Setting Up your Affiliate Marketing System

Setting Up your Affiliate Marketing System - There is much speculation about how much money you can earn online without your own product. Marketing your own digital product on the Internet can be very lucrative but there is no reason why you can't profit a great deal by using creative methods that offer real value to Internet surfers and have your own product as well.

An affiliate program is really not as difficult to set up as you may think. Thanks to the high demand for affiliate systems recently, there are now lots of ways to set up your own program.

Setting Up your Affiliate Marketing System

Here's what you need to set one up:

1. A web site with your own domain name.

2. At least one product or service that you own completely.

3. A system to handle commission tracking and payment.

That sounds pretty easy, doesn't it? Well, actually it is! And it's getting easier all the time.

The first two items listed above are self-explanatory. Of course, you need your own website and your own product or service. You can't very well set up an associate program if you don't own the site or the product(s) you will be promoting. If you have not taken these two steps, you'll need to do them first. Once you've managed to get by these two steps, you can move right to step three, setting up your program.

You will need to search the Internet for a system that will handle commission tracking and payment. You can try to do this yourself but you will most likely miss some and missed ones are missed income. There are free ones, as well as, paid ones. 

The positive aspects of an associate management system are many:

1. You can sign on associates more rapidly and grow a larger force of resellers.

2. You'll enjoy the automation and online management of affiliates.

3. These systems provide full sales statistics for both you and your associates.

How To Set Up An Affiliate Marketing System For eCommerce Store

Affiliate marketing may not be the first thing you will do starting to master sales for a new eCommerce business. It may not be the one that will work for you if you are willing to get the results right now with minimum efforts. But it may become one of the top traffic acquisition sources if you invest time in creating a high-efficient affiliate program. 

In this article, I'll tell eCommerce businesses more about opportunities and mistakes to avoid in affiliate marketing. 

Affiliate marketing: what is it?

The first thing that comes to your mind when defining eCommerce is selling goods online. But "selling" means much more than making sales and doing marketing for your store. 

In reality, eCommerce is about: 

Finding the right manufacturer or setting up production on your own;

Shipping all goods on time and to the right people;

Taking care of payments and taxes;

Warehousing and storing;

Customer service.

Not much time left to actually do marketing and sales. Affiliate marketers selling your product may become one more sales channel that does not require much time and taking too many risks. 

When having set up affiliate system your main purpose is getting more traffic, preferably your target audience. Working with affiliates you create a network of people interested in promoting your business. It's like your own sales army. 

It may happen so that you will have a stocked shop and use affiliates to sell and ship your goods. 

Quick facts about affiliate marketing:

1

81% of brands and 84% of publishers leverage affiliate marketing; 

2

38% of marketers call affiliate marketing one of the top customer acquisition methods;

3

According to Google Trends, between September 2016 and September 2017 search interest in the term "affiliate marketing" has risen by 30%;

4

16% of all online orders are generated through affiliate marketing;

5

19% of affiliate campaigns promoted fashion products. Affiliate marketing for sports and outdoor products accounted for 15%, and health/wellness and beauty accounted for 11%;

6

In most affiliate programs less than 10% of affiliates drive 90% of traffic and conversions

7

Amazon Associates affiliate program is one of the greatest examples of the affiliate networks. It lets you promote any good that is sold on their platform and earn 10% commission.

Affiliate marketing: types

Let's take a look at three main types of affiliates: people who will promote your product, make a buzz around it and actually make sales. 

1

Bloggers and owners of media resources

The people you will work with most probably have some knowledge, experience, and reputation in the niche you are selling. These affiliates will talk to their audience and promote your products in the way "from their own experience", sometimes even if they don't use your product. 

Also, they may want to include a banner on their website and wait until somebody clicks on it and they earn a commission from the sale. 

Promotion channels: YouTube, podcasts, websites, social media, email. 

2

Media buyers

Marketers who use PPC, SEO, and other paid channels to promote your product and get a good ROI. 

Promotion channels: social media, GDN. 

3

Coupons and review sites

Websites interested in discounts for your products and special offers. 

Promotion channels: websites, social media, review websites. 

4

Companies who work in the same market as you do

Promotion channels: personal upsales to their clients, marketing collaborations, and email campaigns

How to start with eCommerce affiliate marketing

Get all your ducks in a row, and only then send a pitch letter to your potential affiliates. The first thing you need to do is to prepare all your products, website and social media to be shown to your partners. 

