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Thursday, June 12, 2008
Sustaining Affiliate Program Success
Sustaining Affiliate Program Success
Most of your affiliates are inactive. According to affiliate metrix, if your program is typical of most, as many as 95 percent of your affiliates have never even served up an ad impression for you.
Did you ever think about how you could improve the active rate of your program? Better yet, have you actually done anything to increase the activity of your affiliates? If you are not going to work with your inactive affiliates, you might as well remove them from your system right now. However, if you are interested in maximizing your affiliate channel, it's time you did something about it.
Recently, affiliates of the ClubMom affiliate program were asked what advice they wish they had been given when they first started in affiliate marketing. Being the altruistic sort that I am, I'd like to share with you some of what they said.
No Free Lunch
There is a common misconception that it is easy to make money with affiliate programs. Sorry, but it involves a lot more than just putting up a few banners and links. It takes hard work, dedication, and a lot of patience.
You will have to work at frequently updating your site and your affiliate links. To attract new visitors and bring people back to your site for a 2nd, 3rd, and 10th time, you have to make your site a destination. Your visitors are not coming to your site to click on affiliate links. Keep your site evergreen (i.e., update it often), and don't expect to make money right away. If you build and market it well, the commission checks will come.
Participate in the Community
Share your knowledge, spout your opinions, and ask questions. The collective knowledge of the affiliates for any given program is a great natural resource.
Yahoo Groups hosts community sites for a number of affiliate programs and enables a community of affiliates to participate in chats, an email discussion list, polls, calendars, and more. If your favorite affiliate program does not have a community set up, suggest it to the affiliate manager.
Test and Test Again
Did you ever give prominent placement to an affiliate program and wonder why the money was not flowing into your account? It may be that the offer is simply not attractive to your visitors, but it also may be that the link is not functioning correctly.
Test every link you place on your site to be sure the links direct your visitors to the correct page or product offering. Some HTML editors alter part of an affiliate link, which ends up scrubbing away your affiliate ID when the link is clicked. So test, and test again.
Increase Your Traffic
To achieve sustained success with an affiliate program, you must drive a consistent stream of new traffic to your site. Registering with the major search engines is a good first step. Before submitting your site, be sure to optimize the code (title, meta tags, etc.). Take a look at "Search Engine School," a free e-book, to get an idea about the best techniques for search engine optimization.
Also, it's very beneficial for your site to make friends and alliances with other like-minded site owners. Swap site links and email signature plugs to drive free, targeted traffic to one another.
Contextual Is Effectual
You should select affiliate programs that tie in with your site's content. If you have a site dedicated to automobile repair, a link to a site for credit card sign-ups doesn't make a lot of sense, even if it pays the highest commission of any affiliate program around.
Visitors come to your site looking for a particular subject matter, so you should take advantage of the targeted audience and deliver offers for products, information, and services that are relevant to your site.
How likely would it be for you to be able to buy a case of motor oil in the same place where you buy your underwear? Odds are you wouldn't go back to that store again (at least for underwear purchases). It's the same concept with your site -- give your visitors non sequiturs, and they will never give you sales. Your affiliate programs and content should be difficult to distinguish from each other.
Also, don't try to sell the product or the merchant's site where you are an affiliate. That is the merchant's job. Your job is to entice your visitors to click on the links.
History of affiliate marketing
History of Affiliate Marketing
There is a popular urban myth about the origins of affiliate marketing. It goes something like this...
In July 1996, Amazon.com launched the first affiliate program on the Internet. That's the story in the Amazon.com Associates Program Frequently Asked Questions, at least.
As legend has it, Jeff Bezos, CEO and founder of Amazon.com, chatted with a woman at a cocktail party about how she wanted to sell books about divorce on her web site. After that exchange, Bezos pondered the idea and thought about having the woman link her site to Amazon.com and receive a commission on the book sales. This was the impetus for creating the "first on the Web" Amazon.com Associates Program.
But there are some problems with that claim by Bezos. According to Daniel Gray in "The Complete Guide to Associate and Affiliate Programs on the Net," there were a number of sites that operated programs prior to July 1996. And that is just the mainstream side of it. There are also many adult sites that dabbled in the affiliate marketing concept before Amazon.com picked it up.
The Mothers of Invention
The big secret of the Internet is that the adult sites came up with many of the best (and worst) marketing concepts that are used in the mainstream.
