Imagine if you only had to pay Google Adwords when you actually made a sale! Most online commerce businesses have huge budgets on pay per click campaigns and search engine optimization, but many advertisers fail to consider creating their own affiliate network. An affiliate network can be one of the most effective ways to drive traffic to products and other offerings while only paying for actual leads or conversions.
At the most basic level, affiliate marketing is simply enabling others to promote your business with the promise of paying them a fee for conversions or percentages of sales. The right affiliates are extremely experienced Internet marketers or operators of high traffic domains with the ability to provide valuable user traffic. These “affiliates” or “publishers” are the most important part of any affiliate network. The volume, relevancy, and legitimacy of the traffic they bring will define the success of any affiliate program.
For some advertisers the term “affiliate” fosters a negative connotation, and rightly so. The affiliate industry has had many issues with fraud, spam, and deception. For this reason many advertisers are starting to create their own networks so they can control which affiliates are approved to promote their offers while monitoring those affiliates in real-time. Businesses that already have many online partnerships have an instant group of affiliates that they already know and trust. By creating a network that their partners can join to promote their products and services, advertisers can now easily give partners the credit they deserve for sending valuable leads and conversions, which only leads to more partners referring more traffic.
There are a few trusted affiliate network platforms that advertisers can use to manage and track their affiliate activity. HasOffers, LinkTrust, and DirectTrack are currently the industry leaders, each with very different pricing structures. It is very important to fully try out these systems and conduct your own benchmark testing to determine which is truly the most efficient and economical solution. Choosing the right system will dramatically cut down on employee costs for running the affiliate network.
Getting started is really quite simple. Set up an account with a performance tracking software, load your first offer into the system and allow your affiliates to start signing up. Before you know it your affiliates/publishers will start sending traffic your way, quickly demonstrating the benefits of having others help promote your own products and services.
COMMENTS
Tue, March 09, 2010 - 6:11 PM
Great Blog - Peter!
Wanted your feedback on starting an affiliate network.
I want to start and manage an affiliate network for a niche online category.
Is there a point now where affiliates just avoid networks as there are hundreds all bragging they have the best offers and conversions?
Is there value in offering a niche category solution where affiliates who focus on a niche can drive 100’s of complimentary offers to their users.
I have run a network in the past in UK and in US markets so I know how to do this. Just alittle worried affiliates are ‘networked out’