An Introduction to the Hows, Whens, Whys, and Whats of Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate relationships take time, nurturing, and attention to grow. There is no quick and easy solution for completely monetizing a website - it is a process.

Your traffic* is worth a great deal. You know that. In creating partnerships and joining Affiliate* Marketing Programs, you have demonstrated a desire to capitalize on your traffic and to make money while complementing your current viewers’ experience. Below are some ideas on how to promote the program, to make it a success, and to expose it in a beneficial way to your visitors.

Newsletter - Send it out as an advertisement* with your newsletter. A marketing newsletter is typically sent to current or prospective customers free of charge. A good marketing newsletter, in both design and content, strives to turn prospects into customers and customers into repeat customers. Your newsletter is not a sales pitch, but rather an avenue for interested parties to hear about news, offers, and specials that you can bring to them for being valued customers or viewers. With affiliate program cookie tracking, repeat customers will continue to make you money! This approach will work for both Monetization and Information sites. Monetization* sites can take the process one step further, and include campaign offers in past-customer lists. To appreciated patrons of your site, you can offer specials and discounts through affiliate programs that match the demographic and interests of your customers.

Confirmation Page - Monetization Sites are also able to offer these specials and discounts on their confirmation or after-sale pages. In essence, you are offering another product. Monetization sites do not want to disrupt the sales process, and in fact want to make the buy process as short and streamlined as possible. Include the information you want your customer to see after the sale (such as the affiliate link, descriptions, call to action, etc.); you are hereby extending the monetization process but not the buy process.

Integrating Content - Informational Sites should post information about the product or program. Creating a page to include history or reviews about the product would drive interested traffic to the site. This is the clearest form of contextual marketing* and demographic targeting. If you have an informational site, integrating the link into the content of your webpage would bridge whatever gap might exist between your viewers and potential customers. Creating a natural progression through your site and to the affiliate links you have set up will enrich the site as a whole. If you have a nifty custom-created navigation bar, think about creating affiliate links in the same style. This way, your site flows cleanly and the affiliate information is seen as more content on your site.

Blog* Post and Promoting the Second Tier - Write a blog/news entry or post mentioning the program as a business opportunity. You can include a text link in this kind of ‘advertorial,’ and it will be more targeted than a banner or the randomly placed creative. If you drop your second tier link in the post direct fellow marketers and webmasters to sign up as affiliates and promote the program, you will gain a commission on the sales that they create as well!

Banner* Promotion - If the only option is a banner, make sure to place the ad above the fold, or ‘above the scroll’* - Studies have shown that upwards of 20% of visitors do not scroll down. To interest those consumers, and to get that click-through rate that will make you money, people have to be able to see the promotion, right? There are many things to take into account regarding banner placement —

Make sure to set your frequency* cap if you have a series of banners that occupy the same space. If the banner creatives become too repetitious, your viewers can experience banner burnout*, which will significantly decrease click-through rates*. If you want to cycle through banners, use two or three different creatives for the same affiliate program.

If you have a rich media creative, one that is telling a story (15 to 30 second video clip, scrolling text, etc.), make sure to place the banner near a content-rich area of your site. This way, the information being communicated has a chance to get your viewer interested.

As much as you can, make sure to match the style of the creative to the style of your site. If you can’t find a creative you like in the program software, contact the program manager. Every good affiliate program and affiliate management team should be available to alter and creative specific tools for their affiliates to use.

It is extraordinarily important to get the offer involved in your content. You have a very specific group of viewers and repeat visitors, and the only way to integrate this potentially lucrative opportunity is to grab the attention of your guests with content-specific products and endorsements. Play to their needs and wants, and this partnership will turn into a benefit for yourself and your viewers.

*(See Glossary Below)

-Zac Sutton

Zac Sutton is currently the Director of Business Development for NetTraction.com and AffiliateTraction.com. He can be contacted by calling 831.464.1785 ext 3307 or by email at Zac@NetTraction.com.

