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Part 3
Building Winning Affiliate Programs:
The Affiliate Marketing Plan

Dear Friend,

In response to numerous inquiries for a specific Action Plan for Affiliate Program Managers, this issue focuses on putting together all the pieces for your affiliate programs.

Coming out of research for my consulting clients, this issue should be applied whether in start up mode or growing a mature affiliate network. Also included is an interview from ReveNews.com with Alyssa Perry of Outpost.com, who runs the affiliate network for their excellent program.

Peace,
Declan

Overview

The Seven Step Action Plan

Step 1. Begin Thinking Like Your Customer

Step 2. Target Your Affiliates

Step 3. Develop Your Marketing Materials

Step 4. Push Merchandising

Step 5. Start Your Campaign

Step 6. Manage Your Network

Step 7. Off-line Exposure

Overview

Setting up an affiliate program to achieve market share involves research into your niche, identifying if you want to have many affiliates, or a select few, and building your sales force. In order to achieve competitive lockout, a pre-emptive strike into the your industry online must be taken. Email is a critical factor to your success.

The best affiliate programs treat this marketing as a lead generator, focusing on 1-5 products, and then introduce customers to the wider selections that may be available. Large catalogs online have not succeeded, for the most part because of a lack of thinking like the customer. This approach diminishes sales, often because the customer is given so many choices. Clicking and searching through catalogs does not generate results; in reality, it creates multiple buying decisions for the customer.

When faced with multiple choices, most will leave and may decide to come back again if reminded via email. If you send them to the your home page and do not encourage immediate email contact and reward them for it, it is likely you will gain lots of traffic but few sales.

In the following action plan, we will outline ways to target your niche markets and convert those leads to customers. By focusing on conversion of prospects to customers via affiliates, email, and your customer loyalty program, you can build a tremendous email list of customers which will spur growth by doing the following:

Build your email list throughout the site. Email drives the affiliate industry online; use this to your advantage. When someone enters from an affiliate's site, offer products and a way to join your customer loyalty program. Give them an immediate benefit, like a gift certificate, for filling this in. Every marketing effort you make should drive them to join your email list, because most people do not buy until 3-4th contact.
For each target market you develop, create portal entry points of specific products for these niches. If you are advertising to students, for example, lead them to the affiliate "students" page, with a selection of 3-4 featured products. Do not send people to your home page with thousands of items; focus them on specific buying decisions.
Build your affiliate network via Tier One, Two, and Three sites with specific benefits for each. Emphasize the average price per sale, and the stature in a travel industry where people commonly spend thousands of dollars online, as a primary benefit, especially to the Tier Two and Three sites (Tier sites described below).
Manage your network and convert affiliates to customers as well; if someone does not sell for you, it is likely they will want to buy from you and save money. This is an excellent strategy for Tier Three sites especially, where you can develop a list of tens of thousands of prospective customers by first approaching them as affiliates.

As you create your own affiliate business plan, remember to think of the two target markets for your efforts. The first are your affiliates, who own the Web Sites and email mailing lists that you need to reach; make your offer appealing to them by providing a good incentive for them to work with you. Your second market are your customers; where do they meet online and who are your key affiliate players to reach these people?

At the center of everything should be the email mailing list you develop; whether via your Web Site, your affiliates, or any other marketing efforts, your ability to quickly register people into your database and begin personalized marketing will help you create market share.

The Seven Step Action Plan

Step 1. Begin Thinking Like Your Customer:
Discover Where They Meet Online and Define Your Niche Markets

At first glance it may seem simple to assume that your customers just go to visit certain Web Sites; set these up as affiliates and the rest just happens. This narrow vision has undermined many affiliate programs.

Your customers will go to a variety of resources besides the top Web sites. While Tier One portals will generate a dramatic portion of your sales, long term customer development lies in mining the Tier Two and Tier Three Web Sites, where word of mouth advertising and list development really happens. Most of all, customers will check out the wide variety of automated email mailing lists, newsgroups, and special discussion boards that give them what they need. Web Sites are just the tip of the marketing iceberg.