Brian Clark, president of ReveNews.com and member of Affiliate Union's board of directors, states, "I'm quite a fan of the adult industry -- not a consumer of their product, by any means -- but deeply respectful of how much of the innovation in online business models is really happening in that industry first and bemused by people's reticence to give them the credit or even talk about the subject."
"Not just affiliate programs, mind you. They're also the cutting edge of streaming video, pay-for-view content, coercive click conversion, community publishing, etc.," comments Clark.
Mark Hardie of Forrester Research concurs. "What I see when I look at this industry -- putting aside any moral judgments about reprehensible content -- is an amazing example of an industry that has banded together to protect its business, push revenue across the industry, and innovate cutting-edge technologies," says Hardie. "I think there's a lot here that can be applied elsewhere."
The consensus of marketing folks and adult industry insiders is that Cybererotica was either the first or among the early innovators in affiliate marketing with a cost-per-click program.
According to John Distasio of CyberFoxes, none of the adult sites are running cost-per-click programs anymore. CyberFoxes, which has been running its affiliate program since 1996, started with the cost-per-click model, but because of the high volume of fraud, it now employs a cost-per-acquisition model. In the current program, which uses CC Bill for tracking and payouts, an affiliate earns 50 percent of a converted lead and a 50 percent residual each time its lead renews on the monthly subscription.
Before There Was Amazon.com
In February 2000, Amazon.com announced that it had been granted a patent (6,029,141) on all the essential components of an affiliate program. The patent application was submitted in June 1997, which was before most affiliate programs but not before PC Flowers & Gifts.com (October 1994), AutoWeb.com (October 1995), Kbkids.com/BrainPlay.com (January 1996), EPage (April 1996), and a handful of others.
"While I admire what Jeff Bezos did for the industry, he in no way pioneered anything," said Brad Waller, VP of marketing for EPage.
"He popularized the idea, but he was a latecomer -- by about two years. There is quite a bit of documentation on this issue, including assertions by Jason Olim and Matthew Olim, in their book about founding CDNow, that they had an informal program in 1994," continued Waller.
Finding a Solution
Chris d'Eon, current VP of marketing - retention with Proflowers.com faced an early affiliate marketing dilemma when he was at an Internet start-up that was selling online backup solutions (@Backup, now called SkyDesk) back in 1996.
According to d'Eon, "The early challenge [of affiliate marketing] was to build a tracking system. We finally built our own, first using spreadsheets, then a full-blown system. We eventually spun this system off and recently sold it to ValueClick. In the early days, we did meet a few companies doing the same thing as we were... Alexa and Launch.com come to mind."
The formal birth of affiliate solution providers came to be in 1996 with the launch of LinkShare and Be Free. Commission Junction started up in 1998 to round out what is considered to be the top three.
Directory Assistance
The landscape of affiliate program directories has become a bit overwhelming in the last year. An estimated 50 directories are trying to direct traffic in affiliate space, but it all started with Refer-it.com.
According to James Marciano, he founded Refer-it.com in October 1997 because he could not find one central place for affiliate programs to generate revenue for his site, TheSquare.com. He decided what was needed was a search engine for affiliate programs with ratings and details.
In January 1998, Allan Gardyne started up a one-page associate programs directory. He had hunted in every major search engine for an affiliate program directory and could not find one, so he started his own version. That one-page site officially became AssociatePrograms.com in February 1998. Other important players, such as 2-Tier, Associate-it, CashPile.com, and ReveNews.com, launched later in 1998.
Amazon.com helped bring affiliate marketing into the pages of business journals, but is the Amazon.com Associates Program the first affiliate program there was? I guess it depends on what your definition of "is" is. Just as Al Gore once stated, "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet," Amazon.com claims that its program was "the first on the Web." If you repeat a lie often enough, people will eventually believe that it is true... until you get caught.
There is a popular urban myth about the origins of affiliate marketing. It goes something like this...
In July 1996, Amazon.com launched the first affiliate program on the Internet. That's the story in the Amazon.com Associates Program Frequently Asked Questions, at least.
As legend has it, Jeff Bezos, CEO and founder of Amazon.com, chatted with a woman at a cocktail party about how she wanted to sell books about divorce on her web site. After that exchange, Bezos pondered the idea and thought about having the woman link her site to Amazon.com and receive a commission on the book sales. This was the impetus for creating the "first on the Web" Amazon.com Associates Program.