Glossary Terms:

Above the Fold/Scroll: In reference to ad placement in traditional media, such as newspapers, this defines the top half of a page. On the web, this portion of the page is viewed without scrolling.

Advertisement or Ad: Digital creative that is typically interactive. Banners, buttons, interstitials and key words are all examples of online advertisements.

Affiliate: Typical term for a website that drives traffic to another website in exchange for a percent of sales from users driven to the site.

Banner: An interactive online advertisement in the form of a graphic image that typically runs across the top or bottom of a webpage, or is positioned in a margin or other space reserved for ads. Banner ads are historically GIF images. Many ads are animated GIFs since animation has been shown to be more effective. The standard banner is 468 pixels wide by 60 pixels high. The standard banner is still the mainstay of online advertising, but is quickly giving up ground to newer, potentially more effective forms of online advertising, such as email and interstitials. See Creative.

Banner Burnout: Overexposure of advertising creative that contributes to a drop in click-through rates. Frequency control reduces burnout for a particular creative or campaign.

Blog: Online journal of entries in reverse chronological order that typically features multiple links; short for Web log.

Click, Click-Thru or Click-Through: The activation of a hyperlink using a mouse or other input device. The click-through is essential to the interactivity of online advertising

Contextual marketing: Promoting a product in a setting, environment, or publication that is relevant in terms of content.

Demographics: Statistical data that describes the makeup of a given user base, and includes information such as age range, gender, education levels, and average household income. Demographic data is one of the tools used to match ad space with an advertising campaign.

Frequency: The rate a particular user is exposed to a particular creative or a particular campaign during a single session or period of time. Frequency capping is essential to the success of online advertising campaigns to maximize creative effectiveness.

Monetization: ‘Monetize’ in its purest form means to convert a substance or an idea into money. Regarding the Internet in particular, monetization is the process of earning money from website visitors, such as through advertising, e-commerce, etc.

Rich Media: A general term used to describe advances in online creative that take advantage of enhanced sensory features such as animation, audio and video. Rich media takes many different digital file forms. The serving of rich media creative can require more bandwidth and software modifications for older systems. Rich media creative will become more useful as user bandwidth increases.

Targeting: The control of the distribution of ad creative to only those websites or those users that fit within the particular targeting parameters. The depth and breadth of potential targeting parameters is unlimited. Targeting has the potential to dramatically improve the advertiser’s ROI. Typical targeting parameters are: local user time of day, website category, user country, user age, etc.

Traffic: The volume of visitors to a website. Traffic is the currency of online success, but is not the only factor. Massive, low grade traffic to a website with poor content will inevitably result in failure. To an ad network Traffic Management is the ongoing effort to balance Publisher inventory with booked campaigns.

When setting up an affiliate program there are many things to consider such as the payout, cookie duration, payment threshold, when to send checks, payment types, number of tiers, and what type of campaign to run.

The first thing to consider when establishing an affiliate program is just how much to pay out. Whether the campaign you are running is CPC (cost-per-click), CPS (cost per sale) or CPA (cost-per-action) there are simple computations one can do based on statistics and hard numbers to ensure a return on the investment and a healthy margin. To do this, one must establish an acquisition cost threshold (ACT) to ensure that profit margins remain reasonable. To establish this threshold, one must take the total profit margin per sale and decide how much of this margin they are willing to pass on to affiliates. For example, if the total cost including business expenses for a bottle of vitamins is $6, and it is sold to the customer for $10, then what remains is a $4 profit margin. To establish an ACT, one must figure out just how much of this margin will be shared with the affiliate. Start by establishing the maximum amount that will be given as a commission. For this case, we will say that the merchant splits the margin evenly as the highest payout they are willing to give. In this case, that would be a payout of $2 or 20% and the merchant would receive the same margin. It is important to save the highest threshold for super affiliates, bonuses and second tier sales. Super Affiliates are high producing, reliable affiliates that require less support for the amount of revenue they bring in. It is also highly advisable to reserve a higher payout for super affiliates as a way to entice them to the program and to keep them loyal. Bonuses are also very important for motivating affiliates; so it is important to leave room in the ACT for this purpose as well. Also, if one decides to run a second tier program, it is important that the first and second tier commissions combined do not exceed the ACT. So for this example, a good payout for standard affiliates may be 13% ($1.30), with a second tier payout of 5% of sales ($.50), a super affiliate payout of 18% ($1.80-$2.00), leaving 2% for bonuses and incentives. This would ensure the merchant a 20% margin. As a note, some affiliate tracking software figures the second tier as an additional percentage of the second tier sales, where other tracking software figures the second tier commissions as a percentage of the earned commissions of the second tier affiliate. The preceding example was figuring it as a percentage of the second tier affiliate’s sales.

