By Fabrizia Degli Esposti on 2005/01/11
My experience in the affiliate marketing field is greener than the crispest four leaf clover in Ireland. So when I was approached by our CEO with the question: "Would you like to get involved with our affiliate marketing team?" my jaw dropped. I swallowed my over-sized Italian ego, admitted I didn't know anything about affiliate marketing and smiled. The smile was my pitiful way of extracting some kind of sympathy from my CEO. His answer to my lack of knowledge was that I could learn all there was to learn about it by starting with a "guinea pig" programme. And so researching affiliate marketing became my new found passion...I'm also single and reading passes the time.
The Internet was an obvious ally in my quest for knowledge. It proved to be brimming with information about all aspects of affiliate marketing, programs, directories, dos & don'ts, ifs and buts that I quickly depleted a couple of trees printing out manuals and making notes. What I found was that this branch of marketing is, in fact, not brain surgery after all. All it takes is determination, hard work and an understanding of the basic principles behind it. My aim today is to de-mystify affiliate marketing for those wanting to start up their own programmes. The interface I built our affiliate programme into was already a pleasure to work with, making the affiliate programme more appealing just in the looks department alone. The rest has been a steady learning curve. Here are some pointers for first-timers:
Prepare
This first point is the most important foundation for any affiliate programme to run smoothly. Know your product. Work out your commission structure, how much you can afford to pay your affiliates, how often and by what means. Have a look at your competitors as a guideline but make your own statement.
Legalise
A very important matter you should take care of next is the legal documentation in the form of your programme's terms and conditions. It is easier to take care of this once you have the commission structure worked out. Lawyers speak a different language to most of us, and they know how to best safeguard you and your business.
Research
Look at what your competitors are doing and how they are doing it. A good place to find your competition is in various affiliate directories.
Look at what your competitors are doing and how they are doing it. A good place to find your competition is in various affiliate directories. Spend time getting to know other sites and most importantly your own. Remember that your website has its own personality and that should be transmitted through every aspect and page of your site, even in the affiliate programme. So researching also means getting to know your own website, spotting its own faults and making overall changes to better serve all aspects of its functionality.
Optimise
Use tools such as WordTracker to find which words will better your programme's chances of being pulled in organic searches. Incorporate as many keywords and keyphrases into your copy, banners, text links and/or contextual ads as possible without making the copy unreadable. If you do not have a professional copywriter at hand I suggest you source one. It is vitally important to drive as much traffic to your site as effortlessly as possible. Optimise your entire website if it hasn't been done already.
Advertise
You don't have to fork out loads of hard earned notes on advertising. That would defeat the purpose as you can't then afford to pay your affiliates which then means no affiliates! Use your own website as a canvas to advertise your affiliate programme. Look for those open spots here and there that could help you more than you realise. Request advertising space from your reciprocal links. Barter a little advertising space by making them an affiliate and give them the commission.
Submit
Once your affiliate programme has been tested, tweaked and adjusted in all the right places you have to set out on that long road of submitting the programme to the major affiliate programme directories. There are hundreds out there and you may choose to take the easy route and purchase a package that will automatically submit your programme to 40 of the major directories, or you can do the submissions yourself. Your budget, time and dedication dictate in this regard. The directories are fairly easy to submit to and they all ask more or less the same information. Have all your information handy so that you don't waste time looking for it.
Offer
Your affiliates are important to you so treat them with the respect they deserve. Yes, they want to make money but honour their requests and make it as easy as possible to be your affiliate. Give them as much information without them having to ask you for it. One thing affiliates love are real-time stats!
Manage
Good management is key. If you are not managing the programme yourself, you need someone who is capable of dealing with not only the technical but also the administration aspects of your programme.
Accept
Allow for criticism. It might be difficult but believe that all criticism is good news because it means you can improve and be better than you were before. Take the points made, digest them, research the problem and rectify it as soon as possible. Good comments taste so much sweeter but just think how much sweeter it is not to have anything to criticise negatively because you've accepted past comments and learnt from them.
At Quirk, we've created our own software for the affiliate programmes that we manage. Each programme is sculpted to fit that particluar website's personality - something we believe each site has and needs to be respected, like any complex creation on this earth (watch out, I might start reciting Paulo Coelho extracts any minute now!). I'm never adverse to a good chinwag and would love for you to drop me an email at fabz@quirk.co.za and we can discuss your website's personality, the weather or exchange recipes for fabulous choc-chip cookies!