Oh, almost forgot, if you really want to set up a successful system of sales via affiliate marketing you will need to invest in relations with your sales managers. 

#1: Let's count. Pricing techniques

First of all, you should decide on whether you will pay for the sale, for a click or per lead. The most frequently used scheme involves payment for each sale made with the help of an affiliate. 

There are two possible ways to pay your affiliate marketers for their work: 

Percentage of sales

Fixed commission 

Affiliate commissions may differ from just 1-2% of the sale to 50-70% of each sale depending on the type of the product and company. 

Commission depends on whether you need to manufacture, store and ship the product. For physical products affiliate commissions may vary from 1-20%, for digital products that may be sold to the new people with no extra efforts more times 30-80%. 

Identify your Key Unique Proposal, the proposal that will make you stand from your competitors companies proposing affiliate programs. 

#2: Create materials for your affiliates

Take care of everything they need to successfully sell your products: banners, information about your company, templates for social media and guidelines for emails. 

Think about onboarding experience: what you will tell your new affiliates about the product and the company. 

Create FAQ list and send this list with all other materials to your affiliates to save your time within an email sequence. 

Here's what you need to add to your affiliate marketing program:

How program works: step-by-step guide how to start selling your products;

Landing page with all information on the terms and conditions of the program;

Marketing templates to use for promotion;

All basic information about your company and frequent updates on offers;

Success stories of the affiliates (later, when you have some affiliates);

Types of customers you are looking for, your perfect client profile;

Here is how Apple and GSN do it on the landing page for affiliates: 

 

Promoting your affiliate network may be conducted through affiliate forums and networks, social media, existing customers and many more channels. 

Some great resources that will help you to set up affiliate recruitment campaigns: Avangate's blog post and Evan Weber's LinkedIn article.

Finding people working on commission

A person is known by the company he keeps. Choose your affiliates wisely! Your products may be represented and referred to by: 

People who love selling but don't have their own products and do selling for other companies;

Bloggers and famous people having a decent amount of the traffic to the website in need to monetize it;

Companies dealing with the same target audience as you do. 

What do affiliates pay attention to while choosing the merchants? 

According to PayLoadz three most important factors include: 

19% - commission;

13% - merchant reputation; 

11% - relevancy of the product to what they promote. 

Common problems you may face

#1: They represent your brand in a way you don't like

You may be peacefully surfing the world wide web and suddenly stumble upon an inappropriate message or claim made by your affiliate about your product. 

A message that is too far from your thoughtfully crafted brand message. Bad news travels fast. What to do and how to prevent these situations? 

How to protect yourself: 

1. Give guidelines of what your affiliates can do with your logo, branding, how they can present you and approve their posts if necessary. 

2. Use tools for screening the brand mentions on the web to keep track of all your affiliates. You can use these tools: 

Google Alert: classical tool to keep you aware of what they are saying about you and react proactively 

Mention: media monitoring tool that helps to monitor social media, news sites, blogs and many more 

Screening your affiliates social media and blog posts: this rule applies especially well to the new affiliates, with whom you are just building trust. If you notice something that doesn't match your brand message, tell your affiliate to delete it and discuss the conditions again so that this situation won't repeat again. It is very important that your affiliate understands what happened, why you don't like his post and will stay interested in further collaboration. 

#2: Choosing the right partners

Well, you can not predict your affiliate's actions until you start the collaboration, that is true. However, you may act wisely knowing how they work with other companies. Check their older posts and look for how long their previous collaborations lasted. An affiliate changing his partners too often may be a red flag for you. Do you want to repeat the same standard? 

How to protect yourself: 

You may want to talk to the companies who have already collaborated with your prospective affiliate and ask them how it was. After you set up a collaboration with an affiliate, you should provide all the necessary information and get back to him asap if he has some questions. 

#3: Fraud

You need to constantly check where you affiliates place your links and if the traffic you get comes from real people, your target audience. 

How to protect yourself: 

Monitor conversion rates from affiliate websites. If the conversion rates are: 

Too high: check if affiliates are placing your links too often to generate commissions;

Too low: your links are placed with many others ads and are not distinguishable. 

Tracking systems for affiliates

So, you have set up an affiliate system. And the network is expanding. How to track all commissions when the numbers are growing? You can use tracking software to attribute the right commission to the right affiliate or create your custom one. 

There are lots of software you can use, but I will mention just a few: 

PostAffiliatePro

Probably one of the best tools to track your leads, registrations and sales commissions. It includes the function of private campaigns visible only to the chosen affiliates, along with the possibility to introduce sub-affiliates. 