The following covers your target strategy, with suggestions to gather lists of sites that you can mine for customers.

Tier One Travel Sites and Portals

Everyone wants to work with the bigger players in the industry. From search engines to the leading Web sites, it seems ideal to form relationships with these high traffic sites.

The problem with these high profile sites is the length of negotiation time and cost of customer acquisition. Sales quotas and a hybrid model of advertising costs with affiliate sales are commonplace, but come at a cost. These types of partners will generate their own repeat business, which may affect your bottom line. Select these partners carefully, and be wary of what they claim.

For example, search engines are not good places to search for many products as a customer; with the development of brand names like Travelocity and Expedia in the travel industry for example, the search engines are not where they are searching. Given the search phrases listed in your business plan, be sure that your customers would enter these specific words. The fact is, people rarely search for the specific keywords we all assume.

Many of your Tier One portal sites may not be ideal partners, bringing a high cost per transaction and limited returns. The irony of working with high traffic sites is that they will continually be able to generate repeat business for you. Your profit margin should be tailored towards this situation; in many cases, the bigger the partner, the lower the profit margin to them, because of the volume of orders generated. It all depends on your situation, but be sure that when you negotiate with a Tier One portal, that you can afford to work with them.

Tier Two: Destination Sites (5,000 visitors or more a month)

Tier Two sites are where you can mine the Internet for many of your customers. From sites hosting localized information or other related information, these sites should be generating a minimum of 5,000 unique visits a month.

Contacting Tier Two sites involves a mixture of email, telemarketing, and fax. The busier the site, the less likely they are to answer your email. The beauty of this niche is that they often respond quickly to inquiries and can be signed up right away.

The key to remember about Tier Two sites is the lack of repeat traffic as compared to Tier One sites. You will find sites with a specific customer base, which will likely generate immediate results within the first 2-3 months of affiliating, then give you diminishing returns. Once you have mined a Web Site's customers, the sales will even out into a more steady flow.

Often people visit Web Sites out of a specific information need, like someone buying a car. They would go to the information site first, then click on a link to the showroom, the Web Site to buy a car. This is an example of a very qualified lead that may generate more sales. Be sure you target qualified leads. Many of your sub-categories of products and target customers run into the same, busy, last minute approach. This is another reason why email is critical to your success; they are rushing to get where they need to go. You need to contact them frequently to develop sales.

One common focus is to generate content for your audience, but be careful. Instead of trying to create more content, which is saturated throughout the Internet, you could organize this as a guided tour of the best sites to go for information. These are your target Tier Two customers, and by rolling out your approach with your affiliate network, you could offer to just link to them, and invite them to return the link and get paid.

Take the MiningCo approach to the Internet; instead of focusing on cost intensive content, use other's research and content to augment what you do. You can invite participation at your site. For example, New Orleans is a heavily trafficked subject on the Internet. You could evaluate the best sites for New Orleans in terms of traffic and content; contact them as affiliates and list them in the travel select directory as a benefit, if you were offering travel related items.

Other suggestions for Tier Two Sites:

Investing: A hotbed for information and Web traffic.
Career/Student (high school, graduations, new jobs, retirements) plus people looking for career information.
Auction Sites: The proliferation of auction sites provides an interesting opportunity. You could offer select pieces of your product through the eBays, OnSale.com, and WebAuctions to develop brand name. Given your pricing structure, an auction site could be a likely affiliate. Give the discount to their visitors instead of paying them.
Senior Sites: One of the most ignored segments of the online world is the 55 and older demographic. These are ideal target customers and sites like SeniorNet and Third Age provide ample, easy opportunity to reach them. Best of all, these people love email!

Tier Three: Your Target Customers

Tier Three sites have less than 5,000 visitors a month; throughout the GeoCities, Tripods, and online communities, there are many small sites sharing a business opportunity or point of view. These are ideal sites to turn into customers; this is the territory where you develop your tens of thousands of affiliates and convert them into tens of thousands of customers.