The next factor to take into account is the cookie duration. A cookie refers to a small piece of code that is placed in a visitor’s web browser. It stores information about the visitor for tracking purposes or for customizing the web experience. In the case of affiliate programs, a cookie is responsible for determining whether or not an affiliate will be credited with a referral upon the visitor’s return to a website after their initial visit, and how long after their initial visit they will be credited. Cookie duration generally ranges from 1-365 days. There are arguments both for shorter cookie durations and longer cookie durations. Through experience, however, the arguments for a longer cookie duration seem to outweigh those for a shorter duration. Some merchants choose a shorter cookie duration because they view an affiliate program as a means to obtain dirt-cheap traffic, and traffic is especially cheap if the affiliate does not get credited when there is a sale. However, one must understand that reliable, quality affiliates are well aware of this, so merchants who have shorter cookie durations generally cannot maintain a base of experienced super affiliates. To keep affiliates happy, and to recruit affiliates who will produce reliable results, one must look at their affiliate program as a way to maintain win-win partnerships, and not as a way of taking advantage of novice webmasters. For this reason, it is highly recommended that merchants set their cookie to 365 days or longer to attract more experienced affiliates who can produce results. Remember that without the affiliate that traffic does not exist, so it is vital to do everything in one’s power to maintain a somewhat egalitarian relationship with the affiliate.

The payment threshold is another indicator for affiliates as to whether or not the merchant is trustworthy and views the affiliate relationship as a win-win partnership. A high payment threshold will deter new affiliates. Quite simply, the sooner they are paid for their efforts, the sooner they will trust the merchant and give their loyalty to the program. High payment thresholds single out smaller affiliates and act as a red flag for more experienced super affiliates who will see this as a merchant finding ways to squeeze more money for themselves out of the relationship. Some merchants believe that it is the quality of the affiliate that matters, rather than the quantity. Truthfully, both quantity and quality are important, and the only way to ensure that you retain both super affiliates and smaller producing affiliates is by treating them fairly and giving them no reason to believe they are being taken advantage of. For this reason, it is advised that merchants set this threshold as low as possible while still taking into account the costs incurred to pay the affiliates such as check cutting fees and postage. Thresholds should be set at no more than $50 and preferably at $10 or less. The faster affiliates receive a check, the faster they will produce.

Most programs send out checks monthly. However, a bi-weekly or weekly payout will certainly attract more affiliates. It will, however, increase management costs, which may have to be figured into your ACT. Offer as many payment methods as possible so long as they are easy to implement. The standard payment options are by check, wire or PayPal.

The next thing to decide is how many tiers one would like their affiliate program to have. Most programs have one or two tiers. The first tier represents a direct referral from an affiliate to the merchants website where a purchase takes place. This is the main commission or first tier. A second tier commission refers to when an affiliate refers another affiliate to signup for the program. After this referral, the affiliate who referred the new signup will get a percentage of all of the sales the new affiliate accrues. For example, if the second tier payout is 5% this means that the original affiliate earns an additional 5% of the sales earned by the new affiliate whom they referred. As stressed before, some affiliate tracking software figures the second tier as an additional percentage of the second tier sales, where other tracking software figures the second tier commissions as a percentage of the earned commissions of the second tier affiliate. Obviously, the latter would be a much higher number than the former when promoting one’s program. Merchants must be sure to gain a firm understanding of how their affiliate software figures this number. Additionally, some programs have more than two tiers. However, this poses a problem. The more tiers that are produced, the less can be paid to each affiliate, making the relationship much less lucrative for the affiliate and the merchant. Frequently, this hurts the affiliates who directly promote your offer. It is best to offer two tiers so that the first tier affiliate earns 25% of the total commissions accrued by the affiliate in his/her second tier.

