources.com
For tips on improving your conversion rate listen to Alex Mandossian, Joe Vitale, and Mike Fortin in the Membership Site
http://www.Trafficology.com/login.php
Tags: 
