HOW
TO CHOOSE THE RIGHT AFFILIATE MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE
By
Corey Rudl
The whole point behind setting up
an Affiliate Program is to make it really easy for the affiliate to
join and to bring you qualified visitors. For the affiliate, the
beauty is that there are no orders to fill, no credit cards to
charge, no inventory to stock, no returns or shipping or handling
problems, no customer service, no questions, no in-person or over
the phone selling of the product.
It is all "clean and
easy" for them... which is one of the main benefits of joining
an Affiliate Program.
They don't have to worry
about maintaining a website (although many affiliates DO have a
website, some just sell to their newsletter lists, or use other
sales techniques not requiring a website). It basically makes it
really easy for them to make money. They link to you, you track
everything and you give them a referral fee for every sale they
generate. This is the heart of Affiliate Programs, and the whole
beauty of them!
What you want as an
affiliate program owner, is software that not only takes a lot of
work out of your hands, but makes it really easy for your affiliates
to join and get all of the information they need to become
successful.
Most small businesses
should not be concentrating on how the software works and on how to
get it working. Your time is better spent on developing products and
on marketing them not on dealing with the technology behind your
software, because the technology can be very sophisticated.
To repeat myself (because
it is so important), you, as an Affiliate Program owner, want to
have software which is easy to use and provides all of the
information for associates to become successful (which means that
you become successful). You want to spend time on marketing and
improving your product, building a better website, converting more
visitors into sales and supporting your associates to make sure they
are doing well, giving them more ideas and making sure you have
great customer service. You don't want to be worrying about all the
hardware and software technology, which goes on behind the Affiliate
Program.
BUT... you should know what
Affiliate Program software is capable of... what features to look
for and ask about... what works and what doesn't work! You need
to know enough about Affiliate Program software to choose wisely.
There's lots of software
out there right now for Affiliate Programs. To be very straight
forward (and I'm not going to point fingers at anyone in
particular), there's a lot of garbage out there. Some of them have
different ideas on how to track associates (i.e. CGI scripts, hidden
form fields, through cookies, through Java scripts, through database
management, through ASP management). It goes on and on and on. You
have to really watch this, because you must get quality software.
You don't want to set up your whole Affiliate Program and then find
out 3 months later that the software is lacking and your affiliate
are complaining that the software isn't reliable… not to mention
the multitude of other problems, which may arise with poor software.
So what software is
available?
What if I told you that
it ranges from $300 to $12,000?
Pretty crazy isn't it?
There is software which
goes by such names as Site Sponsor, NetTracker 2000, E Comm Works,
Affiliate Shop, Commission Junction, ClickTrade, BeFree, etc. The
list just goes on and on. As I just mentioned, some of this software
is available from as low as $300.00 to a high of $12,000.00.
What can throw you off is
the pricing structure for the different software. Some companies
give you the software and you have to figure out how to install it
and incorporate it in your system. Others install it for you, some
run the software from their servers and charge you a set up fee (in
the thousands of dollars!), and some charge you "per
affiliate" you sign up (which can really get expensive if you
get a lot of affiliates). The list just goes on and on. It seems
like everyone has their own price structure and it gets quite
confusing as some can have semi-hidden charges and it becomes hard
to compare accurately between the different pieces of software.
I am not a great believer
in giving a portion of my profits to the affiliate software owner,
or having them charging me a fee per associate. As with any of these
methods I can end up paying a large sum of money every month to them
as I get bigger and bigger. My preferred choice is to pay for the
software up-front, to know exactly what is involved and to know that
there will be no charges in the future.
As far as buying
associate software, generally the software over $7000 has some great
features. It is very intricate and complicated software designed to
make it easy for the buyer to use and easy for the affiliate to use.
But it is very expensive!
Generally speaking, a lot
of the cheaper software is less sophisticated, might require a lot
of custom modifications, doesn't track all the sales, doesn't make
it easy for affiliate to sign-up, or is not sufficiently automated.
All these things are
problems not only for you but for your affiliates as well.