But there are some problems with that claim by Bezos. According to Daniel Gray in "The Complete Guide to Associate and Affiliate Programs on the Net," there were a number of sites that operated programs prior to July 1996. And that is just the mainstream side of it. There are also many adult sites that dabbled in the affiliate marketing concept before Amazon.com picked it up.
The Mothers of Invention
The big secret of the Internet is that the adult sites came up with many of the best (and worst) marketing concepts that are used in the mainstream.
Brian Clark, president of ReveNews.com and member of Affiliate Union's board of directors, states, "I'm quite a fan of the adult industry -- not a consumer of their product, by any means -- but deeply respectful of how much of the innovation in online business models is really happening in that industry first and bemused by people's reticence to give them the credit or even talk about the subject."
"Not just affiliate programs, mind you. They're also the cutting edge of streaming video, pay-for-view content, coercive click conversion, community publishing, etc.," comments Clark.
Mark Hardie of Forrester Research concurs. "What I see when I look at this industry -- putting aside any moral judgments about reprehensible content -- is an amazing example of an industry that has banded together to protect its business, push revenue across the industry, and innovate cutting-edge technologies," says Hardie. "I think there's a lot here that can be applied elsewhere."
The consensus of marketing folks and adult industry insiders is that Cybererotica was either the first or among the early innovators in affiliate marketing with a cost-per-click program.
According to John Distasio of CyberFoxes, none of the adult sites are running cost-per-click programs anymore. CyberFoxes, which has been running its affiliate program since 1996, started with the cost-per-click model, but because of the high volume of fraud, it now employs a cost-per-acquisition model. In the current program, which uses CC Bill for tracking and payouts, an affiliate earns 50 percent of a converted lead and a 50 percent residual each time its lead renews on the monthly subscription.
Before There Was Amazon.com
In February 2000, Amazon.com announced that it had been granted a patent (6,029,141) on all the essential components of an affiliate program. The patent application was submitted in June 1997, which was before most affiliate programs but not before PC Flowers & Gifts.com (October 1994), AutoWeb.com (October 1995), Kbkids.com/BrainPlay.com (January 1996), EPage (April 1996), and a handful of others.
"While I admire what Jeff Bezos did for the industry, he in no way pioneered anything," said Brad Waller, VP of marketing for EPage.
"He popularized the idea, but he was a latecomer -- by about two years. There is quite a bit of documentation on this issue, including assertions by Jason Olim and Matthew Olim, in their book about founding CDNow, that they had an informal program in 1994," continued Waller.
Finding a Solution
Chris d'Eon, current VP of marketing - retention with Proflowers.com faced an early affiliate marketing dilemma when he was at an Internet start-up that was selling online backup solutions (@Backup, now called SkyDesk) back in 1996.
According to d'Eon, "The early challenge [of affiliate marketing] was to build a tracking system. We finally built our own, first using spreadsheets, then a full-blown system. We eventually spun this system off and recently sold it to ValueClick. In the early days, we did meet a few companies doing the same thing as we were... Alexa and Launch.com come to mind."
The formal birth of affiliate solution providers came to be in 1996 with the launch of LinkShare and Be Free. Commission Junction started up in 1998 to round out what is considered to be the top three.
Directory Assistance
The landscape of affiliate program directories has become a bit overwhelming in the last year. An estimated 50 directories are trying to direct traffic in affiliate space, but it all started with Refer-it.com.
According to James Marciano, he founded Refer-it.com in October 1997 because he could not find one central place for affiliate programs to generate revenue for his site, TheSquare.com. He decided what was needed was a search engine for affiliate programs with ratings and details.
In January 1998, Allan Gardyne started up a one-page associate programs directory. He had hunted in every major search engine for an affiliate program directory and could not find one, so he started his own version. That one-page site officially became AssociatePrograms.com in February 1998. Other important players, such as 2-Tier, Associate-it, CashPile.com, and ReveNews.com, launched later in 1998.
Amazon.com helped bring affiliate marketing into the pages of business journals, but is the Amazon.com Associates Program the first affiliate program there was? I guess it depends on what your definition of "is" is. Just as Al Gore once stated, "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet," Amazon.com claims that its program was "the first on the Web." If you repeat a lie often enough, people will eventually believe that it is true... until you get caught.
