hottest ways to market your business online right
now!
Why Selling Your Product or Servicethrough an Affiliate Program
is such a Powerful Marketing Tool!
Want Proof? Our own Affiliate Program generatesus over 1 million dollars in sales, and I will show
you how.
I am constantly asked... "I am selling a product,
should I develop an Affiliate Program for it?"
The answer: Absolutely! With the exception of a few
products and services, almost every product or service
online will be MUCH more successful if you offer an
affiliate program for it.
That is a pretty bold statement, isn't it? I'm probably a
tad bit prejudiced here because we generate over a
million dollars every year just from our Affiliate
Programs!
However, the plain fact of the matter is that I have
never seen a business that invested in an affiliate
program and did not make money with it! Yes, read
that again, I was not exaggerating… I said that every
business I have seen that introduced an Affiliate
program has made more sales, and generated more
money!
In my opinion, developing an Affiliate Program for
your own product or service is one of the most
powerful ways to market online today!
Basically, an Affiliate program is a "reseller program".
You are allowing other people to resell your product at
their website, through their newsletter, to their
customer base, or in any ethical way they want to
market it on the Internet (you get to set the rules on
the ways your resellers are allowed to sell or represent
your product).
Affiliate Programs have made a "level" playing field
between the big corporations and the small companies
like you and I. Using Affiliate programs it is
ridiculously easy to harness the power of other
websites and all of their traffic... and yes, it is possible
to set up an Affiliate Program for your own product or
service without having to take out a second mortgage
on your house!
Yes, you can do it... but it takes an investment of time
and a small investment of money to do it properly! And
you have to do it right the first time! I'll talk all
about how to get set up and how to run a successful
Affiliate Program in several of the sections that follow.
But first, let’s get into the heart of things.
Why can an Affiliate Program make you so much money?
As you know, I love joint ventures because they can bethe easiest path to success in any business (they have
been for me, so I am living proof). Basically, an Affiliate
Program is the ultimate "electronic" joint venture!
Just in case there are few of you who don't
understand, let's go through an example.
Let's say you have a protein powder that you mix in
with your drinks. It reduces cholesterol and also
improves a person's health and vitality. It's a great
product and your customers love it! Now, if you can
team up with someone else who has an email list of
past customers who are also interested in improving
their cholesterol, their health, and how to eat
properly... you will make a boatload of money (the
perfect joint venture)! So much that you would be
willing to give the affiliate a healthy portion of the
profits from all the sales generated from his/her list
(this is called a "referral fee"). You sell YOUR product
to THEIR list of customers, and you both profit. You
use your product and your affiliates’ list.
And it doesn't end there bo! What about websites, which
are health and nutrition oriented? What if you got
them to post a banner on their site about your
product, or you even got them to endorse it to their
visitors because they liked the product so much. Many
of their visitors would see the recommendation and
visit your site… you sell them the product, then give
the website which sent the visitor to me a "referral fee"
for the business.
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| Affiliate program flow. |
Do you see the power in that?
You don't have to go out and spend money onadvertising... there is NO COST in doing this kind of
joint venture. You only pay your affiliate per sale. So if
you don't make any sales you don't pay out a dime…
but if you make a thousand sales, you both make a
ton of money. Your affiliate is then motivated to make
it work as are you… the more you sell, the more
money you both make.
That is an Affiliate Program in a nutshell. The person
who is promoting your products to their customer or
at his website, is known as the "affiliate" and you are
the affiliate program owner.
In traditional marketing, joint ventures of this nature
were a little complicated and time consuming and it
was very difficult to track every order. But now, with
electronic marketing, software can track EVERY
customer sent from someone's website, newsletter,
promotion, personal email to their customer database,
or from any affiliate … to determine who gets credit
for the sale.
Basically, an affiliate is an independent representative
of your company. They try to sell your product and get
a "referral" fee for all the products sold. They send
people to your site (using a variety of methods that will
be discussed later). You then track those visitors and
sales, and give a "referral" fee for all sales generated
from those visitors.
Isn't that beautiful? I love the Internet!
And it gets even better. By using the technology of the
Internet, it is virtually the same work to track "1"
affiliate as it is to track "10000".
Can you imagine having hundreds
or even thousands of people out there,
selling your product or service for you?
Can you imagine how many sales that would generate
for you?
I think you get the picture. Are you excited yet?
So how do you get hundreds or even thousands of
"affiliates" (otherwise known as "resellers") to join your
program?
Sometimes people will "ask" to be a reseller for your
product/service (usually customers who have bought
your product, are quite happy with it, and want to
represent it), or you can actively seek out resellers
(affiliates) that you feel would be perfect for your
products/services.
The only way to become very successful with
Affiliate programs is to do the latter (search for
resellers who have the perfect exposure to your target
clientele in order to sell your product or service).
Let me give you an example. If you were selling
gardening equipment, your perfect affiliates would be
people who own gardening related sites or newsletters,
or those who own other related businesses with a large
database, and that sell products/services that are
complementary to yours (make sure they are not
competitive).
These are the people who would be your perfect "joint
venture" partners and therefore your perfect "affiliate".
When you set up an Affiliate Program, you are
deliberately going out and searching for joint venture
partners! Your affiliates put a banner or text link to
you on their sites... and they will send their customers
and/or visitors back to your site.
In order to do this you must have an accurate and
reliable way of keeping track of your affiliates and the
visitors they bring to your site (and which visitors
come from which affiliate so you know who to credit
when there are sales). This is where Affiliate Program
software comes into the picture (more about that in
one of the sections that follow).
The beauty of all this is that you benefit from the
traffic of OTHER sites… and your affiliates benefit too
by getting a cut of the profit. It is a win-win situation
for both of you. It costs them nothing to join your
affiliate program and resell your goods, and you don't
pay them a dime until they generate a sale… it just
doesn't get any better than that in marketing.
The power behind affiliate programs is that "there is
nothing to lose" (other than a few hours of your time).
For example, the affiliate joins your affiliate program
for free. He invests 30-60 minutes to post the banner
or links to your site from his (or emails her customer
base or newsletter base about your product/service)…
and if it doesn't produce as many sales as she
expected, he simply removes the banners or links.
What did he lose?
An hour of his time, at the most! That is not much of.
Thank you for reading..
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