Archive for: March 2007

Banner ads are a popular tool used by affiliates, but they can be complicated to create and to utilize. Creating pre-made banner ads that affiliates can use on their own websites is an easy way to provide something helpful for affiliates. The banner ads can simply be copied from a page on your site and pasted onto the affiliates’ site. Make sure to provide some instruction about to how to set up the banner ad and how banner ads can bring in targeted traffic for the product. Banner ads can of course be placed on other sites, and instruction on how to go about using them as paid advertising should be offered. You might also offer customized tools to affiliates that ask for them such as different banner sizes.

One way that is even easier for an affiliate to interest people in your product is to use simple signature files. Putting a signature file in all outgoing emails increases the amount of people who will see information about the product. A signature file can even be a variation of the email ads or classified ads that you have already provided. There will be affiliates who are already well-versed in signature files for promotion, but there will also be some who have never thought of it as a promotional tool as well as those who simply don’t know how to set one up.

Offering the information about how to set up an email signature file makes it even easier for an affiliate to utilize this as an advertising source. This information should of course be provided with a warning about using it for illegal spam, but there are many, many ways that it can be used legitimately and still be sent to hundreds of potential customers, if not more. Most people send email daily, so as simply a numbers game there is a possibility that some of the people receiving legitimate emails from the affiliate will then purchase the product. This may even be a fun way for an affiliate to market the product, as it is easy to set up and is a simple way to get the promotion started.

Once an affiliate is underway in their promotion of the product, it is helpful to have some content that they can put on their website, blog, or in email or direct mail to promote the product. One type of content that will be welcomed by affiliates is positive reviews of the product. Getting a glowing third party review is a powerful selling point for any product, and if there are reviews available, providing them to affiliates for their use is a great way to give them something that you already know will be an effective promotional tool.

Supplying interviews are another way to do the same thing-provide some content that will be useful to affiliates, and garner a little control over the quality of the promotion. This may be interviews conducted of you, providing the vendor’s perspective of the product. This may also be interviews with people who have used, or read in the case of ebooks, the product.

In the case of ebooks, it is also a good idea for affiliates to have access to an interview with the author. Interviews are easy to read and are useful in web promotions. Having interviews available is slightly different from testimonials, and provides quotations that are useful in many types of promotions. Anyone writing a press release about your product would be interested in having the interview format to provide the needed quotations. Interviews, reviews and testimonials are all effective ad staples, and will give affiliates a way to advertise right away instead of enduring a wait time to come up with their own copy.

In addition to the training provided for the affiliate to use web tools such as pay per click sites, providing training in the use of the other promotional materials may be just as helpful. Putting together some materials about ad copy, how to use it, where to use it, etc., will make it more likely that an affiliate actually will use it. It may also cut down on the use of spam by affiliates, as they will see other avenues in which the provided materials can be used. Providing training is going the extra mile- showing the affiliates that they are part of your network and truly work with you, not just for you.

Jim Musselwhite is an internet marketer with a wide array of diverse, authoritative information sites including http://www.affiliatemanagementformula.com/ and Affiliate Tools

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jim_Musselwhite

Though the affiliates are the ones who go out and promote your product, you still have a significant part to play in that promotion. In order to keep affiliates willing and able to promote the product, it is important to make that as easy as possible for those affiliates. This means providing them with the proper affiliate tools they need for the successful promotion of sales. And the quicker the sales come for an affiliate, the more the affiliate will be willing to promote your product, creating more profit for both of you.

There are many tools that can be provided to affiliates in order to make their task easier. There are many things that a vendor can create themselves, taking relatively little time, but will be welcomed by an affiliate. One way to assist affiliates is by creating specific email ads that cater to your prospective clientele, and sending them to the affiliates as a promotional tool. This is a quick way to offer affiliates an easy way to promote the product. And, even if an affiliate is an excellent affiliate with effective promotional skills, the affiliate may not have a talent for ad creation, graphics or for copywriting. Giving them this tool not only saves them time, but makes them feel like a valued part of your network.

