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An affiliate program give you a very powerful way to
increase sales. If you read any of the information about selling online,
affiliate marketing is considered one of the most powerful ways of
increasing your sales. All of the most successful online marketing
programs involve affiliate sales.
Affiliate marketing dramatically enhances your reach
into the marketplace. You can reach thousands of potential customers that
you would never reach without an affiliate program. Your affiliates are
your sales people.
One of the things you must do to acquire and keep active
affiliates is provide a complete and accurate accounting of what business
each of your affiliates is sending to you. This includes the number of
visitors, or clicks, they sent to your pages and the number and amount of
sales that resulted from those visitors.
There are two basic payment methods for affiliates. One
is Pay Per Click (PPC). You pay the affiliate an amount for each visitor
that they send to your site. So, if you're paying them 10 cents per
visitor and they send 100 visitors to your site this month, you owe them
$10. This very similar to the Pay Per Click search engines like Google,
etc.
The second method is Pay Per Sale (PPS). Each time an
affiliate sends you a visitor that results in a sale, you pay them either
a percentage of each sale or a flat dollar amount for the sale. In this
case it doesn't matter how many visitors an affiliate sends, you only pay
when a sale occurs.
There are pros and cons to both methods. My personal
preference is PPS because you only pay when someone purchases something.
The potential downside of PPS is that you can have a hard time getting
solid affiliates if you can't demonstrate a solid closing ratio. For
example, if you can't show that if you get 100 visitors you get a sale, or
two sales, or more, you may only get affiliates that deliver mediocre
results. The affiliates that will deliver thousands of visitors a month
are not interested unless you deliver results.
Another feature of affiliate programs is how long the
visitor is "remembered". If the visitor doesn't purchase on the
first visit, how long do we remember them to pay the affiliate their
commission? When your affiliate sends a visitor to your site, we place a
cookie on their browser. We also write a record in our database indicating
the affiliate and the visitor. When we place a cookie on the visitors
browser we set a time for how long the remember the visitor. The default
value is two years. So, if the visitor purchases something in the next two
years we will remember who the affiliate was that sent the business. That
way, they get paid even if the visitor didn't purchase the first time they
visited.
Another way affiliates typically get paid is if people
they refer to your site become affiliates. If the new affiliate produces
sales, the original affiliate may receive an additional flat dollar amount
or percentage of the sale resulting from the new affiliate. This is called
a two level affiliate program.
You have a lot of flexibility with eCOMpal's affiliate
program. You can pay per click or pay per sale. You can pay a flat
dollar amount or a percentage. You can set up a one level or two level
affiliate program. You establish the length of time we remember the
visitor.
Setting Up Your Affiliate Program
1. The first step is to click on the Affiliate Program
link in the My Affiliate Program Menu.
2. Name - Give your program a name, like "Selling
Widgets Online".
3. Pay Per Sale - If you're going to Pay Per Sale, check
the Pay Per Sale box. If you don't check Pay Per Sale, it will
automatically be a Pay Per Click program.
4. Cookie Days - Decide how many days you want the
visitor to be remembered. This is Cookie Days. The default is 720 days,
approximately two years.
5. Program Info URL - Where can your affiliate find out
all the information about your affiliate program. This is a reference to
your web site and all the information about your affiliate program,
including how much you pay, how often you pay, what form of payment, etc.
6. Web Address URL - Where do you want the visitors to
go when they click the link from the affiliate?
7. Pay Amount Per Sale Or Lead
8. Payment Percentages - If you check this box, you are
paying a percentage. If you want to pay a flat amount, uncheck the box.
Note: If you're paying per click, this should be unchecked.
9. Pmt Level 1 Premium - How much is the payment amount or
percentage for the first level affiliate?
10. Pmt 2 Premium - How much is the payment for the second
level affiliate? I.e. the affiliate that referred the affiliate that got
the sale or click.
11. Welcome Message - This is the
message that will be sent to new affiliates when they sign up
for your affiliate program.
If you
want to set up an Offline Affiliate Program the following fields
are available
12. Coupon Not Required - If you're not
running an offline affiliate program exclusively from
your account you want to check this box. Normally, the visitor
can NOT proceed until he or she enters a coupon code to continue
the process.
NOTE: For the offline affiliate
program, the visitor (customer) that's making a purchase will be
asked for a coupon code. The
coupon code is the
Affiliate Id of the Offline Affiliate that sent the
visitor. If you are selling exclusively through an offline
affiliate program, don't check the Coupon Not Required box. If
the checkbox is unchecked the visitor MUST enter a coupon code
(the affiliate's ID) in the coupon code before continuing.
13. Free Shipping - Do you want to give
the visitor Free Shipping with their order as an incentive to
purchase
14. Discount - Or, do you want to give
the visitor a Discount as an incentive to purchase. Enter a
discount amount or percentage
15. Is the Discount a Percentage - if
you entered an amount in discount check this box if it's a
discount percentage rather than a flat dollar amount.
That's it for the setup. There's one more thing you need
to do.
Create Links For Your Affiliates
To make it easy for your affiliates, you need to create
one or more links they can add to their site to send their visitors to
your site. You can create either text links or image links. Personally, I
think you should create at least one of each. On some sites an image link
has the most impact. On others, including newsletters, a text link is more
effective or useful.
1. Click on the Links For Affiliates link to start the
process.
2. The first thing you'll see is an empty list of links
you've created. Click on the New button to create a new link.
3. Description - This is used in two ways. If this is
going to be a text link, this is the text that will be displayed for the
link. Give people a compelling reason to click on the link. Why do the
want to go to your site?
If you're creating an image link, then the description
is the Alternate Text for the image. It will be displayed if a visitor
puts their mouse over the image for a few seconds. It should complement
whatever the image is representing and give people a compelling reason to
visit your site.
By the way, the description can contain HTML formatting,
like <B></B> to bold a section of text.
4. Image URL - If this is an image link enter the URL
address of the image. Where is the image coming from?
5. Image Height - If an image link, what's the height of
the image? This improves load speed.
6. Image Width - If an image link, what's the width of
the image?
That's it.
If you create several links with different ../images and
compelling descriptions you can monitor how many clicks and sales from the
clicks you're getting from each of the links. It can help you refine your
message.
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