Affiliates don't want to join you if you don't offer stats in
real-time. They won't join you if they don't feel confident that
they are going to get credit for every single sale they generate.
They won't join you if you don't have software which makes it easy
to join and helps them become successful associates. They won't join
you if you don't have a successful website which converts visitors
into sales.
It's important to have
good software in order to make affiliates feel comfortable that you
have a legitimate program, that your tracking methods are reliable,
that they can trust you, and that you have a great opportunity for
them.
In addition to the cost
of the Affiliate Program software, there are additional out of
pocket costs involved in setting up an Affiliate Program. This
includes the cost of hosting fees (usually included in your website
hosting fee unless you are a very large site), costs for any kind of
modifications, maintenance, or updates, or anything special that you
want to do with the software.
The only extra cost
involved would be your time to write the checks every month
(which if you have the right software can be done automatically!),
answering email which comes in, and your extra customer service
costs. But if you are making the extra sales, these costs are
inconsequential as you have much more profit coming in.
Before I go on, I will
mention that you do have one other option... that is buying the
services of a company which will administer your Affiliate Program
for you. Some of them have huge set up fees and a smaller per sale
fee... while others waive the set up fee but charge as much as 30%
for each sale you make.
ClickTrade, SafeAudit and
LinkShare are all examples of Affiliate Program service companies.
Services like these charge a percentage of sales per affiliate you
sign up, or a multitude of other ways… some even have set up fees
that are $2000+. If your affiliate program gets big (which it had
better) and you are paying a percentage of your sales or per new
affiliate to have them manage your software... the costs can get
pretty hefty! As high as thousands of dollars a month if you get
really big… which we all hope you do. In my opinion, it is much
more advantageous to actually buy your own software (and
generally much less expensive).
Now, if you are looking
at software that is $10,000, then you may want to reconsider looking
at the companies above… but don't worry… I will show you how to
get software that will cost you less than $900 and have the same
features and value as the $7000+ software.
It is much more cost
effective to have your own Affiliate Program software, control all
your own systems, and be able to make special modifications to it if
you want to add specific features or customize it for your business.
Even though the service
companies charge you hefty fees of up to 30% of each sale, they
can't do any customization! If you have your own software you can
customize it and make it exactly how you need it for your Program,
for your system!
Here are some of the
features you should look for:
The
affiliate sign-up process should be fully automated.
It should make it super
clean and super easy for affiliates to join up. When your
prospective affiliate fills out the form, they should quickly be
assigned an affiliate code. They should automatically be sent an
email giving them the details on banners or text links, how to
install them and recommendations for using them. You should be able
to automatically send them a FAQ sheet.... everything they need to
get started right away… all automatically so it happens without
you lifting a finger.
If your affiliates want
to make changes... their passwords... their email address... the
address their checks are sent to, their phone numbers... they should
be able to do that at any point in time themselves. Having
this process fully automated makes it easy for them... and for you
(so you are not changing their information and eating up your
valuable time when you could be out marketing your company and
making money)!
Automated
Contact System
Make sure that you can
automatically email all your affiliates if you want (i.e. a special
webpage that allows you to queue a mailing, press a button, and walk
away). All it should take is a click of a button to email all of
your affiliates and give them an update on what is happening and how
they can improve their affiliate referral fees.
Flexible
Administrative Functions
Your administrative
functions should work for you... not against you! Can you call up a
web page and check all your affiliates? Can you go into the software
and make adjustments? For instance, if refunds come in, we will
simply make adjustments for that refund and take the referral fee
off the appropriate affiliates' commission checks (VERY Important!).
Does the program give you monthly commission reports? Can you make
instant changes to all your affiliate sites? For example, if you
change a price, or want to put up a different offer, or change
headlines. The software has to have the ability to do all of this
for every affiliate with the push of a few buttons.
Automatic
Tracking
Top-notch software will
track through all the different types of browsers, set ups, and
visitor types. It will track orders whether it's an 800 number
order, a fax order, an order via mail, or an online order.