LeadDyno

These guys promise to feature your affiliate program in their newsletter and their network to get you some initial traction. One of the bonuses is Affiliate Dashboard Mobile App which makes it easy to track your affiliates their commissions no matter where you are in a real time.

OmniStar

You can install OmniStar system in no more than 15 min. Pricing starts at $47.00 with 15-day free trial work. 

Custom tracking system

If you are Shopify store owner, you may find lots of useful apps for affiliate tracking here. 

More about other affiliate tracking systems here. 

What you should pay attention to when choosing the tracking system:

How easy integration with API is;

Whether it allows the multilevel tracking;

Payment gateways it can be integrated with;

Costs which may vary depending on the number of affiliates and links;

Free support.

To wrap up

Affiliate marketing for eCommerce businesses is becoming one more powerful tool for marketers from day to day and ignoring it may be a serious mistake. 

Lots of tracking software and a possibility of up to 20% from affiliates makes marketers invest more in establishing relationships with affiliates and crafting systems suitable for everybody. 

Although you may face some challenges while setting up your first programs, be sure: your efforts will pay off in some time! 

How to Design an Affiliate Marketing System to Boost Your eCommerce Sales

According to eMarketer, worldwide eCommerce retail sales were $2,304 trillion in 2017, an increase of 24.8% over 2016, with mobile sales accounting for 59.8%. While this is great news for online retailers, it has also resulted in fierce competition and reduced profit margins.

That's why eCommerce businesses need to find innovative ways to expand their reach and find new markets in order to stay competitive online.

One of the easiest ways for boosting eCommerce sales is through affiliate marketing. This involves partnering with another eCommerce store selling complementary products and asking if they can promote your products to their online community. For every sale made, your affiliate partner will be given a percentage of the revenue generated. The beauty of an affiliate marketing model is that it can by new businesses and for those well-established.

Affiliate marketing is one of the simplest ways to generate a high ROI. That's why we'd like to show how to design an affiliate marketing system which will help you expand the reach of your products and achieve your sales targets. Here are the main steps in setting up a profitable eCommerce affiliate marketing system:

Step#1: Strategy

To get started with an affiliate marketing system, you have two options.

The first option is to create your own eCommerce affiliate program using a tracking system. There are several free and paid tracking apps you can choose from.

screenshot or serp result

Paid Apps from Shopify, are a great way to get started. Many of these offer a free trial period, which gives you the opportunity to try out a few tracking apps to see which best suits your affiliate marketing system.

The second option is to sign up with an affiliate network. Essentially they're marketplaces which allow eCommerce businesses to find affiliates who are willing to promote their products. The advantage of using these networks is that they already have people searching for products to promote.

Even if four or five active people sign up to your affiliate marketing program, you could generate a steady stream of sales and boost your profit margin.

Some of these affiliate networks charge a monthly fee or take a cut of profits, which often discourages new entrants to the market. Popular affiliate networks you can consider are Rakuten LinkShare, Bigcommerce, and Tapgerine.

Step#2: Setting the Commission Structure for Your eCommerce Affiliate Program

One of the most debated aspects of setting up an affiliate marketing system is deciding on the affiliate commissions to be offered. The compensation structure put in place can often be the difference between the success or failure of an affiliate marketing program.

It takes considerable time, money and effort on the part of affiliates to promote products. So unless they are offered a generous commission, affiliates are unlikely to promote your products.

What most eCommerce business owners fail to realize is that affiliates don't just help them sell more products, but bring new customers who you can sell to over and over again. Given the fact that it is easier to sell to an existing customer, it can be worthwhile offering 50 to 60% commissions on the front end. You will ultimately make up the cost over the lifetime value of the customer, through repeat sales.

affiliate-marketing-commission-structure

Of course, it goes without saying that you need to ensure all costs have been factored into your pricing so you still make a profit even after paying your affiliates and take into account any fees charged by affiliate networks and other related charges.

Step#3: Building Your Affiliate Partnerships

The next step is to find your affiliate partners. Many businesses make the mistake of thinking this is a numbers game, and the more affiliates they have on their side, the better will be for them. In reality, affiliate marketing follows Pareto's Principle, and you will find that 20% of your affiliate partners will bring in 80% of the sales. These are your stars, and you need to treat them with the respect they deserve.