The payout type (cost-per-action, cost-per-sale or cost-per-click) depends on several factors. Though CPC (cost-per-click) campaigns do have their place, there is tremendously high probability of fraud, requiring constant monitoring. The great majority of affiliate programs now do not offer a CPC options for this reason unless they have robust fraud control available to them.

CPA (cost-per-action) programs are useful to obtain visitor information for future promotional use. For example, if a merchant wanted to create a list of customers interested in arthritis medication, a good approach may be to create an HTML based advertisement for affiliates offering a free eBook on arthritis tips. The visitor then would be required to enter their information to receive this eBook and would then opt-in for more information. As long as this visitor is aware that they are opting in for more information about arthritis, and the site privacy policy allows the sharing of this information, it can then be sold as a lead, or used to promote the merchants products in the future.

Another good use of CPA campaigns is when the purchase requires a great deal of financial commitment, or if the product is too complex to explain without a two way dialogue. A merchant can set up a form to give a free consultation and may also choose to include additional incentives such as a free offer. The lead produced by this form can then be followed up with a live phone call to instil trust in the visitor and to ensure a two-way dialogue, which will increase the possibility of a sale. However, if one chooses to use this approach, the costs of having a call-center must be figured into the ACT. Also, the merchant must find a way to match the phone call with the lead, to ensure the affiliate is credited properly. This can be accomplished by the affiliate ID being passed through code to the database where the lead information is stored. Usually the affiliate ID can be obtained from the affiliate linking URL and passed on.

In contrast to the high maintenance and fraud potential of CPC and CPA campaigns, CPS programs are the most straightforward and cost effective campaigns for low financial commitment impulse buys or purchases where the visitor will fee comfortable purchasing online. The majority of offers are of this nature. CPS campaigns have the lowest level of maintenance, fraud and additional costs.

Years before the NASDAQ tanked and banner advertising died, e-commerce pioneers like Amazon.com and CDNow began partnering with topic-centric websites to drive revenues, paying a commission for each sale referred. The practice spread quickly and became known as “affiliate marketing”. By early 1999, Forrester Research proclaimed “affiliate programs” as the Web’s most effective traffic-driving technique - almost twice as effective as banner advertising.Consider that by September 1999, more than three years after Amazon launched, there were over 1,000 merchants offering affiliate programs. And by 2000, Amazon’s Associates Program had grown to over 500,000 affiliates. What Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos started as a polite conversation, had grown into an entirely new industry, bringing with it affiliate networks, directories, newsletters and a variety of consultants. Other innovations followed and affiliate marketing is now an integral part of the Web’s composition. It’s also now widely heralded as the Web’s most cost effective marketing vehicle.Still, as affiliate marketing evolved, issues with the model have been exposed. The affiliate community needs to remember that affiliate marketing is not about generating “cheap” advertising, but developing profitable strategic relationships.But now there is a way for merchants to offer a win-win where both merchants and affiliates have a vested interest. Improving technologies now make it possible for the formerly CPS, CPA, CPL performance programs and the CPM, CPC, and flat advertising models to unify creating a new hybrid that I call the CPP (Cost-Plus-Performance) model.