Your software should be
able to track visitors whether they order today, tomorrow or a year
from now... and no matter how many products or services they order.
The associate who originally sent the visitor to the site should get
credit for all sales, no matter when those sales take place.
Variable
Payouts
It's very important that
you have software that allows you to choose to pay a fixed amount
(per click through), a fixed amount per sale, or a percentage of the
sale. YOU need to be in charge of determining your payout… your
software shouldn't limit you, or decide this for you!
Real Time
Statistics
You definitely want real
time statistics. Your affiliates should be able to go and check all
the stats anytime they want to. They should be able to see how many
visitors they are sending over, and how many sales they are making.
This allows them to test various sales techniques at their site to
see what works well for them! It also motivates them by seeing what
they are making currently and encourages them to do better.
Counting
Visitors and Sales
Make sure you have
software, which will count the number of visitors and the number of
sales for each affiliate separately. That way you can see which
affiliates are sending you quality visitors, and which are not. It
will also let the affiliate know if his/her customers are converting
into sales and if they are not, he/she has a chance to improve that
by reading the stats. You will be surprise how useful this is and
how many affiliate software programs do not count the visitors, only
the sales per affiliate. Wouldn't it be interesting to find an
affiliate who sends you 500 visitors and sells 50 products, compared
to an affiliate who sends you 5000 visitors and only sells 5
products? This information is INVALUABLE and helps you identify
successful affiliates and not-so-successful affiliates (so can help
them improve to make you both more money).
Minimum Pay
Out Settings
You should be able to
preset your pay out levels. For example if you are selling a product
that pays out $10.00 per sale, you might want to set your minimum
pay out level at $30.00 (3 sales) in order to cut down on checking
and administrative costs.
Automated
Check Paying
This is very important
and gets necessary as you become more successful! Your software
program should have some kind of system in place, which writes the
checks for you to your affiliates. This may not matter the first
month, but as you get bigger and start having to write 100, 200 or
500 checks a month, it can get really tedious. It could take days
of simply writing checks if you had to do it manually (also there is
a lot of room for error this way).
For example, in affiliate
software that use for the Internet
Marketing Center, the software automatically downloads all
of the information of payee name and amount owed in a QuickBooks
format. They simply upload that file into QuickBooks Accounting
software and QuickBooks automatically prints the checks! There are
no hassles, as it is done in a few minutes and makes the whole
process very easy because it is fully automated. If they didn't have
this, they would be looking at days of work just to write the checks
every month.
They only spend less than
a few hours a month doing month end, whereas before they were fully
automated, they were spending 3-4 solid days doing it! In other
words make sure you have a fully automated system.
There are dozens of small
things that will take a lot of time, which you probably never
thought of... like actually having to write out and sign all those
checks... and then having to print out all the stats for every
affiliate… then print out all the labels for every affiliate, etc.
Why do it by hand when you can have it done automatically for you?
Here is the good news!
Internet
Marketing Center have developed Affiliate / Associate Program
software from scratch and been using variations of it for the last 3
years (they call it AssocTRAC).
They have developed it from the point of
view of a marketer, not from a programmers point of view... there is
a big difference!
They have learned a lot
over the years they have invested in this. The problems they have
run into, dealing with thousands of affiliates have introduced them
personally to all the ups and downs, ins and outs of running an
Affiliate Program! They have developed software, which meets all of
your affiliate program needs, whatever you can imagine, from a
marketer's standpoint.
In my opinion it is
probably the ultimate affiliate marketing software available out
there! AND, they are adding features to it all the time,
little modules that you will be able to purchase that will have
extra toys and features that will make things even more automated!
It blows them away every day they do this, as it is just incredible,
and it saves a lot of time (and makes a lot of money!).
Internet marketing expert
Corey Rudl has gained popularity because what he teaches are not
theoretical approaches to online marketing but real examples of what
works when it comes to having a successful business on the Internet.
He's also the author of the bestselling how-to guide, Insider
Secrets to Marketing Your Business on the Internet.
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