An affiliate who has not yet sold a product for a vendor may have a problem in knowing how to getting started, and perhaps even sees little hope of making sales with this limited knowledge. Giving the affiliate ready-made tools to make sales may just tip the scales toward the affiliate being an active marketer for the product.

Tools that can be provided to an affiliate may include classified ads that a vendor can write and offer to affiliates for their own use. There are many different ways this can be utilized by affiliates, including the many free sites that post classified ads. Compiling a list of free sites, as well as low cost effective sites, on which the ads can be posted is an extra service that would give the affiliates an added arsenal of advertising opportunities, making it much easier to get the product sold and their commission earned. Some instructions on how to submit classified ads and how to retool the ad copy for their own use to target specific markets are all ways to make using the ads even easier for an affiliate.

Ads to be used by the affiliate for pay per click advertising are another useful tool. PPC ads are one of the biggest ways that affiliates use to advertise, but having the ads may not be enough for beginning affiliates. Providing some training on how to use pay per click services, as well as information about the major sites to use the ads with are extremely helpful with getting affiliates to use all of the resources that the web has to offer.

One of the problems that affiliates run into, even if they are excited about the product and want to promote it to their best ability, is not having the knowledge to know where effective promotion can be found and how to use it. Training given to affiliates may include overviews about how affiliates can earn higher revenues through effective advertising, as well as how to navigate Google Adwords and Yahoo Overture and other affiliate tools. Understanding the systems will not only make an affiliate more inclined to use the resources that are now available to him, but may also garner some loyalty to the vendor who taught him the ropes.

(article to be continued in part 2)

Jim Musselwhite is an internet marketer with a wide array of diverse, authoritative information sites including http://www.affiliatemanagementformula.com/ and http://www.youraffiliateteam.com/

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jim_Musselwhite

Joint ventures are a profitable and powerful way to market a product, but affiliate networks are very profitable as well. Clickbank has 100,000 affiliates waiting for products to promote and sell, making it the ideal place to go if you have a product to sell. The system in place makes it easy for vendors with an account and a product to connect with affiliates and conduct highly effective affiliate recruiting.

Affiliates can sign on to sell a product without your having to pitch it to them or convince them to sell it. All of the sales made through affiliates are tracked and accessible through your control panel. It will even take care of the banking hassles that small businesses have to deal with when selling items. Clickbank processes the orders for the product and approves the customers’ payment. It also takes care of the bank inquiries that may be necessary, as well as questions from customers.

Opening an account with Clickbank is free, but there are other fees. Contact information must be given to the site by the vendor so that checks can be sent from Clickbank. When the time comes to sell a product, there is an activation fee required of $49.95. This is a one-time fee and opens the door to a lifetime of sales. When an item is sold, Clickbank also charges a fee based on the selling price. There is a $1 charge plus 1.5 percent of the sale. This is deducted directly from the sale and the vendor and the affiliate are sent the rest of the sales price.

When signing on to sell a product through Clickbank, you must specify the price that will be charged for your product. Then, decide what your commission rate for affiliates will be, with the maximum amount of commission allowed being 75 percent. Clickbank will then show the vendor a page where potential customers can find out how to purchase the product. A customer will click on an order link to buy the product, and is then shown a window with the price. Customers enter their credit card information which must be approved by Clickbank before the sale goes through. Upon approval, the commission is deducted from the price and sent to the affiliate and the rest of the price, minus Clickbank’s fees, is sent to the vendor. The entire system is automated and the vendor has to do very little besides signing up and deciding a price and commission rate. Affiliate recruitment efforts are now underway in a highly automated fashion. The rest of the time may be spent looking for profitable joint venture partners.

There are more than 10,000 web businesses using Clickbank for its ease and effectiveness, which draws more affiliates than any other site of its kind. Clickbank works only with digital products, such as software and ebooks. These are items that are simple to sell online and don’t need a complicated shipping process.

