Merchant ABCs hosts Deborah Carney, Vinny O’Hare and Amy Ely joined Kim Salvino of buy.at and to discuss affiliate tools and sub networks.

Topics Include:

A Tools Overview – understanding the different types of affiliate “tools” and where to find them

Pros & Cons – discussing how these tools can be helpful and also a look at the risks

Spotlight On Skimlinks & VigLink – how these companies work and what program managers need to know

Industry View – recent developments, new technology and international policies

Ultimately, the discussion highlights the importance of transparency, solid relationships, good communication and making the right decisions for your program.

Vinny O’Hare
Deborah Carney (a.k.a. Loxly)
Amy Ely
Kim Salvino
Merchant ABCs
Geekcast.fm

Thanks to Geekcast.fm for hosting our podcasts, check them out for lots of other great podcasts about affiliate marketing and marketing in general.

Merchant ABCs hosts Deborah Carney, Vinny O’Hare and Amy Ely joined Kim Salvino of buy.at and Liz Fogg of Team Loxly to answer a fundamental question for affiliate managers: What key steps should I take when launching (or relaunching) an affiliate program?

Key Steps Include:

• Review the affiliate list – check your program’s placement on the site, understand how they’re promoting your program (and make sure they’re compliant with your PPC policy), ask industry contacts about their reputation, consult your network or OPM, review forums and search online for any positive or negative feedback about the affiliate

• Evaluate the program terms – make sure you have program-specific terms in addition to network terms, ensure they’re clear and consistent, outline search policies on using brand name in the display URL, misspellings, brand + term bidding, and consider including terms for coupon affiliates to set expectations

• Assess the creative – include a wide variety of fresh text link and banner creative in IAB standard sizes, create deep text links (deep linking should be a requirement!!), offer a well categorized, regularly updated data feed and provide content for affiliates to use on their site

• Understand the competitive landscape – is your commission structure, cookie length, conversion rate and creative suite competitive?

• Develop a communication plan – send out an introductory newsletter to affiliates and an announcement post in forums and social media, consider including a survey to ask what they need, determine when you’ll send newsletters and if you’ll echo communications through social media, provide your full contact details and be approachable, genuine, and responsive to affiliates

• Walk through the affiliate’s shoes – sign up to the program an affiliate, identify how long it takes for network approval, understand the process for pulling creative, viewing reports, and more so you can identify pain points that may deter affiliates and consumers

• Test, test, test – test your shopping cart in all major browsers (IE, Firefox, Chrome), complete a test purchase to ensure tracking and reporting are working as expected, confirm that affiliate transactions across different networks track properly

There is plenty of additional information in this information-packed podcast. Enjoy!

Vinny O’Hare
Deborah Carney (a.k.a. Loxly)
TeamLoxlyLiz
Amy Ely
Kim Salvino
Merchant ABCs
Geekcast.fm

Thanks to Geekcast.fm for hosting our podcasts, check them out for lots of other great podcasts about affiliate marketing and marketing in general.

Merchant ABCs hosts Deborah Carney, Vinny O’Hare and Amy Ely discussed the benefits of working with an Outsourced Program Manager (OPM) and how to find the right one for your business.

Key Takeaways:
·         OPMs bring experience, relationships, and expertise that can help grow your business
·         Understand the OPM’s philosophy and approach – what networks and types of affiliates do they work with?
·         Determine the levels of service offered and the right fit for your business – is it best to start off as a consulting relationship?  Do you need full service?  Will you co-manage or leave all the work to the OPM?
·         Research the OPM’s involvement in the industry and their reputation – are they active in the community?  Do they provide helpful and expert information over blogs, forums, podcasts, or through speaking at conferences?
·         Make sure you agree with the OPM’s approach to recruiting affiliates – will they recruit via email, phone, social media, conferences, etc?

Find us on Twitter:
Vinny O’Hare
Deborah Carney (a.k.a. Loxly)
Amy Ely
MerchantABCs
Geekcast.fm

Thanks to Geekcast.fm for hosting our podcasts, check them out for lots of other great podcasts about affiliate marketing and marketing in general.

Merchant ABCs hosts Deborah Carney and Vinny O’Hare joined Kim Salvino and Amy Ely of buy.at to discuss ideas on engaging new customers gained from Black Friday sales.

