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!
|
Visit IBM developerWorks to download a free trial of the latest release of IBM Lotus Sametime Standard V8.0. Lotus Sametime Standard V8.0 is a platform for unified communications and collaboration that combines security features with an extensible, open solution including integrated Voice over IP, geographic location awareness, mobile clients, and a robust Business Partner community offering telephony and video integration.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Download a free trial version of IBM Rational Software Analyzer Developer Edition V7.0 to identify bug defects earlier in the software development cycle. Rational Software Analyzer is an extensible software development solution that reduces the expense of bug-fixes by enabling static analysis code reviews and bug identification very early in the development cycle.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Secure your Web applications with IBM Rational AppScan Standard Edition V7.7, previously known as Watchfire AppScan. This Web application security testing tool automates vulnerability assessments and scans and tests for common Web application vulnerabilities. Visit IBM developerWorks to download a free trial of IBM Rational AppScan Standard Edition V7.7.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Asset Reuse is a key strategy for companies looking to create innovative solutions to solve complex software development problems. Searching for, identifying, updating, using and deploying software assets can be a difficult challenge. Listen to this webcast, to learn about strategies and tools that you can leverage for a successful project, including Rational Asset Manager, Rational Software Architect and WebSphere Service Registry and Repository.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
This webcast outlines the best practices that must be instituted to gain the maximum benefit from SOA while maintaining high quality of service. Whether you are deploying new applications or managing and monitoring your existing infrastructure, learn how you can ensure high quality of services with SOA based solutions from IBM. All registrants who attend this live Web Seminar will receive complimentary access to a white paper titled “Maintaining QoS in an SOA Environment”.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Regression testing -- in which code is thoroughly tested to ensure that changes have not produced unexpected results -- is an important part of any development process. But many testing environments neglect the terminal-based applications that still form the backbone of many industries. In this tutorial, you'll learn how the Rational Functional Tester Extension for Terminal-Based Applications works with other Rational Functional Tester to help test terminal-based applications quickly and easily.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Get a free trial download of the latest version of IBM Rational Functional Tester V7.0.1. Rational Functional Tester is an automated functional and regression testing solution for QA teams concerned with the quality of their Java, Microsoft Visual Studio .NET, and Web-based applications.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Get a free trial download of the latest version of IBM Rational Performance Tester V7.0.1, a load and performance testing solution for teams concerned about the scalability of their Web-based applications. Combining multiple ease-of-use features with granular detail, Rational Performance Tester simplifies the test-creation, load-generation and data-collection processes that help teams ensure the ability of their applications to accommodate required user loads.
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!
|
|
|
|
Explore how Rational and WebSphere software enable enterprise documentation in SOA environments. Specifically, a new integration between IBM WebSphere® Business Modeler and IBM Rational® Method Composer software can help technical writers more easily keep enterprise operations manuals in sync with changes that are made to business processes, resulting in more accurate and timely documentation that benefits the entire enterprise.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
All FREE IBM® developerWorks Tools!
|
