 Affiliate programs are one of the most
effective ways of getting people to your website and
securing sales. Having several affiliates promoting your
product is the equivalent of having several
commission-only sales people running around selling for
you. You will definitely need an effective affiliate
management program to help you manage your sales force.
Learn about this concept below, as well as a powerful
recommendation to help you effectively manage your
affiliate program boost your sales.
1. What Is an Affiliate Management Program and Why Do
You Need One?
Affiliate management programs allow you to effectively
operate your affiliate program and the partnerships formed
through it. You need effective affiliate management to
ensure the highest ROI possible for all of your
partnerships. Amazon.com is the poster child for a hugely
successful affiliate management program. How did they do
it? By using a robust affiliate management program and
providing powerful tools and training to their affiliates.
2. Where Can You Find an Effective Affiliate Management
Program?
Of course, Amazon's affiliate management program, code is
proprietary, so you won't be able to get your hands on
that, but you CAN get one. Then, just how can you get your
own affiliate management program? It's simple, they're
everywhere. If you type the phrase "affiliate
management program" into your favorite search engine,
you'll see a plethora of returned search results. Don't
despair just yet; I'm going to tell you just what to look
for in an effective affiliate management program. But for
now, you must decide if it's more of a benefit for you to
buy and install an off-the-shelf software package on your
server, or to pay for a hosted service, even if you have
the expertise to easily install your own program. Does the
boxed version do everything you need it to do? Is the
price right? (Only you can decide that.)
3. Things to Look for In an Affiliate Management
Program
Your affiliate management program should allow you to
track your affiliates' progress, train them, contact them
individually, and even make special arrangements with them
(partnerships). A quality affiliate management program
should immediately give you the information you need about
your affiliates at a glance.
You should instantly be able to see who your best
performing affiliates are and which ones are struggling.
In this case, use the tools in your affiliate management
program to email an automated training series to the
affiliates who are having difficulty, or offer more
personalized help. The choice is yours. On the flip-side
of that, you can offer your best performers better
incentives to keep the sales coming. Does your current
affiliate management program allow you to do this?
4. What Are Multi-tiered Affiliate Management Programs
A multi-tiered affiliate management program is one that
not only pays your affiliates commissions on the sales
they make, but it also allows them to recruit others and
make a percentage of their sales as well. Multi-tiered
affiliate management programs are structured somewhat like
MLM programs. They allow the top person to make a
percentage of the sales of everyone else whom they
recruit. Some affiliate programs go as deep as 5 levels,
but these normally don't live up to expectations. It's
like, "each one - teach one. The person directly
above is responsible for the success of the person
directly beneath them.
Two-tiered affiliate management
programs usually work best for this. They are the most
effective, as others don't pay as well on the 1st and 2nd
levels (tiers) as the 2-tier affiliate management
programs. Affiliate management programs that stretch
beyond 2 levels may place the highest commission
percentage to be earned on the lower levels - which are
usually not filled. This prevents the affiliates from
making the max commissions on their sales. It also
provides little incentive for affiliates to keep promoting
your product/service. Therefore, for the best results I
strongly recommend you use a two-tier affiliate management
program if you're thinking of implementing a multi-tiered
affiliate management program. Better yet, implement an
affiliate management program that gives you the
flexibility to offer a flat affiliate program, a 2-tiered
affiliate program, or no program at all to your
affiliates.
My #1 Affiliate Management Program Recommendation
I strongly recommend ProWebWare's affiliate management
program. I have 3 reasons why:
1. Price
2. Functionality
3. Sheer Power
 The affiliate management program is
part of an all-in-one e-business suite of tools for the
Internet entrepreneur. The suite is synergistic
combination of powerful e-business tools that I'm sure
most, if not all e-businesses can definitely benefit from.
ProWebWare gives you powerful tools to automatically run
and manage your affiliate program. Offer your affiliates a
chance to earn commissions, even recurring commissions
through your affiliate management program, and/or through
ProWebWare's 2-Tier affiliate program. You get powerful
campaign tracking and expense calculation tools. They make
easy work of figuring out which ads produce the best
results for you. You get so much value from using the
ProWebWare system that I can't possibly do the system
justice here in this short article. Just check out
ProWebWare for yourself at http://www.prowebware.com.
Thanks for reading, and much success
to you in your online endeavors! |
