Affiliate Program as it should be
by Pavel Lenshin
Every off- or online business has a target of growing its
market share. Under all other equal conditions the percent
of the market, occupied by a company, means certain level of
recognition, brand, exposure and, therefore, sales and
income.
For small business owner a shift from 0.01% internet market
share to 0.04% may result in tremendous four times income
growth, the problem is in the limits of resources this
particular owner has access to. Usually they are weak enough
to allow such expansion at their own cost.
Help may come from two massive marketing instruments:
- viral marketing;
- business partnership based on outsourcing necessary
resources.
Today we are going to speak about latter instrument of
gaining exposure you deserve.
Business partnership is an agreement between two or more
legal entities to cooperate together in order to reach
mutually beneficial results.
By extrapolating such statement into a framework of gaining
market exposure, we can narrow this meaning down by focusing
on uniting promotional efforts for reaching mutually
beneficial results.
In practice the owner of affiliate program with the aim of
gaining extensive market exposure attracts fellow marketers
to promote the owner's(s') product(s) for a reward usually
in the form of commission from retail price per sale. A
commission for popular info products may vary from 5% to
70%.
Promotional materials (like, endorsement letters, reviews
and articles) can greatly assist your partners in promoting
your product as highly effective pre-selling tools.
The dilemma of joining affiliate programs
The most common mistake beginners do is registering with all
possible and impossible affiliate programs they see in hope
to promote them all and collect all the money they were
promised to get on the page of respective affiliate program
owners.
In dominating majority of cases they end up with wasted time
and money. The reason is simple, they don't have necessary
resource - a database of consumers, subscribers, business
partners - people who may be interested in such type of
offers. Instead, those newcomers decide to start their
online businesses by promoting other people's products, what
is extremely hard, because you will build client database
and credibility for the company products of which you
promote, not for yourself. The only thing you can do is to
grow the subscription database, unfortunately, the most
valuable asset - loyal clients - won't be accessible in any
case.
Some well-known internet millionaires, making fortunes
cross-promoting 3rd party products may truly support the
idea of "easy income with affiliate programs", but they tend
to forget that all their profits were possible due to huge
subscriber databases, thousand of affiliates and customers a
newcomer does not have!
That is why start wise by creating your own product, grow
your credibility, circle of loyal customers and then join
and promote as much 3rd party products as you consider
necessary.
Setting up partner program
Every partner program you will create or setup should have,
at least, basic must-have features:
1. Database driven registration of affiliates.
2. Tracking affiliate sales in order to count commission.
3. Admin control panel to support affiliates and track their
sales.
There are 3 basic methods of having fully functional partner
programs application, not going far into science, they are
"do it yourself", "setup 3rd party application", "use 3rd
party service".
The first method is for those, who are knowledgeable
programmers and fortunate enough to invest a lot of time in
creating such a solution for personal needs or those, who
are lucky to have a lot of money and hire those
knowledgeable programmers. Responsibility for taking under
control all support and function-related issues would lie on
your shoulders.
Setting up 3rd party affiliate program solution requires
much less time or money, if any. The result will be the same
as above - fully functional partner program and inevitable
support problems. The only difference is that you won't be
able to develop that partner application the way you need
and like.
The main advantage of 3rd party service is the ability to
stay unaware of how your partners sign up, track sales,
receive checks and so forth, because in this case servicing
your partners or affiliates will be the headache of
independent company, not yours. For such "reluctance" 3rd
party affiliate program provider would charge you on monthly
or per sale basis, slightly decreasing your net profit at
each sale.
Having your own affiliate program in place enables you to
expand your market boundaries exponentially.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Pavel Lenshin is a devoted Internet entrepreneur, founder of
ASBONE.com, where you can find everything to make your
business prosper. Discounted Internet services,
FREE ebooks
http://ASBONE.com/ebooks/ FREE reports
http://ASBONE.com/reports/ ------------------------------------------------------------
| DISCLAIMER: The content provided in this article is not warranted or guaranteed by Developer Shed, Inc. The content provided is intended for entertainment and/or educational purposes in order to introduce to the reader key ideas, concepts, and/or product reviews. As such it is incumbent upon the reader to employ real-world tactics for security and implementation of best practices. We are not liable for any negative consequences that may result from implementing any information covered in our articles or tutorials. If this is a hardware review, it is not recommended to open and/or modify your hardware. |
More Affiliate Promotion Articles
More By Developer Shed
 developerWorks - FREE Tools!
|
Join us for this on demand webcast to learn about developing complex systems more quickly and efficiently. We'll cover market drivers for developing, governing and reusing systems software assets and how you can develop system software assets with Rational Asset Manager.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Download the IBM WebSphere Portal V6.1 beta code and learn more about the rich features and enhancements in IBM WebSphere Portal V6.1. WebSphere Portal provides a composite application or business mashup framework and the advanced tooling needed to build flexible, SOA-based solutions, and scalability to meet the needs of any size organization.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Visit IBM developerWorks to download a free trial version of WebSphere Extended Deployment Compute Grid, which lets you schedule, execute, and monitor batch jobs. Because online transaction processing and batch jobs execute simultaneously on the same server resources, you can avoid costly duplication of resources. Compute Grid supports job types of Java transactional batch, compute-intensive and a new type called "native execution", which enables non-Java workloads to run on distributed end points.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Learn from the best! Find out how developers use Rational ClearCase to be more flexible, innovative and deliver higher quality code in the Rational ClearCase Power Users eKit. This complimentary eKit provides a collection of materials, like articles, whitepapers, and demos that can help you become a power user of Rational ClearCase.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Portfolio Management is about effectively managing portfolio value by aligning portfolio investments with business goals. This complimentary e-kit provides a collection of materials that can help you understand how IBM Rational enables and automates best practices for improved governance and clear visibility into portfolio and project performance across the entire IT project lifecycle.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
As organizations have grown increasingly dependent on online software, the risk of malicious attacks has also become far more serious. Fortunately, well-governed organizations can protect their Web applications by injecting vulnerability assessments and ethical hacks into their software development and delivery processes. This paper describes 12 of the most common hacker attacks and provides basic rules that you can follow to help create more hack-resistant Web applications.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Visit IBM developerWorks to try the IBM SOA Sandbox for connectivity. The SOA Sandbox for connectivity provides a trial environment with the tooling and components to help you explore how to effectively connect your infrastructure and integrate all of the people, processes and information in your company. Use the hosted sandbox to explore SOA techniques that streamline connecting existing IT assets together, as well as learn how to connect them to new business logic.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Whether you are creating new applications or modifying existing ones, managing integration of new components with traditional z/OS elements is a critical part of building and deploying modern applications. Listen to this webcast to see how IBM can help you optimize your development process using an IDE like Rational Developer for System z that integrates with management tools, such as ClearCase to manage your application development on mainframes.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
The discipline of assembling and delivering software is maturing beyond standard developer-centric compile/test software builds. The end-to-end software development lifecycle is emerging as the new focus moves “Beyond the Build.” Join this on demand webcast to learn about methods for streamlining software delivery and key capabilities of the IBM Rational Build Forge framework for automating build and release management in environments of any size.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
IBM Lotus Notes 8 provides a wide range of developers the ability to provide customized, integrated user interfaces via composite applications and via custom sidebar and toolbar plug-ins. This webcast provides you with tips and techniques to use with out-of-the-box capabilities of Lotus Notes 8, and survey how you can share useful components within your own company and within a larger community.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
All FREE IBM® developerWorks Tools!
|