And by using Clickbank to set up your joint ventures, potential partners know that with the automated system they will be paid their commission as agreed. This takes a great deal of the risk out of a joint venture enterprise and may help garner the trust of potential partners. The sheer number of affiliates and potential partners also means that there is a very good chance that some of them will have products similar to your niche item, no matter how specialized it may be. Make sure to find a partner with a very similar item to use their customer list to its full advantage.

One downside to the Clickbank affiliate system is that you do not personally choose your affiliates. Affiliates are free to sign up with products they want to promote, so your influence is minimal. But, vendors do choose their joint venture partners, which gives an element of control over the businesses that will be endorsing your product. Joint ventures tend to be slightly more personal deals, with more interaction between the vendor and the partner than a vendor with an affiliate.

With joint ventures, getting your product out in the virtual marketplace and in front of interested customers has never been easier. Affiliate networks and joint ventures have the potential to help your business earn a steadily growing income with much less effort on your part. Your affiliate recruiting process is now in large part on autopilot.

Jim Musselwhite is an internet marketer with a wide array of diverse, authoritative information sites including http://www.affiliatemanagementformula.com/ and http://www.youraffiliateteam.com/

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jim_Musselwhite

Managing your affiliate system is one step to getting a profitable joint venture started. By becoming a Clickbank vendor, an easy way is provided to you for keeping track of all of your affiliates. First, sign up as a vendor with Clickbank. Then your product or products must be submitted to Clickbank’s affiliate program. A digital product must be on its own “pitch page” that you make with your own domain. Clickbank will not accept pages made on free sites- you must own the domain. The pitch page will be full of sales copy describing and promoting your product. The page will also have a payment link that routes the payment through Clickbank. The page is also required to disclose how long the digital delivery of the item will take. Also, the format used for the product must be disclosed to ensure compatibility with the customer’s system. Clickbank’s return policy must also be listed. Clickbank will replace defective items for eight weeks after purchase, after which time all sales are final.

There are also some items that are prohibited from being sold through Clickbank. Adult items, MLM items, and email lists are just a few of the prohibited items. Make sure to check the list to make sure your item is not prohibited by the company.

After you are registered with Clickbank and your product is picked up by affiliates to market it, Clickbank provides a place to manage your affiliate network. The affiliates can even be paid through this control panel. Clickbank offers an easy and free system of tracking and paying affiliates. Your entire affiliate network can be managed from this control panel. Once you have an effective affiliate network in place, you can begin to set up joint ventures.

Once you find a joint venture partner, you can keep track of your joint ventures through Clickbank as well. Once you have your account in place, you have to seek out and find a joint venture partner. When negotiating with the partner, you will decide upon a commission percentage that will go to the partner. Your Clickbank control panel will have a place to input the commission rate that was agreed on for each sale made through them. Then, sign up the partner as an affiliate for your product. They may also sign up themselves as your affiliate. Either partner can do this, but if you are seeking out the joint venture, you may want to do the sign up simply to make it easier for your partner.

The joint venture partner will then be assigned a link for the item you are selling. You will come up with an ad, and place that link on the ad as the order link that customers will use. You will then submit the ad to your joint venture partner who will send the ad out to the customers on the company’s customer list.

Clickbank makes the accounting for all of your joint ventures simple and easy to track. They will even do the accounting and pay the joint venture partners for you. Clickbank sends checks out to all of the vendors, affiliates and joint venture partners who make sales through the links they provide. Clickbank sends the appropriate commission to affiliates and partners, and sends the vendor’s check to the one selling the product. Checks are sent out every two weeks.

(article to be continued and this section completed in Part 3)

Jim Musselwhite is an internet marketer with a wide array of diverse, authoritative information sites including http://www.affiliatemanagementformula.com/ and http://www.youraffiliateteam.com/

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jim_Musselwhite

One way many website owners have discovered to set up an affiliate system quickly and very easily is to use the services offered by Clickbank to get their affiliate recruiting efforts in gear. Clickbank offers several tools to assist vendors with increasing their affiliate network, as well as tools to help them keep track of sales provided by their affiliates.