Remember that you are setting up your sales force online; typically, the 80/20 rule applies. If 20 percent of your network generates most of your sales, you can either let the other 80 percent fade away, or turn that attrition rate into customers. It is quite easy; sign them up as affiliates to make money with you, and offer them the chance (via customer loyalty programs, buyer's clubs, memberships) to save money with you. More will save money, buying from you, than will generate sales.

The beauty of Tier Three sites is that you can automate most of the sign up and marketing via email. With little traffic, these sites often welcome a personalized message. This is where your customer acquisition costs can be dramatically improved. As you expand your target marketing, Tier Three sites will yield many more sign ups. Be sure you offer to convert these affiliates to customers, because no matter what they do, sales will be limited because of lack of traffic. Here are some examples of sites to target:

Urban City Directories: The Internet is currently dominated by a few, urban areas where the Information Age is exploding. Be sure to target certain, heavily visited cities in the U.S. and Canada. For example, Austin, Texas, is one of the most heavily "wired" cities in the U.S. This is a good target for local affiliates.
MiningCo, Tripod, and GeoCities individual sites
Targeted Email Marketing and Market Research (newsgroups, mailing lists, ezines)
The unfair advantage you will have over your competitors is the email list. This specific approach should be publicized and spread throughout the Internet. Building your list into hundreds of thousands of ezine subscribers should be a primary focus.

Here are several easy ways to achieve this:

1. Promote your efforts through cooperative ventures with other ezines and mailing lists at:

2. Target influential newsgroups at http://www.dejanews.com; find out the person who either moderates or significantly contributes to discussions on newsgroups or mailing lists is an excellent way to either develop an affiliate or simply promote awareness.

3. Include professional email services in your marketing rollout; you may try to affiliate with these companies as well, or simply buy targeted runs to their email lists including:

MyPoints.com, http://www.mypoints.com
NetCentives, http://www.netcentives.com
BusinessLink: http://www.businesslink.com

ADNet: http://www.adnetintl.com

4. Look for Web Rings and ICQ groups to promote this to: http://www.webring.org

There are hundreds of sites on these Web Rings who would be excellent targets.

ICQ http://www.icq.com is another excellent site to target. Many sites and lists of ICQ members (over 20 million) are available to spread awareness of your affiliate programs.

Rewards Programs

You may want to approach the various reward-centered companies online and offer your products as a special bonus to their customers. Apply your affiliate percentages to their rewards system. Fewer customers will redeem their points as much as buy your products through a special price.

Examples are:

NetCentives: http://www.netcentives.com, particularly strong in the travel industry and working with virtually every major airline.
MyPoints: http://www.mypoints.com
CyberGold: http://www.cybergold.com

Step 2. Target your Affiliates

Take those Web Sites, email lists, and online communities where your customers meet and create your lists of affiliates to target via email, fax, and telemarketing (examples in Step 5). With the broad variety of sites you have to pick, it is best to begin with one specific niche, roll out your campaign, measure the results, and apply what works to the next niche in your market.

Break down your products into specific categories, determine the Web Sites to link to, and target those affiliates. Before you begin, consider in depth what you are really offering them in terms of your affiliate program.

Affiliate Value Proposition

The value proposition you offer to your affiliates differs from that of your customers. While the pricing, selection, and branding capabilities may be an advantage, to prospective affiliates the bottom line is how much they are going to make.

Your affiliate payout is critical to your success; no salesperson is motivated by low percentages, or payments that happen 4 times a year. Many programs pay quarterly, then wonder why their sales force is not motivated to sell If you cannot offer an adequate (hint: more than 10%) profit margin, or pay more often, think about how successful your program will be without these incentives. Besides your referral fee, make sure you emphasize the branding power of your company's logo at the affiliate's site and the ways affiliates can integrate these as value added services to their own sites.