The CPP combines a paid campaign with a performance campaign and offers the best of both worlds. I see this as the future of affiliate marketing, a wide-open world of performance and payment where the CPP takes inventory lost to Google’s AdSense and advertisers back. The result is a whole new world of opportunities for merchants, affiliate managers and affiliates

The hybrid CPP is converting former CPM, CPC advocates into affiliate marketing believers. For many top websites, affiliate marketing now represents a chance to loosen the grip of pay-per-click search engines and costly advertising. The most difficult obstacle in affiliate marketing is finding good affiliates with traffic. If a site sells traffic then they must have it, and if you negotiate a Cost-Plus-Performance payout, valuable opportunities begin to open up.

Merchants are also realizing that affiliates need better tools as well. Technologies such as data-feeds, site and shopping cart abandonment (exit traffic) promise to allow merchants, who are also affiliates, to increase EPC and EPM numbers without compromising the visitors experience, thereby improving monetization. By simply offering additional products and/or service offers at or after the point of sale, merchants can add revenue without diluting the sales process.

It’s becoming clear to merchants, affiliate managers and affiliates that the line between performance and traditional advertising has been breached.

It started with Google’s entry into the market. Google’s AdSense captured valuable affiliate program inventory, which caused the flexible affiliate marketers to evolve again. The industry’s response was to tangle with the paid advertising side of the market. Google’s method is to pay out for ad space - the same ad space that was used by affiliate marketers. That limits available inventory and changes the Web publisher’s expectations.

Some affiliate marketers using AdSense end up cannibalizing their own market. Why? To get guaranteed income from traffic. If you pay for traffic, you’re guaranteed to get it. The merchants get guaranteed traffic and the affiliates get guaranteed revenue from traffic. However, this presents a problem. Traditional advertising places the risk on the merchants, while performance places the risk on the affiliate. In either case only one has a vested interest in the campaign.

It’s clear from a handful of recent studies and reports that marketers are frustrated with the current process.

In a survey of 135 senior-level marketers a recent study found that while 60 percent of respondents said that defining, measuring and taking action on ROI is important, only 20 percent are satisfied with their ability to do so. In addition, 73 percent reported a lack of confidence in their ability to understand the sales impact of a campaign.

The study, conducted by Marketing Management Analytics (MMA), the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), and Forrester Research in April 2005, was presented in July at ANA’s 2005 Marketing Accountability Forum.

Also this summer, a MediaLife’s media buyer survey quantified what most already suspected: media buyers think that about only half of media reps know what the heck they’re doing (via MediaBuyerPlanner.com). A significant minority of the buyers - about one in six - have such a low opinion of representatives that they said only 10 or 20 percent are useful.

Complaints centered, unsurprisingly, on time wasting, both in the form of over-contacting and proving ill-prepared when conversations do take place. Another big complaint proved to be overly hard selling, with some reps seeming to believe that repetition or browbeating may succeed in getting a property on the buy where the numbers won’t.

Half of the buyers said they agree with the statement that the rep problem was “no big deal. Sure, they’re annoying sometimes, but I’m sure they find me equally so. It’s how the industry is set up.” About 45 percent agreed instead that they are “a necessary evil. Most are okay, but there are a few really obnoxious ones I hate doing business with.”

Even with all the issues, the good news is that the affiliate community is still evolving. Organic search is becoming more competitive. CPM rates are going up. Paid search is becoming cost prohibitive and the need for cost effective online inventory is becoming stronger, causing the affiliate space to grow at ever increasing rates. As merchants, affiliate managers and affiliates become even more interwoven, the friction decreases and new forms of integration and aggregation are made possible.

I see it this way - the race is on! In the last year the number of merchants offering affiliate programs has more than quadrupled. Literally, millions of websites now participate as affiliates - from personal homepages at Geocities and Homestead to Fortune 500 companies. And now, more often than not, merchants with affiliate programs are also affiliates.

Whether termed affiliate marketing, collaborative commerce, revenue sharing or syndicated selling, the affiliate space leads the way in the ever changing landscape of online marketing and has become the Web’s fastest, simplest and most cost effective marketing vehicle.

