Why Internet Merchants Must Have An Affiliate Program

Building a web site is an important 1st step to having an online presence. But after that the real work starts in terms of promoting it. It's a large job in the vastness that is the Internet. You will need some help. Get yourself a horde of affiliates and incentivize them to drive traffic (and sales) to you. There are many 3rd party affiliate management programs available that make it a snap to set up an affiliate program. If you look around you will see that all of your competitors are using this valuable channel so you need to, too!

The #1 thing affiliates want to have is a product that sells like hotcakes. If you have a good product then you will attract a ton of affiliates. If your product sucks you will only get the lowest quality of non-performing affiliates. For each sale an affiliate makes you should pay them well. Probably want to be a bit overly generous here. If they make a lot they will promote you more; and that leads to even more free traffic and sales for you. Give them tons of banners they can use to promote your product. And don't just pick one or two sizes; give them 12 different sizes. Spend a couple hundred on banner designers and give your affiliates lots to work with. Lastly, be sure and pay them on time. Nothing motivates affiliates more than a regular paycheck every month.

When designing your program you have to decide if you want single tier or multi-tier. A multi-tier program will help you recruit more affiliates (the top tier earns a commission on whatever the 2nd tier gets paid). It's a good idea but don't go nuts with the number of tiers or it may start to look like a pyramid scheme (many directories will only allow 2-tier or 1-tier programs). You have to figure out if you want to pay per-sale, per-lead, recurring (for subscription products), or a percent of sales on everything. You'll also need to advertise your affiliate program by posting it in places that affiliates hang out (ABestWeb AssociatePrograms are two of them). And if you don't want to manage and set up the program personally then use a 3rd party provider like LinkShare or ShareASale who make the whole process as simple as can be.

Be sure and treat your affiliates well. They are real people with families. Communicate with them via an affiliate newsletter, pay them regularly, and give them solid creatives (banners, text ads) they can use to sell your products. Make their job as easy as possible and pay them well -- they will then go the extra mile to advertise your product for you.

If you're selling online you need an affiliate program. You may not realize the results that Amazon achieved with their program, but you can still have a very good program that brings in business regularly. Think about having hundreds of other people out there advertising your product or service. Many merchants do just that through their affiliate program. It's one of the most logical uses of the Internet.