One of the best ways of putting a network to work for you is to develop a joint venture with another company. Joint venture marketing utilizes the customer lists of another site and endorses your products to that customer list. The company giving the endorsement gets a commission percentage from the sales they generate for you. Joint ventures can be very powerful for publicizing a website or product, garnering a much wider potential customer base. The endorser is already a company that the customer trusts, as they have already bought from that company or contacted them for information about their product. That trust is then passed on to you through their endorsement of your product.

A potential endorser should possess a large customer list, with a high percentage of them being customers who have paid for items versus customers who have simply expressed interest. The endorser should also be someone who is well-known, with a name that will be recognized by those customers. And using customer lists is much more effective than endorsing the product to people who may have no interest in that type of product. Cold lists, or random lists of names and contact information, simply can not provide the same kind of sales leads that a hot list of real customers can. For this reason, a good joint venture partner should be offered a high commission rate for the potential sales they will bring in. Joint venture commission rates are generally a lot higher than those paid to regular affiliates, as an effective joint venture partner will be putting your product in front of many customers who are already known to be your target sales audience. Some vendors offer joint venture partners a higher amount than they themselves will receive for the product because of the much higher number of sales that will be generated.

Clickbank is by far the best place on the internet to put together a joint venture system. They have the largest directory available of products that have affiliate programs. Finding joint venture partners using Clickbank is much less time consuming and is much more targeted toward your niche than sending cold emails or direct mail to these companies. Because Clickbank has so many potential joint venture partners available, there will be many available that fit with your particular niche. Affiliate recruitment and joint venture systems go hand in hand.

To find potential partners, Clickbank’s marketing and business forums are full of business people who are waiting for the right joint venture to come along. There are also list services concerning joint ventures that vendors can join in order to find the right partners. When approaching a potential joint venture partner, it is important to tell the potential partner about your product and what makes it a unique item. Let the partner know what you can offer them and why they should work with you. Be honest in your pitch- play up the product without making unrealistic claims. The partner should be impressed by the product. Make sure they know what they can get out of the deal in terms of sales and commissions. You may be rejected by a few candidates, but if this happens, simply contact another one. There is a joint venture partner out there for every product.

It can take some time to find the right joint venture partners, and once you have one, the business relationship has to be nurtured so that trust can be established. Once you have one successful joint venture deal in place, it will be easier to find and establish others, making the affiliate recruiting process go that much more quickly. There is no limit to how many joint ventures you can launch if you are honest in your business dealings and offer fair business terms.

(article to be continued in Part 2)

Jim Musselwhite is an internet marketer with a wide array of diverse, authoritative information sites including http://www.affiliatemanagementformula.com/ and http://www.youraffiliateteam.com/

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jim_Musselwhite

Direct mail is currently not used by very many business owners for purposes of recruiting affiliates, and its under use is cutting out a potentially effective way to attract and retain quality affiliates. Direct mail has the advantage of being a hard copy that can be read anywhere, not just at the computer. It can also contain a lot of information in a small space. A postcard is a small piece of mail and is very inexpensive to send, but it will hold a good deal of ad copy for your network. Having effective copy written for your direct mail will ensure that the information needed by a potential affiliate is included, and increases the chances that the terms will interest the potential affiliate. When writing direct mail, it may be a good idea to hire a copywriter to make the most of the potential of the medium.

Online forums are another good way to find interested affiliates. Online forums are so numerous that forums devoted to the retail niche being served will be easy to find. There are also many forums devoted to affiliate programs. These sites will already have people there waiting for the right affiliate programs to come along. Prospective affiliates can be contacted directly on the forum and presented with information about the affiliate program. A webmaster may also want to have a page on their site dedicated to their affiliate program, and post the page on several different forums that may have interested forum users, allowing forum members to read the details from your site at their leisure.