As both merchants and affiliates continue to recognize the power of change, affiliate marketing’s best days are yet to come. In a few short years, affiliate marketing looks to become the tail that wags the dog - controlling the majority of the advertising and marketing dollars. Despite the less than impressive advancements in the advertising world and hype, affiliate marketing stays true to its origins as a better way of connecting buyers and sellers and rewarding those that facilitate those relationships.

— By Greg Shepard

Greg Shepard writes and speaks about all facets of affiliate marketing including design, conversion, online advertising, and e-commerce. Greg is the CEO for NetTraction.com and AffiliateTraction.com. He can be reached at greg@NetTraction.com.

Affiliate Programs provide the answer to every marketer’s dream – results and guaranteed advertising. If it doesn’t work, you don’t pay a penny. Can it be that simple? Can one really just, purchase an affiliate software solution, throw together a quick Affiliate offer and add a few banners hoping the offer will convert? Will it be possible to attain digital sales force of literally thousands of affiliates in just a few days? Unfortunately, it’s a bit more complicated than it might seem. So the question remains, “how does one start a profitable affiliate program?”

Though I am not a writer by profession or education, it is well known by fellow colleagues and partners that I love the affiliate industry and care about preserving its future as an opportunity for all levels of marketing expertise. In this industry, credentials are certainly overrated and cannot qualify an individual to give advice. Only experience and seeking out information from those with experience can help one to succeed in this dynamic marketing channel.

Being an online entrepreneur, I have spent over 6 years in the affiliate industry. I have experienced every side, whether assuming the role of affiliate, merchant or affiliate manager. Through experience, I have learned the ins and outs of growing a successful affiliate program. I intend to share with you these tried and tested techniques that have been proven to work through years of trial.

There is no doubt that Affiliate Marketing can be highly effective and profitable. However, it takes time, careful planning, execution and excellent management to create a successful program. Do not let this dampen your enthusiasm! Though it does take time and effort, one is greatly rewarded provided the techniques being used have been proven to work. There is no easy way to build a program quickly. You won’t find any free short cuts. A successful program takes perseverance to build. This article is dedicated to helping affiliate managers build a strong foundation, and to helping them to lay a clear path to a return on their investment.

Why are some programs extremely successful while others stumble at the first hurdle? Well, you may be disappointed to find that there is no quick and easy trick guaranteed to create a successful affiliate program. The good news is that there are many tactics, that when used in combination, can give a program the boost it needs to reach its full potential over time. First, let’s eliminate some of the myths surrounding affiliate promotion. Your affiliate marketing channel will not be an overnight success, and affiliates will not often come knocking on your door asking to join your affiliate program! Contrary to popular belief, a profitable affiliate program does not look after itself. It is not an automated sales generator.

An affiliate program is a long-term annuity that will out perform any other marketing channel, period. However, it typically takes at least 90 days before an affiliate program starts to pick up steam. What you do in those first 90 days is fundamental to your program’s success or failure. Remember, if you dedicate consistent time and effort to the planning and management of your program, you will secure a powerful and profitable sales channel for your business.

First, you will need a clear plan of action as well as an understanding of the resources required, both in terms of time and money. An effective program needs commitment and dedication, not just for launch and the acquisition of affiliates, but also to keep and help your newly developed sales force to actually promote your offer effectively. You will need a generous splash of knowledge and an ongoing commitment to work with your affiliate partners to ensure high quality, targeted visitors are referred to your site. Affiliate Marketing is not about generating “cheap” advertising but rather about developing profitable, strategic, long-term win-win relationships.

It is also important to understand the perspective of the affiliate. The affiliates’ traffic represents revenue, mostly in the form of profit. To maximize profit per visitor, the question becomes how well a creative and the site convert the affiliate’s traffic, firstly by referring clicks to your site and then by converting those clicks to revenue at the highest rate possible.

Lets start with the creative. What aspects must be focused on and how can one find the source of conversion problems? One must first ensure that the page where the banner or link will be placed is exposed to traffic. Without exposure, there will be no clicks and no conversion. Many affiliates are not aware of which pages of their site carry traffic. Monitoring impressions in your affiliate software will allow you to evaluate these affiliates and to contact them and make suggestions for improvement.

