effectively manage affiliates

OK, so you are offering an affiliate scheme from your website (where other website owners have an affiliate link to your website or promote your site through email newsletters and receive a % of each sale they make).

So how do you manage your affiliates for maximum effectiveness ?

For any affiliate scheme you’ll get a few “super affiliates” that do most of the leg work. Many people sign up to an affiliate scheme but don’t actually bother going any further. Here are some tips:

• offer an incentive to join the scheme - like a $10 bonus
• provide loads of tools for affiliates to use - no one likes hard work, so provide banners, website copy, example emails in as many different areas as possible - so affiliates can choose what and how to promote
• ensure you explain how to “cloak” a link - most affiliate programs provide affiliate links that are full of code - so show how to undertake redirects and using sites like tinyurl
• communicate often - websites that don’t work with their affiliates are missing a great deal. your affiliates are your sales force so communicate new products, special offers and new ways to promote your services
• have an affiliate promotion - certainly new launches have competitions between their top affiliates. For those who are the top 10 they receive an additional bonus
• Pay a decent percentage. Don’t feel that by offering a 50% commission you are losing 50% of your sale. In the majority of cases you wouldn’t have made the sale in any case so in reality it’s 50% gained — and of course if you have a decent back end system you will be up selling more products to these new customers as well.

 Just remember that if someone has bothered to sign up to your affiliate programme they are interested in earning money.