Your affiliate referral fee has to provide enough incentive for them to act; be sure to focus on the average sales price of an item first to increase perceived affiliate value, because these percentages may be low. You may find that it is a good idea to set scaled, affiliate referral fees; many networks offer these different percentages on an as needed basis, and advertise one, general fee at their site. Here again you must target your affiliates differently; for those who will genuinely generate high volumes of sales, you need to stick with your scaled pricing. But for the rest who will likely never reach those lofty goals, a slightly different value proposition is suggested.

For Tier One and high traffic Tier Two sites, your lower pricing structure can work well as outlined, because they are more likely to return repeat business. Yet for the majority of your affiliates, the reality is that they will generate just a few sales. Why not pay them very well, knowing that they will generate a few sales, and build loyalty. Structure your Tier One and high traffic Tier Two sites in terms of volumes of sales, and run out a general campaign based on a slightly different structure. Offer this as an option; most low traffic sites will take the following choice.
For example, instead of scaling your fees based on volume (remember, this is a different structure than you make with your major affiliate partners), why not do it based on mode of advertising? Give them 5% if they link to your site or someone buys a product; give them up to 15% if they put an entire, storefront on their site, for example. You will then encourage them to put your more effective modes of advertising on their sites and not have a promise of reducing their earnings down the road, once you have mined their customer base.
This strategy will work because statistics show that 20% of sales come from affiliates, and the rest on repeat visits. People most often buy on 3rd or 4th contact. Bank on it and build the immense promise of your affiliate network. By giving affiliates the promise of a higher referral fee, you fill the affiliate's need to earn more, while generating more leads for yourself. You will spread the word and build a lead generating funnel based on the repeat business factor. Just make sure you grab their email address.
Finally, make sure you measure the success of each affiliate using the following formula:

Asset Value of One Sample Affiliate

Key 1: Leads

Measure this in terms of your traffic; determine your clickthrough visits from other sites and how much repeat business you generate. Who is generating a consistent volume of leads for you? For those who don't, transition them to become part of your customer loyalty program.

Key 2: Net Sales

Rank your affiliates in terms of sales generated; what is your SellThrough ratio (visits to sales)? Compare this to the sales you generate via your email list on an ongoing basis.

Key 3: Advertising & Marketing CPM

Determine from your best selling affiliates what the effect on CPM is at their site. A powerful tool for rolling out your network is discovering what works and how it increases the value of their banner advertising. Make sure to use this measurement as a way to introduce the value of your affiliate network.

Key 4: Branding

While this is intangible, emphasize the power of co-branding with you, especially to smaller sites. Amazon's strategy of branding was very effective for the thousands of small sites who need credibility building. Your affiliates must at least carry your logo to develop brand name.

Key 5: Affiliate as Customer

The goal is to build your network of thousands of affiliates and mine this list to convert affiliates into customers. Encourage affiliates to buy from you, not via their program but via your customer loyalty program, and give them an initial gift certificate within a month of signing up. You may find that this area is crucial to increasing your customer acquisition by using affiliate programs as a list building device.

Asset Value of this Affiliate Per Year

Measure this and develop a long term value of your affiliates to target.

Step 3. Develop your Marketing Materials

Your affiliate network is only as strong as your marketing materials and your support (see Step 6). Most affiliate networks rely on banner ads only; use the following list, ranked in order of effectiveness, to offer a complete selection of marketing materials to your affiliates.

A. Banner Ads

Build your banner ads to include full size and small, logo banner ads to people can link. Most affiliates will simply post this and do nothing else; be sure to encourage them to use the following.

B. Text/Banner Ads

If you do offer banner advertising, write up several headlines and short commentaries about your company. Use testimonials as much as possible and encourage your affiliates to write their own recommendations next to your logo. Their word of endorsement is more powerful than any banner ad, taking it beyond the unfamiliar advertiser to a recommended resource.