If a banner or link is not converting impressions from the affiliate’s site to clicks then there are several factors to consider. Does the creative cater to the correct demographic and does this demographic match that of the site? It is vitally important that the creative caters to the correct demographic. For example, a banner featuring a natural supplement would want to targeted to the best demographic. In this case, it may be men and women over the age of 30. One would want to include a picture or copy on the banner that is targeted to this demographic and must also ensure that the banner or link in question is placed on a site that is likely to cater to the same demographic. For example, a hunting site would be a poor demographic for promotion of a natural supplement, whereas a natural health site would be perfect. There has been a great deal of untargeted marketing online. This is a huge mistake. Offers such as “win a free mp3 player” that are targeted to any demographic will likely get the click but not the sale, unless the actual offer being promoted reaches the same demographic. It is incredibly important to strike a balance between impressions to clicks conversion and clicks to sales conversion. It is the dynamic of these conversions that makes a truly lucrative offer.

The next question involves whether the creative has the ability to attract the visitors’ attention, while clearly presenting an offer and enticing a click. There are methods for creating a banner or link that is likely to convert. Remember, it is vitally important that a banner is not simply focused on getting the click. That click must be likely to convert through targeting and the presentation of a clear offer with features and benefits. An offer is not simply what you may be selling. Offers consist of a discount, buy 1 get 1 free, enter to win, etc. Offers are meant to convince the visitor that they are receiving a special unique opportunity. An offer should be accompanied by a sense of urgency (limited time offer) and features and benefits that set it apart from any competitors’ products or services.

Now, assuming your creative is targeted, placed on the correct page, has an attractive offer and contains all of the necessary elements, the next step is the landing page. If clicks are not converting to sales when banners or links are implemented and placed properly then the next step is to review your landing page. A landing page must be a continuation of the offer. If it is not a clear continuation of the offer presented on the banner, you will lose the visitor and thus your click to sale conversion will suffer as a result. Confirm your offer on the landing page and present more detail and supporting features and benefits. Make your “buy now” link visible in multiple locations. Or, if you are simply trying to produce a lead, make your form immediately visible. Try to funnel the visitor into the sale or lead by gaining trust through guarantees and associations. Review copy, navigation and the number of clicks its takes to get to the cart of lead form. Eliminate dilutions that may distract the visitor from entering the purchase process.

The landing page is the last step before the purchase process. The purchase process should be as user friendly and simple, reducing the number of clicks to as few as possible. Also, avoid registration processes that divert the visitor away from the offer. This is a major point of attrition. You may be able to transparently build this into the process, or acquire this information after you have attained the sale. Look for leaks! Leaks are anything that can create a sale while bypassing tracking, like phone numbers with no affiliate id or forms that don’t track affiliate ID. The best affiliates will test your system, and any leaks will likely leave you with inexperienced and unmotivated affiliates. Your affiliates send traffic, not sales; the conversion of traffic to sales is your responsibility, not your affiliates.

In conclusion, a successful affiliate program will never be a completely automated solution. However, with special attention paid to a few details, and knowledge acquired from those experienced in affiliate marketing, one can truly increase profits exponentially with some effort. Take the time to communicate with your affiliates to ensure that every part of the process is implemented correctly. Your success is hidden in the details, and the details take some time and effort to perfect.

— By Greg Shepard

Greg Shepard writes and speaks about all facets of affiliate marketing including design, conversion, online advertising, and e-commerce. Greg is the CEO for NetTraction.com and AffiliateTraction.com. He can be reached at greg@NetTraction.com.

When building a web site to convert sales, one must establish comfort in the visitor and avoid the frustrating pitfalls that commonly plague online merchants. It is important to remember that keeping visitors on a site and guiding them through the sales process is just as important as getting them there. Several tips for visitor retention and monetization are outlined below.