One of the best ways to find affiliate partners is to start with a list of other businesses selling complementary products online and contact them directly. Look for businesses that have a modern website and testimonials from happy customers. This will give you an indication of how successful they will be in selling your products.

For example, if you have opened an online store selling pet care products, you could approach an eCommerce store selling dog food. Or you could set up an affiliate arrangement with vets all around your city.

If you sell beachwear, you could set up an affiliate partnership with a company selling surfboards.

You can start the conversation by sending them a simple email as follows:

Dear (Name),

I was browsing the internet and came upon your store. I run an eCommerce business [name of business] selling [what you sell]. Since we are targeting similar markets and have complementary products. I feel there's excellent potential for a profitable affiliate partnership.

If you are interested in learning how we can get started and the generous commissions we offer, I would like to invite you for a no-obligation exploratory meeting at your earliest convenience.

If you are interested in exploring this opportunity, I am happy to send you some product samples.

If on the other hand, you choose the option of signing up with an affiliate network, their tracking systems make it easy for affiliates to sign up to your program without you having to contact them individually.

The tracking systems are quite sophisticated and enable both you and the affiliates to accurately track the number of sales being made and the affiliate commissions that need to be paid.

Step#4: Creating Affiliate Marketing Resources

Once you have affiliates on board, you need to provide them with marketing resources which will make it easier to promote your products. Without these, your affiliates will struggle to sustain an initial spurt in sales. This will make it difficult for you to achieve significant growth in your affiliate program.

Here are some resources which will be required for a sustainable affiliate marketing program:

Marketing Material: Email Templates, Banners, Facebook Ads, Articles and anything else which assists with sales

Product Images and Descriptions: Approved product descriptions for use on websites or other channels

Training: Ideally, this can be in the form of training videos which will help affiliates boost their marketing skills so they are successful in selling your products

Affiliate Membership Portal: Affiliates should be provided with a unique portal to log in and check their sales and commissions on a daily basis

eCommerce affiliate marketing is an excellent opportunity to foster strong customer relationships and expand your reach beyond what you can ever hope to accomplish on your own. Once you're started and begin to see initial success, you'll see why this is such a lucrative channel to grow your sales while building a community of loyal customers and partners.

How To Start An Affiliate Program in Minutes

Procrastinating about Starting an Affiliate Program

Procrastinating about Starting an Affiliate Program

Yes, it's on your to-do list.  It's been on your to-do list since the internet told you that you needed an affiliate program to boost online sales.  But your blood pressure slightly increases and your head feels like almost exploding at the thought of actually getting it done.  Why?  Well, it feels like a painful process.

Heck, starting your online business was painful enough.  So why would any sane person self-inflict more pain?  You'd rather participate in way more exciting activities like binge-watching your favorite series on Netflix, endless social media scrolling or being sucked into hours-on-end of YouTube videos.  Right?  And the cycle of procrastination continues…

But you're here.

Which means you're now my problem.  But that's ok because somewhere deep inside your procrastinator self lies some kind of hope that you can get it done.

Now before your thoughts of starting an affiliate program escalate into frustration and you throw in the towel (again), – yikes, this feels like a therapy session – I need you to hear this.

Building an affiliate program can be easy.  To be precise, you can start an affiliate program in minutes.

No, I'm not high on CBD.  For reals.  You'd be surprised at what you can accomplish with LeadDyno, even if you're an affiliate program virgin.

Ok, so now that I've calmed your overwhelmed self down, are you finally ready to get cracking?  If you're not then all the effort into counseling your butt this far has failed, but trust me, by the end of this post, you'll see how easy it really is.

Here's How You Can Start an Affiliate Program in Minutes

What you'll need to get grinding:

An affiliate system that WORKS.

An affiliate system that integrates seamlessly with your online store.

Reliable tracking that your affiliates can trust and won't make them feel like you're ripping them off.

Affiliate marketing tools that won't frustrate or embarrass your affiliates.

A convenient payment system that won't want to make you pull your hair out.

Affiliate program promotion to get you out into the universe.

Affiliates.  What's an affiliate program without affiliates?

Wooa, that's a lot.  Want to save yourself the hassle?

Listen up.  All YOU need to do is sign up with LeadDyno.  Wham-bam and you get all of the above – easy!  Yes, yes, yes and YES!  It's easy.

Integrations

LeadDyno Affiliate Program Integrations

Relax, make some tea or coffee and even have a muffin because LeadDyno seamlessly integrates with the following shopping carts:

Shopify

Woocommerce

Big Commerce

Etsy

and more integrations.

