Getting Affiliates Active

[Sticky-Jason]

Tweet

Hi all,
Let me introduce myself my name is Jason and I’m relatively new to affiliate marketing, I work for the online marketing company Stickyeyes and the company has recently launched its own platform Sticky Affiliates (white label of TD). Any way to cut a long story short a series of different circumstances has ended with me being heavily involved with the affiliate side of the business.

We have a decent program on the platform which offers a very good commission (25%) but I’m struggling to get affiliates active. I’ve managed to get people signed up to the platform but it’s just this final hurdle that I fall short on. I’m hoping that some of the veterans out there may be able to impart some advice or tips that may help me get affiliates active on the program.

All help will be greatly received no matter how basic it is (I need to learn how to walk before I can run) :blush

[Kandevil]

when I saw the title I thought this was another affiliate fat camp type thing, saying we affiliates spend too much time sat on our ar$es

sorry Jason, sure some sensible advise will be forthcoming soon.

[nim-b]

Have you done the following:

- really SHOUTED about the programme, through all available channels

- looked at the affiliates currently signed up, looked at what sites they have, and contacted them with specific and useful suggestions for how they can promote you

- done some research into sites that work in your industry, and contacted them to ask them to join

- made 100% sure you have given affiliates all the right tools they need to easily promote you. That means asking them what they need, and getting stuff like creative and feeds spot on.

If you've done all of that I'm stumped

Always bear in mind that the majority of your affiliates are going to be inactive at any given point, but if none of them are active you do have a problem.

[Sticky-Jason]

Thanks Naomi :tup

Looks like I need to get my research cap on again!

[andrewjamescrowther]

Hi

Hows Matt Oxley doing?

[gowithabc]

Until you have more affiliates than you know what to do with, this will always be a battle. Especially when you get a lot of signups through google adwords. I have found that many of the affiliate signups that come from adwords are usually very new, some usually do not even have a website yet and are people just looking into the idea of getting started in affiliate marketing.

So many people think it's easy to just make a website and start making money, so they jump in, signup for 100 affiliate programs and realize it's not as easy as their initially thought.

Keeping up constant communication is critical. I recommend an email system that will send our reminders if the affiliate account is not logged into for a certain amount of time, and newsworthy affiliate articles that I hope my affiliates will benefit from.

When you find a good one, that works hard make sure to give these affiliates special attention. Once you get a good one, you don't want to lose them!

[Sticky-Jason]

Hi Jack, Matt is doing well he has moved on from Stickyeyes looking for another challenge.

Thanks for the advice Gowith, It seems to be a recurring theme that communication is key, as for keeping the good affiliates happy I make sure they are treated like royalty! The last thing I need is the client hunting me down for bad perfomance!

[rexiedexie]

Hi Jason

It is no longer cheap to promote affiliate sites so if I was only getting 10% 20% or 30% commissions I would not make a profit if I really promoted strongly.

It's very hard to get good affiliates now. Also good affiliates go for the big commissions.

I personally do not join third party programs or programs that do not have multi level commissions and they must pay me at least 50%

Jason this is what you are up against. Top affiliate marketers now just promote a few good affiliate program.

Jason I live in Australia and I would spend $30 to $50 Aud to get one good affiliate.

Thats approx 15 to 25 U.K. pounds

You should target beginners and hope you can nurture and train up some top marketers.

[Elaine]

Also good affiliates go for the big commissions. 

have to disagree with this statement - I reckon I'm a 'good' affiliate and my main criteria is 'will the product sell' - I'd rather go for a smaller commission and know the product is priced right than always chase the larger commissions, which are usually based on too high a price - all merchants have to work within their margins.

I'd rather have 100 sales at 5% than none at 25% - and then when I've got those 100 sales then I can negotiate with the merchant to increase my base rate

[sgpratley]

Hi Elaine,

I don't know if this is a very stupid question, but how do you know a product is going to sell before you start promoting it? i.e. how do you decide which programmes you're going to even test?

I have my own methods which are little more than a combination of gut feel, experience, and seeing how committed the retailer is to the product, but I just wondered if anyone had anything more scientific?

[Mogga]

Hi Elaine,

I don't know if this is a very stupid question, but how do you know a product is going to sell before you start promoting it? i.e. how do you decide which programmes you're going to even test?

I have my own methods which are little more than a combination of gut feel, experience, and seeing how committed the retailer is to the product, but I just wondered if anyone had anything more scientific?

You have to decide whether the site sells. You can go through the process of buying something and see how long it takes before you're fed up and give up.
Testing things like clear delivery info, delivery options, clear pricing, plenty of info on returns and product info - and if something is unique then most of that goes by the wayside anyway.
Also if the phone number is really visible then it's probably going to hurt conversions.

Sending anywhere between 100-500 clicks should be enough to ID converters.

Other problems to watch out for are batched sales, those that wait months before telling you you've made a sale "in case it's not valid" but don't include this sort of info on their merchant page.

When all else fails test purchasing and then seeing if it tracks is the only way.

[Quaytickets]

You have to decide whether the site sells. You can go through the process of buying something and see how long it takes before you're fed up and give up.
Testing things like clear delivery info, delivery options, clear pricing, plenty of info on returns and product info - and if something is unique then most of that goes by the wayside anyway.
Also if the phone number is really visible then it's probably going to hurt conversions.

Sending anywhere between 100-500 clicks should be enough to ID converters.

Other problems to watch out for are batched sales, those that wait months before telling you you've made a sale "in case it's not valid" but don't include this sort of info on their merchant page.

When all else fails test purchasing and then seeing if it tracks is the only way.

These are exactly some of the points we looked at when designing our website so that people didn't give up in the booking process. We have an average 1:8 booking rate. We only display our phone number in a the contact us section so that affiliates don't direct traffic to us only for the person to call.
As for batched sales all of our sales are validated in realtime so they show up in the affiliates account. Seems we are doing everything right :tup

Peter
Quaytickets