Design - Aesthetically, a site should be clean, clear, and attractive to the eye, saving bright colors only for important sales process features such as the headlines, offers, important details and purchase links. Avoid offending visitors with vibrant animated gifs or flash advertisements. Not only are these disruptive of the sales process and may lead visitors away from your site, but they also distract and annoy the visitor causing them to leave prematurely.

Dimensions - Different screen resolutions require that you test your site to make sure that all relevant information is available at as low as 800×600 pixels. Make your site no wider than 750 pixels to ensure that no side scrolling will be necessary. A visitor that has to scroll for every line of text will likely leave. Use your space wisely. It’s probably better to have a small amount of empty space than to cram every detail into a small area. On the other hand, you don’t want to leave out any valuable information.

Load Time and Compatibility - Be sure your site loads efficiently and correctly on all major browsers through a dialup connection. Many novice site designers are reviewing their work over broadband connections. Just because an image is small does not mean the file size is small. It is recommended that you compress your images so that your site loads in under 5 seconds on dialup when it is not cached on your drive. Try using jpeg format for images containing gradients or many colors such as photographs. Use gif formatted images for buttons and text art containing only a few colors. Also, try to use HTML color whenever possible instead of images.

Sales Process - Clearly present an attractive offer such as a discount or free sample and establish a sense of urgency. Your offer is your hook. Make certain it is attractive or you have nothing to help you stand out against your competition. Accompany your offer with a testimonial or guarantee to establish trust and summarize the features and benefits of the product. You can provide more details about the product on a different page for those who want to know more, but it is advisable to keep the front page of your site simple and sales oriented. Purchase links should always be visible.

Purchase Process - Be sure your purchase process is simple. Remember, at this point you have the sale. You should be doing everything in your power not to lose it. A visitor should be able to get from your home page to an order confirmation in no more than 3 clicks. This may sound difficult, but it can greatly increase your conversion. A huge mistake that is being made in online marketing is the long and involved registering process and subsequent requirement of customers to login. The so-called benefits of this feature are to save customer information and acquire opt-in information. However, this process can greatly affect conversion. If you must have customers register, gather their information after they have entered their credit card number and avoid having them enter the same information twice.

Billing information should always be gathered first. Make the customer commit to the purchase prior to entering shipping information or up-selling other products.

Monetization - Monetization means squeezing additional revenue from sources on your site other than your primary offer. Unfortunately, many have misconstrued this concept to mean that one should place affiliate banners throughout the site through which commissions can be earned. This is a huge mistake. Try placing related offers on the order confirmation page or exit pop-under window. This way, you can sell your product and make affiliate commissions without disrupting the sales process. Additionally the purchase can be followed by auto-response emails with special offers or reminders on a periodic basis to retain customers.

You can also earn additional revenue or gather valuable information from a non-buyer. For example, if a customer does not have a cookie in their browser indicating they purchased from your site, a pop up could be displayed which offered them an entry to win a product if they sign up for a newsletter. This is an offer many can’t refuse. Choose something you can afford for your sweepstakes, and don’t give it away until you know that the information you’ve gathered is worth the wholesale price of the product. You can then promote your product in your newsletter and retain the ability to promote your offer in the future.

Monetization can also be achieved through the use of an up-sell. Up-selling items allows you to offer the visitor a complementary item during the purchase process. These items should require a minimal commitment on the part of the customer and minimal explanation on the part of the merchant. For example, if a customer were purchasing a snowboard online, a snowboarding magazine could be offered at the point of purchase. This should only require the customer to click off a single button indicating that they want the additional product. The information can then be fed securely from the form on the merchant’s site to the purchase form for the product on the partner’s site through an affiliate link so that the merchant can earn commissions and thus monetize the site.

— By Greg Shepard

Greg Shepard writes and speaks about all facets of affiliate marketing including design, conversion, online advertising, and e-commerce. Greg is the CEO for NetTraction.com and AffiliateTraction.com. He can be reached at greg@NetTraction.com.