In addition to contacting potential affiliates and directing them to the site, it is possible through advertising to bring affiliates directly to the site and have them contact the webmaster to sign up to the program. These include the ever-present banner ads, which can and do work. Banner ads are relatively inexpensive compared to other forms of advertising, and can be selectively paced on sites with the potential to be seen by those interested and experienced with affiliate programs. Sites with content concerning affiliate sites are an obvious choice, but there are many other types that may serve the affiliate program just as well. Choosing sites that concern website building is a good choice for banner ad placement, as those building websites may be wondering how to make money using their new site.

Sites with content about your specific retail niche are very good prospects for banner ads or other advertising. Viewers come to the site with some knowledge and interest in the items, and some of them may have web sites devoted to something similar. These sites will have a better click through rate than sites that have completely unrelated content, giving you a higher chance of making sales. Choosing a popular website with thousands or even millions of unique views per day will be more expensive than smaller sites, but it may be worth it for the exposure it brings. A popular site’s traffic can ensure that your ad gets the click through rate (CTR) it needs to make finding the right affiliates possible. It also brings attention to the site itself, bringing in potential customers as well as the potential for affiliate recruitment.

All of these methods can garner affiliate hopefuls for you, but the next step is finding affiliates who are a good fit and will continue to generate sales for you. Affiliates who are responsible in their recruiting methods and generate sales are valuable business partners and must be treated fairly and with respect in order to keep them within your network. Affiliates will expect a fair compensation for the business they bring in, and they should be paid honestly and on time. Keeping successful affiliates long term creates an income stream that can last years, if not for a lifetime, so it is worth the extra time needed to nurture the relationship.

Reliable and experienced potential affiliates will want to know more about the affiliate program you are offering than just the potential revenue share. They may want details about how the business is run, the company’s reputation, about the quality of the items or services being sold, how accurate the tracking is, and to know that they can contact you with any questions or concerns they may have. A potential affiliate wanting this type of information is a good sign and the information should be rendered with honesty. A seasoned affiliate will know if the revenue potential or the company’s reputation is being dishonestly portrayed, and will want nothing to do with the network. Treat affiliates the way you would treat a business associate in real life and they will want to stay.

Another reason to keep affiliates long term is their potential for recruiting other affiliates. It is time saving and profitable to have your network do the bulk of the recruiting for you, as well as opening up new channels of advertising and word of mouth from the network. Treating affiliates poorly may actually create the kind of reputation that makes it difficult to get anyone to join your network. Affiliates talk, so make sure it is what you want said about your business.

Because of the rapidly increasing rate of affiliate networks, there are now businesses that can be hired to recruit affiliates for you. Outsourcing of affiliate recruiting is relatively new and is not something that everyone is interested in. Hiring a recruiter cuts the site owner out of the process and leaves them with affiliates that they themselves might not have chosen. It is a time saver, however, for businesses that are expanding and have little time to recruit. For websites that are just getting an affiliate network started, it may be an effective jump start to get the word out about the affiliate opportunity. But the jump start must be weighed against the added expense that is incurred by outsourcing.

However you decide will be the most effective way for you to recruit affiliates, treating them well is the key to keeping the system a well-oiled machine that will be bringing in a steady stream of income. To keep affiliates, they will have to have a steady stream as well. The amount you pay your affiliates is entirely up to you, and there is a wide variation in the amounts that affiliates receive. But, the best word of mouth publicity will be garnered with a high rate of pay as compared with similar sites. A higher than average rate will make the site desirable to affiliates and likely they will be more motivated to spread the word.

Second tier affiliate systems are the motivation behind the affiliates move to recruit more affiliates to the network. The first set of affiliates will earn a percentage of what their recruits are making. This is an excellent incentive for expanding your network indefinitely and creating that passive income that most website owners so desire. While you are growing your business, your network will be hard at work selling your items for you, creating an unlimited income that can last a lifetime. Your business name and its reputation get out there too, bringing in more affiliates as well as more sales.

