Affiliate Communication


Communication is Key!

When building an affiliate network communicating with affiliates is important for merchants to maintain a good relationship. An affiliate's web site targets visitors, who may not necessarily view a merchant's web site, and therefore expands a merchants market. An affiliate may not be able to actively keep up with the merchants product, it is important for a merchant to keep affiliate's informed about new product information, sales, new releases, links, graphics, promotions and special offers.

Keep in mind, not all affiliates are going to produce a high volume of traffic, and importantly, visitors who want to purchase a merchant's products or services. The occasional gem makes the time taken well worth your effort. Talk with successful affiliates, find out what they are doing to effectively promote your software, and use that information to assist those affiliates who are not as successful.

Assist affiliates in understanding your product; no one knows your products like you do. For affiliates to drive traffic that will convert to sales, they need to understand the benefits of the product they are marketing. Once an affiliate knows the product, they will be better able to act as an extended sales force. In order for the affiliate to make the effort, you simply must support them!

Make Communication Easy

Many 3rd party affiliate-tracking programs notify both the affiliate and merchant of a sale. This can often be automated and will create positive communication between merchants and affiliates. Making an affiliate's role easier will help them increase earnings and further promote a merchants site.

Provide affiliates with great looking graphics and sample text. Graphics that work best are those that highlight your web site, yet fit the look of an affiliate's web site.

Newsletters are another great way to get information to affiliates. Include tips and specific for affiliates, along with general marketing advice that helps with site promotion. If you are looking for software to manage newsletters, I highly recommend Group Mail - http://tinyurl.com/23ljy

Affiliate Taboos

An affiliate generates a sale for a product and the merchant promptly decreases the commission. This sends a very negative message to the affiliate, in many cases they've taken a lot of time to place links, promote products and because they've driven effective traffic their commission is decreased. If its necessary to decrease a commission for whatever reason, be sure to include a personal note detailing the reason and letting the affiliate know that you still support their efforts.

A Cheat?

An affiliate sale occurs, you go to their website and don't find any links you decide they must be cheating you! This conclusion is simply a based on poor communication and reporting. Many, many affiliates have multiple sites, very few affiliate tracking programs allow affiliates to list multiple sites, and in many cases the number of sites listed do not accurately reflect the number of sites owned and managed by the affiliate. Additionally many affiliates manage opt-in newsletters that may result in sales, but links are not visible on a website. An example of a popular ezine often promoting affiliates is Lockergnome!

Links, Links, Links

Keep your links valid! If you update a section of the site or remove an offer provide a redirect or retain the link saying that such and such offer has expired and a new one has replaced it. It seems a waste to discard targeted traffic because a special has expired. Be sure to communicate with your affiliates, and if a link will only be good for a specified length of time tell them up front. When an offer expires notify affiliates a week prior to the expiration with a reminder. This will give them ample time to make any needed updates.

Added Incentives!

Affiliates love added bonuses for reaching goals or specified levels of sales. Many of the 3rd party affiliate vendors run contests and provide large incentives for their top performing ones. Reward and praise successful affiliates.

Affiliates tend to be experts in other areas, which relate to a merchants business; therefore, by communicating useful information, and helping affiliates increase their earnings, they will give added exposure and increase your sales. Communicating with affiliates will ultimately benefit visitors of both sites. A little effort in the beginning can mean big rewards in the long run.

About The Author

Sharon Housley manages marketing for NotePage, Inc. http://www.notepage.net a company specializing in alphanumeric paging, SMS and wireless messaging software solutions. Other sites by Sharon can be found at http://www.small-business-software.net.