C. Ezine/Email Advertising Materials

Create small, classified ads and longer ad copy about what you offer. Write this as a press release format, or focus on specific new approaches you are taking. Make it newsworthy and offer this to lists to publish. Encourage ezine and mailing list moderators to become affiliates and to review your site. Their endorsement is an effective piece of your affiliate puzzle, and best of all, they create the content!

D. Search Engine Keyword Pages

Since you will be doing search engine positioning in your own marketing roll out, it makes sense to offer keyword-enhanced Web Pages for your affiliates. Encourage them to place these on the search engines; if done as a regular, monthly routine, this can help assure you of high placement in the search engines, increasing exposure through an affiliate strategy few have put into place. Imagine finding 5 of your affiliate sites in the top 10 search engine rankings?

E. Product Portal Pages

For each of your specific categories in your online catalog, make sure that you create a special page that features the top 3-4 products in a specific line. Encourage your affiliates to link to this page. Drive the products from your database, so that you can change the content and keep the Web Site address the same. For example, if you had computer cases you were offering via computer retailers, you create a special page with your best 3-4 offers. Make sure you include an email form for your customer loyalty program and links back to your entire catalog. Bring them into a page that deals with what the affiliate's Web Site is specifically offering; you can make changes easily by determining one Web page address and changing the content via your database when needed.

F. Full Storefronts

For your biggest partners, a complete entry storefront is a good idea. Many sites like to have their logo co-branded, along with a return link to their site. This should be a one page entry to your database and can be easily arranged using frames or simply driving everything from your database This is for your Tier One partners only, but it can be an effective source of co-branding and sales.

Step 4. Push Merchandising

Converting your visitors to customers is the most important part of your affiliate network. For all of this to work, you need to develop the sales process that quickly lets them know what you offer, who you are, why to trust you, and where to go to buy now.

Build your guarantee of satisfaction behind everything you do and make sure you focus visitors on one specific sale if possible. While shopping carts may sound like a great idea, statistics prove that Internet shoppers rarely buy more than one item per visit. At your price range, it is unlikely that majority will buy more than one product.

While you will use your shopping cart, focus on the following elements to drive your conversions of visitors to customers:

Your Personal Shopper/Customer Loyalty Program
Getting people to give you their email address is what every Web page should focus on. Get them to fill in their name and email, then automate a follow-up of 5 email messages. The following schedule is recommended: immediate/autoresponse, 3 days, 7 days, 14 days, and 21 days. Use your email like an infomercial; give part content, and part sales message. Remind them of your brand name and what you deliver with the following:
Online Content and Community, If Applicable
The community element of your site is an excellent place to get them to visit. Turn it into an edited, recommended Web Site section. Have your editor find the best sites and just recommend those that give the most value. Your content can be used as a primary generator of links and affiliates; contact sites you would like to link to (i.e., target affiliates), and offer to link to them in exchange for a return link. Then let them know how they can earn money by returning your link. Also integrate a Personal Shopper/Member email form to drive email from there as well.
Travel Discounts, Gift Certificates, and Click Rewards
Have a special page for people to register for various discounts, gift certificates, and click rewards. Integrate this into your Personal Shopper/Member Program. As they apply to earn the rights to these rewards, give them an immediate benefit, i.e. gift certificate, just for applying.
Ad Copy
Be sure to use your ad copy well, in your affiliate programs and at your site. Emphasize the words "New, you, how, special, price, and discount" in your headlines and promotions. People respond to a good headline that introduces them and guides them through the sales process. It may sound simple, but most sites ignore ad copy completely; be sure that your copy guides them to the sale, and most importantly, to call you.
Click to Call Banner Ads
Include your phone contact and if possible, click to call banners (http://www.activebanner.com). The ability to immediately call your ordering desk can be essential with items like you are offering. No matter how well you automate, people need guidance, the human touch. Use your banner ads to initiate an immediate phone call, to catch the person when they are most likely to buy.

Step 5. Start your campaign

As you can see, rolling out your affiliate program depends on you accurately targeting your customers and affiliates. You must be prepared to test your conversion process now as you start your campaign.