Affiliate recruitment is undeniably one of the most critical functions that an online business owner can do.

Jim Musselwhite is an internet marketer with a wide array of diverse, authoritative information sites including http://www.affiliatemanagementformula.com and http://www.youraffiliateteam.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jim_Musselwhite

Affiliate programs are the way the internet is doing business. Affiliate networks are growing at an exponential rate as more website owners realize the potential for business growth and word of mouth publicity for their websites. Affiliates use their site’s traffic to increase their own revenue as well as increasing the sales for the site with whom they are affiliated. The affiliate’s website will have a link or ad that can be clicked through to the website offering the items or services. The affiliate is paid either per click through or by a percentage of the sales made by the people who clicked through. This win-win situation can be cultivated with the right affiliate recruiting methods. Recruiting is the process of finding quality affiliates who will bring traffic to your website and spread your company’s name.

To find affiliates who have traffic of their own and will drive the right kind of traffic to your website, the key is the recruiting process used to find the affiliates. Recruiting affiliates is not a simple matter of chance and it is not something that should be done in the simplest possible method to attract the maximum number of responses. Having a poor quality of affiliates can negatively affect your site’s reputation, as well as wasting your time and energy.

An effective affiliate program vastly increases the amount of publicity the website receives, increasing page views and building a name for the site and its goods or services. Affiliates will go on to recruit other affiliates, further spreading the word about the website and the items it sells. Affiliates who are recruited in a questionable manner may then recruit others in a questionable manner, rendering the publicity that the program generates a negative publicity. And, negative recruiting methods can cause problems that go beyond just a matter of the site’s reputation.

Affiliate recruitment is something that should be done legitimately, through legal means. This means avoiding spam, unlawful telemarketing, filling up irrelevant message boards with your information, etc. There are many legitimate ways to recruit affiliates that will not be seen as harassment or as an annoyance and will garner a better reputation for your site. A site with a good reputation is more likely to attract quality affiliates.

Email is currently one of the most popular methods of recruiting affiliates. But, this can be both positive and negative both for the website and for the site’s owner. If the email is sent out in a random fashion, it may not be compliant with the recent CAN-SPAM laws, making the site’s owner vulnerable to lawsuits and legal action. In addition, because many site owners rely on their network of affiliates to further recruit affiliates, those affiliates may recruit through email that is not CAN-SPAM complaint, further causing potential trouble for the site owner. The site owner is legally responsible for their affiliate network’s recruiting tactics and can be prosecuted by the FTC for any violations that their affiliates commit. There are many other ways of recruiting affiliates than sending mass emails or allowing the affiliate network to do so.

Email is a good way to recruit affiliates, but they must be used deliberately- targeting specific people with a legitimate offer to join the affiliate network. Contacting webmasters of websites that have a similar content to your site is a good first step to finding affiliates. The emails should contain all of the information that an affiliate needs to make the decision to visit the site and join the network. Sketchy details in an email will read like spam and not the legitimate opportunity with your network that it really is. When sending recruiting email, think about questions you would ask if you were learning about your network, and answer all of those questions. Include contact information to further separate yourself from the spammers.

Effective affiliate recruiting can also be done through targeted telephone calls. Directly calling those who may be interested in an affiliate relationship is likely to be just as effective as or even more so than mass emails, as they are not filtered out as spam and it is possible to speak directly to the potential affiliate. A strong business relationship can be made from speaking directly over the phone in a way that is more difficult to establish through email alone. A business relationship that begins with phone contact is more akin to a business relationship in the real world, rather than something only conducted through email. People do respond to a personal touch.

Jim Musselwhite is an internet marketer with a wide array of diverse, authoritative information sites including http://www.affiliatemanagementformula.com and http://www.youraffiliateteam.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jim_Musselwhite