More Resources

Affiliate Marketing - A Quick Overview For Beginners
It's simply a kind of marketing in the internet where marketers sell products or services of certain merchants. Those Internet Marketers earn commissions on sales.
10 Ways To Increase Your Affiliate Commissions
1. Participate in chat rooms related to the product you're reselling.
Affiliate Program Mastery: Learn How To Build Internet Capital Goods for Free
As I mention in almost all of my articles, 97% of Internet marketers never make a cent online. I mention this simple fact because it has a lot of power--it has the power to completely discourage people who are not succeeding, and it also has the power to encourage those same people who are failing to learn, so that they can succeed.
Google AdWords Clobbers Affiliate Sellers
First, we must understand their point of view. Unlike some other search engines, Google is committed to providing the best quality search results possible.
Reselling - Money On The Side
The other night I had dinner with a friend who mentioned knowing quite a few people needing websites for their local businesses. Despite being a software engineer, my friend is not a web designer nor does he know enough about servers to actually host (store) websites.
8 Reasons To Be An Affiliate Marketer
When I began affiliate marketing I knew only half of these things but, in hindsight, if I had have known these things then it would have made the decisions I made so much easier. Such is the intention of this article, to contribute towards the success of affiliate marketing newcomers.
How To Make Affiliate Sales In 15 Minutes
If you are one of the 98.6% of affiliate members that never make one cent from affiliate sales or make small $5.
6 Affiliate Mistakes Youre Probably Making...
Everyday I see more and more affiliates making the same mistakes. The worst part is that they're just doing what they're taught by the so-called "experts.
Affiliate! Discover Why You Are Losing $600 Each and Every Month!
Link bypassing is the number one trap affiliates fall into online. Also known as the "affiliate links theft".
What Puts The Super In Super Affiliate?
To be super at anything means to excel beyond the scope of average or achieve superiority status.Super affiliates do just that.
Ten Ways Affiliates Sabotage Themselves
If affiliate marketing is so lucrative, then why do so few ever turn a profit? Read on, and I'll tell you why.1.
Why Do Many People Fail in Affiliate Marketing!
Affiliate marketing has been around on the Web for quite sometime now, but there are still a lot of people who doesn't know much or even nothing about it. Most of the people that don't know about affiliate marketing and has just discovered it normally thinks that they can make a quick buck or two.
Commission Junction: the Perfect Affiliate Resource for Niche Markets
There are many affiliate programs you can go to to find real solid product to market online. Most marketers who produce their own product provide these programs that are easily accessible, and can be worked simply by signing up to them.
You Deserve a Check Today
Perhaps the fastest and easiest way to prosper online is to market products and services as an affiliate.While there have been many an article and book written about how to be an affiliate, most overlook one very important aspect of the affiliate process.
Affiliate Programs : Golden Opportunity or Waste of Time?
Now that the idea of doing business over the internet has been firmly established, many potential internet businessmen are searching for the best way to do business. Usually the choice comes down to whether you want to set up your own business and online store, or sign up for an affiliate program.
Common Decency......Lets Keep it Alive!
I recently had an experience with one of the affiliate programs I *was* involved with. This experience did not surprise me, but did however, disappoint me.
Is It Possible To Make A Living Being An Affiliate Marketer?
It may sound cliché but it is worth repeating. Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to earn money online.
10 Tips To Help You Create Your Own Money Making Affiliate Program
1. View your affiliate program as a partnership between you and your affiliates, and make it your priority to develop good relationships between you and your affiliate sales force.
Googles Secret Guidelines On Thin Affiliates
Journalist Henk van Ess has caused a flurry of excitement on blogs and forums. In his blog he revealed that Google uses teams of humans all over the world to evaluate the accuracy of Google's search results.
Get the Big Dogs to Affiliate with You
Have you ever tried to launch an affiliate program? If you have, then you know that one of the challenges you face is to get people to be your affiliate marketers. After all, if you are new on the block, people who have never heard of you may be reluctant to encourage their list or web traffic to come to your website.

More Affiliate Revenue Information:

Related Articles

Affiliate Marketing Opportunity
Every Affiliate Marketing Opportunity At Your FingertipsMaking the decision to start up a web-based business is one of the best ways to take your financial future into your own hands. The dream of starting your own business is finally coming true and when you learn to take full advantage of your website by making use of every affiliate marketing opportunity available, your dreams will come within reach.
The 5 Sure-Fire Ways of Building Massive Traffic and Making Thousands in Affiliate Sales
Why are those top affiliates able to easily make so much money just by recommending and selling other people's products?What did they do to be so different from the rest of the 96% of the affiliates out there who are making little or no money at all?The key to making those huge affiliate sales really lies on what you portray to your visitors and what you can give to your visitors.But before that, let's deal with getting lots of targeted traffic to your website so that you could build a huge mailing list to mine your income from.
Discover The Affiliate Program thats Right for You
Are you looking for a profitable Affiliate Program?When you start to examine the possibilies for your homebased business, it is easy to be overwhelmed with the sheer number of "opportunities" available. A search for "Affiliate Programs" in Yahoo alone, will yield over nine million matches!As with anything worthwhile in life, starting a homebased business using affiliate programs, should not be done without doing some homework.
Affiliate Marketing - A Quick Overview For Beginners
It's simply a kind of marketing in the internet where marketers sell products or services of certain merchants. Those Internet Marketers earn commissions on sales.
Understanding Affiliate Programs
Years ago before the internet was born, starting your own business was like taking a leap into the unknown. It involved MONEY, TIME, and lots of worry.
Whats LinkShare, And Do I Need To Use It?
Online affiliate marketing is one of the most effective, cheapest and fastest ways to promote merchandise. With millions of people getting access to the Internet everyday, there's a great chance for a merchant to introduce his products and services to a wider market, thereby, maximizing his revenue.
7 Ways To Increase Your Affiliate Commissions
Suppose you could launch an online business in the next ten minutes? Suppose that this business did not require your own website, dealing with customers, refunds, product development or maintenance? This is the ideal world of affiliate marketing.Made popular on the internet by Amazon.
Affiliate Marketing Secrets that You Can Use
Affiliate marketing is a very hot topic on the web right now. Not surprising when you consider the fact that a vast majority of successful online entrepreneurs make their money from affiliate schemes and programs.
Reselling - Money On The Side
The other night I had dinner with a friend who mentioned knowing quite a few people needing websites for their local businesses. Despite being a software engineer, my friend is not a web designer nor does he know enough about servers to actually host (store) websites.
6 Critical Rules When Building An Affiliate Website
There are 6 rules you must use when building any affiliate website if you want the website to make you any money.Building Your Site Rule #1 Always have a strong headline.
How to make money with Affiliate Programs - The Sensible Way
Every day, thousands of would-be marketers scour the internet looking for any and every affiliate program, sign up, sit back and wait for the money to pour in and get frustrated just as fast when the bank balance still shows a big, fat ZERO!There are tons of guru's floating around and even more eBooks and articles claiming to know the latest and greatest trick to make tons of money with no effort at all (oh and of course, unless you use their method then you will never, ever get anywhere in your online business and stay broke the rest of your life). We've all seen these before.
Why Top-earning Affiliates Have Their Own Domains And Websites
Many affiliate programs usually provide special web pages for their affiliates. This is one of the reasons why it may appear very strange, at first, that most top affiliates and the high earners from affiliate programs will most certainly always have their own websites, complete with their own domains specifically for promoting a certain affiliate program that they are involved in.
JV and Grow Rich
To illustrate the concept of arranging simple joint ventures that can lead to exciting new business opportunites, I am including a short story and correspondence that led me down a grand path to a very successful deal that involves one of the most successful personal and financial achievement books ever written, not to mention partnering with a living legend.To start things off, in early July of 2002 I read "Think and Grow Rich" by Napoleon Hill for the first time in my 36 years of existance on this spinning orb of madness.
Affiliate Programs: An Easy Start to Online Income
Affiliate programs may be the easiest online business to start running. Why?With any online business you must have a product or service to sell.
Affiliate Marketing Assets - Things You Need In This Business
There are millions of ways to make money, particularly in the internet. But with the new internet marketing technologies developing daily, sometimes the choices may seem confusing.
High Paying Lateral Keywords
If you run AdSense on your site you know that some words pay more than others, much more in fact. More than likely you have also learned that terms like "structured settlements" and "mesothelioma" can produce incredibly high PPC revenue, if they show up on your site at all.
Safe Surfing in Shark Invested Waters
Paid to surf sites are washing across the Internet like a tidal wave. As powerful waves settle, new sites pop up out of the foam like tiny islands.
Finding An Affiliate Online Opportunity Program
Never before has it been easier to find an affiliate online opportunity program. From years ago when franchising was new the whole county turned its attention to those great opportunities.
Affiliate Programs
Basic IdeaAffiliate marketing is a type of marketing in which revenue sharing between online merchants and online salespeople (affiliates), whereby compensation is based on performance measures, typically in the form of sales (Pay Per Sale), clicks (Pay Per Click) and impressions (Pay Per Impressions).Merchants run affiliate programs to generate leads and sales from other Web sites.
How To Create Your Own Successful And Profitable Affiliate Program
Most of the truly successful marketers have three competitive advantages :They run successful Affiliate Programs (Part 1)They own large Opt-In Lists and have large traffic (Part 2)They create their own products (Part 3)Step #1 - Three Affiliate Program OpportunitiesOpportunity 1 - Using Own Products and ServicesCombining your own products with a successful Affiliate Program is almost a license to write your own checks.Opportunity 2 - Using Resell and Master Rights ProductsSurprisingly, as you will see in step 4, you can create and run an Affiliate Program even if you don't have your own products and services.