Affiliate networks are built via email, telemarketing, and fax. The following is an example of a letter used both as an email and fax contact, as well as the basis for a telemarketing interview.

If you have your target prospects in place, begin by emailing and testing your offer. Compare this to your success via phone and fax follow up. A basic rule applies; the busier a Web Site is, the more likely you are to make initial contact via phone. The less busy they are, the more you focus on email; these are the affiliates who will likely respond via email and are more likely good customers than best selling affiliates. Here's a sample piece of copy:

Subject Line is
RE: I've recommended your website

Hello [their name], (if no name use Hi there!)

I just reviewed your website at [their URL]. I really liked [write a couple personable sentences about their site design or content. Have fun with this!] Did you design the site yourself? Excellent work!

I wanted to introduce myself and present you with an offer. The company I am working for is called [Your Company]. They offer the world's largest selection of luggage, bags, and travel-related products at the best prices. Check it out for yourself at:

http://www.yourcompany.com

We are looking for a few website owners (like you) who love the value and selection we offer, and would like to make it available to their web visitors. We will pay you for doing so.

The idea is simple. You add a link to your site, we track your visitors and pay you a good commission on each sale. We do all the work of processing orders, drop shipping, customer service and handling returns. You receive e-mail notification with each order and a check at the end of each month with a sales recap.

Sound interesting?

We just launched our Web Site to offer the best products at the best prices. There is no one else out there doing what they do.

They asked me to select a few great websites and reward the WebMasters with better than average revenue-sharing commissions. That's where you come in! I like your site and recommended it to the Review Committee.

If you are intrigued at this point, I invite you to investigate the site, then fill out the Associate Application at:

http://www.yourcompany.com/associates.html

Our Online Sales Director will call you to discuss the commission arrangements and answer your questions.

Sincerely,
Hazel Whyte
Your Company Review Committee
http://www.yourcompany.com/associates.html

P.S. Keep up the good work on your site. It was a great place to visit! I ended up spending quite a bit of time at it and bookmarked it for later...

Remember to test this via email, fax, and telemarketing. You will find that by showing you know what their site is about, and addressing them by name (especially in the subject line of our email), your conversion rates will dramatically increase.

Step 6. Manage your network

You will be contacting thousands of possible affiliates via email; it is essential to automate as much as possible. The following tools are important ingredients to your success.

A. Your Follow Up Emails

Do not rely on one shot advertising; just as your customers will not decide to buy until 3rd or 4th contact, make sure you follow up all inquiries with affiliates. Many times they lack of joining is not lack of interest, but lack of time. Be sure you remind them to contact you.

B. Automated Affiliate Training

Once your affiliates do sign up, give them an automated training system to follow up with them. Send 3-5 emails encouraging them to put up your links, pointing them to successful ways to do this, and giving them a way to contact you. The first 2-4 weeks are crucial to your success; remember that in many networks, anywhere from 10-45% of affiliates never do a thing after signing up. Be sure you get them going.

C. Check to See they have placed your links

Your staff should visit each affiliate site and make sure there are links. This can be automated, but by taking the time to look at a site, especially your higher traffic sites, you can make suggestions for improvement. If you let affiliates do it without any supervision, you will lose effectiveness for your network. Remember that it is important where they place the links on their site to improve your branding and sales. Stay on top of them and encourage your staff with performance bonuses for their affiliates.

D. Check your Affiliate's Performance

Each week you should check the traffic generated from your affiliates along with sales. Keep track of your SellThrough ratio. For the majority of affiliates who generate little or no traffic, encourage them to succeed. Give a gift certificate to every affiliate after the first month; reward them immensely. Remember, even if they don't sell, turn the thousands of affiliates into customers. Even if you reach the best case scenario of 20% of your affiliates really selling, you still have 80% who will not. Why not let them save money with you as well as selling?