Nothing is stopping you from starting.  Why?  Because we'll hook you up with a 30-day free trial.  Sweet.

Here are Some of the Goodies You'll Get with Your LeadDyno Free Trial:

You'll get an Affiliate Sign Up Page right off the bat and we'll even host it for you at yourpagehere.leaddyno.com – no sweat!

Get an easy to install "Join Our Affiliate Program" button for your website.  (Note: if you want quick tips on setting this up and you're already signed up with LeadDyno, then click here for more info.)

LeadDyno Affiliate Marketing Sign Up Page Sample

At this point you're really all good to get rocking and rolling – you may as well celebrate your accomplishment.  See – didn't I tell you it was easy?

And if you're ready to make it official and enter into a committed relationship with LeadDyno, there's more that we'll love to give you.

What You'll Get with LeadDyno when You Sign Up to Start an Affiliate Program

When you sign up for the full deal, here's what we'll hook you up with:

Attractive affiliate marketing tools such as social media sharing.  Get Facebook and Twitter templates that your affiliates can easily copy and paste.  We really help make it easy for your affiliates to promote you.  Arming your affiliates with the exact tools—even the exact scripts— that they need for social media domination is another step toward affiliate promotion success. And the process only takes a matter of minutes.

Automated adding of affiliates – nothing is manual and tedious, thank goodness.

Automated welcome email upon joining your affiliate program.  Connect with your new affiliates and give them a great start to promoting your online business.  That's what our automated welcome email is for. You can easily enable this feature (see a helpful video here) and give your affiliate program the professional touch it needs.

Google Adwords Tracking.  Access tracking links that you can easily use for your Google Adwords campaigns for neat performance data.

Facebook Ads Tracking.  LeadDyno will tell you how much business you're generating from your Facebook campaigns.

How to Find Affiliates to Sign Up for Your Affiliate Program

So you've made it this far:  your affiliate program is finally done.  Phew.

But what now?  Where're all the affiliates hiding out?

An affiliate program without affiliates is like having a party and no one turns up – what an anticlimax.  A very depressing anticlimax actually.

So here's how to make affiliates turn up to your affiliate program:

1.  Reach out to your loyal base of happy customers

Recruit them!  They're probably your most powerful brand ambassadors.  And LeadDyno makes recruiting them so easy with the Affiliate Invitation feature that lets you invite your customers to join your affiliate program.

The process is simple: you turn on your Affiliate Invitation Email feature so that your new customers will receive an invitation to join your program.  Kick back, relax, and watch as your affiliate program list grows without any additional effort.

Heck, we've already taken the liberty of writing the affiliate recruitment email for you. You can check it out at our affiliate recruitment page.

2.  Promote your affiliate program

Social media baby.  Find social media influencers and bloggers within your niche and pitch your affiliate program to them.  Who wouldn't want to earn some dollars for easy product referrals?

The great news is that LeadDyno has a massive network of affiliates on its sister network, E-commerce Affiliates.  If you're subscribed to LeadDyno, your affiliate program is automatically listed on this private network and will be promoted to active affiliates.  Affiliates are able to join your affiliate program seamlessly.

Get Affiliate Tracking Within Minutes

LeadDyno Affiliate Program Activity Report

"Okay, this all sounds great," you say. "But you're not really an affiliate program until you have sophisticated tracking available."

And you're right.  Once again, we're happy to do most of the work for you. It all starts with the quick setup of an affiliate link and the entire tracking process looks something like this:

Unique Affiliate Links.  Each member of your affiliate program will have a unique link so that all of their visitors, leads, and customers are tracked in the Affiliate Program easily and efficiently. That's really all they need to get started.

Real-Time Affiliate Performance.  As for you? Well, once you've got a new affiliate partner set up, you'll be able to view their tracking link, their visitors, their leads, their customers—all of it—from the roomy comfort of your own affiliate program dashboard.

Transparent Tracking for Affiliates.  What's more, your own affiliates can check their own statistics by using your program to log in to their dashboard. This means they can view their progress and upcoming commissions with up-to-date, true-to-reality statistics.  This stuff makes you look good and your affiliates will trust you.  In fact, many of our own users here at LeadDyno make this feature one of the points of emphasis when advertising their affiliate program.

For more easy step-by-step guidance, check out our affiliate management resources.  We'll take you through everything from installing and testing LeadDyno to tracking banner ads and going international.  Oh and we have a friendly support team to help you when you need it.

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