Affiliate programs directories
Affiliate programs directories
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Affiliate program directories are niche web directories that are very like the large and broad web directories like the Yahoo! Directory or the Open Directory Project also known s Dmoz. Web directories are like the Yellow pages in the offline world, listings of sites grouped by niche, geographic location or special characteristic or property.
Contents[hide]
1 Difference to broad Web Directories
2 Special content
3 Purpose
4 History
5 References
6 See also
//
[edit] Difference to broad Web Directories
Affiliate programs directories list affiliate programs. See affiliate marketing to learn more about affiliate programs and the affiliate marketing industry.
[edit] Special content
What sets the specialized affiliate programs directories or affiliate directories apart from generic directories? They list most of the time summaries of the program terms and condition for each program in their listing, information such as: compensation model, commission rates, payout terms and methods, cookie duration, special bonuses or incentives and other information useful to affiliates that are looking for merchants or services with an affiliate program...
[edit] Purpose
Next to large affiliate networks and advertisement of the program at the merchants or service providers own website, are affiliate programs directories the most commonly means to promote an affiliate program (advertiser) or find a fitting program (affiliate or publisher).
[edit] History
The first affiliate program directory was Refer-it.com. Refer-it.com was launched by James Marciano in October 1997. Refer-it was sold to Alan Meckler's company internet.com (now Jupiter Media on the NASDAQ: JUPM) in April of 1999.[1] The second but oldest still existing affiliate program directory is AssociatePrograms.com, which was launched in February 1998 by Allan Gardyne. Associate-it, CashPile.com and ReveNews.com launched also later in 1998, but none of them exist today anymore.[2] ReveNews.com is now an affiliate marketing news blog.
[edit] References
^ Internet.com Press Release (April 8, 1999), Internet.com, the E-Business and Internet Technology Network, Acquires Swynk.com and Refer-It.com Web Sites, Internet.com, retrieved October 15, 2007
^ Shawn Collins (November 10, 2000), History of Affiliate Marketing, ClickZ Network, retrieved October 15, 2007
[edit] See also
Affiliate marketing
Affiliate Networks
Affiliate programs
Affiliate
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affiliate_programs_directories"
Categories: Affiliate marketing
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Affiliate program directories are niche web directories that are very like the large and broad web directories like the Yahoo! Directory or the Open Directory Project also known s Dmoz. Web directories are like the Yellow pages in the offline world, listings of sites grouped by niche, geographic location or special characteristic or property.
Contents[hide]
1 Difference to broad Web Directories
2 Special content
3 Purpose
4 History
5 References
6 See also
//
[edit] Difference to broad Web Directories
Affiliate programs directories list affiliate programs. See affiliate marketing to learn more about affiliate programs and the affiliate marketing industry.
[edit] Special content
What sets the specialized affiliate programs directories or affiliate directories apart from generic directories? They list most of the time summaries of the program terms and condition for each program in their listing, information such as: compensation model, commission rates, payout terms and methods, cookie duration, special bonuses or incentives and other information useful to affiliates that are looking for merchants or services with an affiliate program...
[edit] Purpose
Next to large affiliate networks and advertisement of the program at the merchants or service providers own website, are affiliate programs directories the most commonly means to promote an affiliate program (advertiser) or find a fitting program (affiliate or publisher).
[edit] History
The first affiliate program directory was Refer-it.com. Refer-it.com was launched by James Marciano in October 1997. Refer-it was sold to Alan Meckler's company internet.com (now Jupiter Media on the NASDAQ: JUPM) in April of 1999.[1] The second but oldest still existing affiliate program directory is AssociatePrograms.com, which was launched in February 1998 by Allan Gardyne. Associate-it, CashPile.com and ReveNews.com launched also later in 1998, but none of them exist today anymore.[2] ReveNews.com is now an affiliate marketing news blog.
[edit] References
^ Internet.com Press Release (April 8, 1999), Internet.com, the E-Business and Internet Technology Network, Acquires Swynk.com and Refer-It.com Web Sites, Internet.com, retrieved October 15, 2007
^ Shawn Collins (November 10, 2000), History of Affiliate Marketing, ClickZ Network, retrieved October 15, 2007
[edit] See also
Affiliate marketing
Affiliate Networks
Affiliate programs
Affiliate
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affiliate_programs_directories"
Categories: Affiliate marketing
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