E. Have staff dedicated to increasing the performance of your affiliates.

The most successful networks give their staff performance bonuses for their affiliate networks. If managing your network becomes a job, you will lose effectiveness. A good sales force must be honed, trained, encouraged, and tested. If no one is doing this, you are wasting valuable advertising dollars.

Step 7. Off-line Exposure

The final step is to think of your affiliate network outside of the Internet. Many businesses focus so much on the Internet, they forget how easy it is to integrate physical locations into their Web Site via a simple Web browser.

For example, your affiliates will simply link to a Web Page. A travel agent in a physical office could use a computer and a Web browser, bookmark a Web page, and include this as a value added service to their customer base. A student in high school could offer your products as part of a Junior Achievement like program, generating free publicity and likely sales as well.

The off line exposure opportunity is not just via the expensive mediums of print, television, and radio. It can be integrated into retail storefronts and travel-related services offered every day. Creating a brand name in these frequently visited physical storefronts is as easy as setting up an affiliate online.

You can go to associations, groups, and corporations to set up such off-line exposure. Call it an Internet or simply an affiliate, you have the opportunity to expand your vision beyond the Internet. After all, if a travel agent fills in an order and sends it to you, is it any different than an affiliate generating a sale online?

Case Study: Cyberian Outpost

Online computer retailer Cyberian Outpost was founded in 1995 and has been traded publicly (under the stock symbol COOL) since July, 1998. Their revenue-sharing affiliates program, launched in December, 1997, has attracted over 7,500 affiliates with a dual commission offer (3% cash or 5% store credit). In the first six months of 1998, Cyberian Outpost saw net sales of $28.6 million in computer hardware and software from the Web.
On the anniversery of the launch of their affiliate program (as COOL gets hot on Wall Street, with shares up 153% in the month of November), ReveNews sat down with Alissa Perry, Cyberian Outpost's Affiliate Manager, to learn more about what works in revenue-sharing for Outpost.com.
ReveNews: How does your affiliate program fit into your overall marketing plans?
Alissa Perry: We look to the Affiliate Network as the ideal model for low customer acquisition cost and high brand recognition. Our affiliate membership is made up of a wide variety of sites -- everything from personal homepages to small and mid-size company sites. We have experienced a 2500% growth in affiliate sales in the last six months.
RN: What types of websites show strong results participating in your program?
AP: Our most successful affiliates are product reviews sites, Macintosh-related sites and direct computer shopping sites.
RN: How much commission do your high-producing affiliates generate?
AP: Exact numbers are not something that we generally publicize, but I would say the average high-end commissions hit in the $150 to $200 range in any given month.
RN: What types of activities do you find the best results for your affiliates?
AP: A combination of banner ads and content containing text links seems to be the best formula for visitor and sales generation. Providing visitors with enough information to make an informed decision is still the most powerful selling tool out there.
To add to the features for affiliates, we are now pushing the idea of virtual storefronts (hosted by LinkShare) that we can co-brand for affiliates. These allow us to maintain a page with very targeted products that they use a simple link to get to and we do the rest.
RN: Among your affiliates, what's the most overlooked method for increasing sell through?
AP: Proper placement of key links on their sites -- dropping a banner in the midst of all kinds of other products/stores. Not providing proper categorization of products offered on their site (not just for the Outpost, but in general).
RN: What advice would you give one of your affiliates if they don't generate any sales commission in their first few months?
AP: We would take a close look at their site to see where they placed the links to us and to see where the links take people. Then we would suggest possible movement of the link or change in type of link. If warranted, we might take it to the next level and discuss their demographic and suggest specific products they might want to promote.
About the Author
Alissa Perry is the Affiliate Manager for online computer merchant Cyberian Outpost, where she began working at in March, 1998. She has been involved in the marketing/customer service aspects of the high tech industry for most of her professional life.

Copyright © 1998-9, ImagineOne, Inc. (unless otherwise noted). All rights reserved.
Developed and maintained for ReveNews.com by GMD Studios.

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