Topics include:

• Promotion ideas to recapture the attention and dollars of Black Friday / Cyber Monday customers

·         Helpful data, creative and resources for affiliates so they can generate additional holiday sales

Key takeaways:

• Consider time-sensitive promotions that encourage customers to keep returning to the site, such as daily deals or a “Countdown to Christmas” – great examples include eBay and Amazon’s daily and weekly deals

·         As the remaining shopping days dwindle, alter promotions to feature gift cards and/or free overnight shipping

·         Promote complementary products or add-ons for gifts they’ve already purchased, such as Kindle Edition books if the original purchase was a Kindle Fire

·         Use Black Friday / Cyber Monday sales data to give affiliates top seller data and popular categories, then let them know if and when you will highlight or offer a sale on these products again

·         Supply affiliates with shipping deadline dates and when gift card sales are strongest so they can plan and promote accordingly

·         Recognize that holiday promotions don’t have to stop at Black Friday and Cyber Monday, give affiliates offers that run through the rest of December and into post-holiday shopping promotions – for example, encourage gift card spending after the holidays

Helpful statistics:

From Shawn Collins’s Affiliate Tip Blog and citing stats from comScore:

• Online shopping for Black Friday 2011 was a 26% increase versus Black Friday 2010

·         Thanksgiving Day (November 24) was also strong with an 18% increase over Thanksgiving 2010 with $479 million in online sales.

·         There was $1.25 billion in online spending on Cyber Monday 2011, which is up 22% from 2010

·         Cyber Monday 2011 was the heaviest online spending day in history and only the second day ever to surpass the billion-dollar threshold

Find us on Twitter:

Vinny O’Hare
Deborah Carney (a.k.a. Loxly)
Amy Ely
Kim Salvino
Merchant ABCs
Geekcast.fm

Learn more about buy.at:
Visit the buy.at blog
Facebook Fan Page
Twitter: @buyatUS

Thanks to Geekcast.fm for hosting our podcasts, check them out for lots of other great podcasts about affiliate marketing and marketing in general.

Merchant ABCs hosts Deborah Carney and Vinny O’Hare joined Kim Salvino and Amy Ely of buy.at to discuss ideas on how merchants can create engaging and efficient affiliate newsletters

Topics include:

·         Using subject lines, content and a format that is helpful and appealing to affiliates

·         The pros and cons of using HTML vs text, personalizing messaging, and including tracking code

·         The importance of understanding legal & illegal practices when communicating with affiliates

Key takeaways:

·         Use subject lines that make sense – don’t title “monthly newsletter” when you can include key words that relate to the information in the email

·         Consider addressing recipients by name and making the messaging personal

·         List main topics at the start of the email to immediately engage recipients on points of interest

·         Think about including code (that works!) when mentioning the great creative available for your program – if you have their attention, make their life easier by allowing for a quick copy/paste

·         Don’t bother telling affiliates about sales that started yesterday and end tomorrow

·         Engage affiliates beyond your program details, ask them what they need from you, share helpful industry stats, discuss topics with them on forums, in social media, etc.

·         Include contact details at the close of each email

·         Test before you send!  Test before you send!!!

Helpful statistics:

·         In a recent survey of 7,000+ affiliates from Affiliate Benchmarks, they listed weekly as the most preferred frequency of affiliate program newsletters

·         Further, affiliates listed direct personal email, newsletter email, and network email as the top three preferred ways to receive information from advertisers they work with

Find us on Twitter:

Vinny O’Hare
Deborah Carney (a.k.a. Loxly)
Merchant ABCs
Geekcast.fm

Learn more about buy.at:
Visit the buy.at blog
Facebook Fan Page
Twitter: @buyatUS

Thanks to Geekcast.fm for hosting our podcasts, check them out for lots of other great podcasts about affiliate marketing and marketing in general.

MommyBloggers: Changing the Face of Affiliate Marketing? panel from Affiliate Summit West 2010, which took place January 17-19, 2010 in Las Vegas, NV. An interesting note to this panel is that I posted a request for speakers in HARO to find the bloggers, except for Kim, who I already knew.

Why should merchants watch this video? Because all of the bloggers on this panel get a significant amount of traffic to their blogs and social media accounts. Too many merchants are carte blanche turning down “Mommy Bloggers” and bloggers in general. This is a powerful group of people that probably can hit your target markets. Merchants need to understand that blogs are just another type of website. Instead of turning down a blog automatically, take a look.

There are a very large number of blogs and bloggers that get insane amounts of traffic, more than many “traditional” affiliate websites because bloggers market via word of mouth. Anyone know what the best marketing is? Word of Mouth. Bloggers are the beginning of the trend now being called relationship marketing. Meaning that instead of having a website that is SEO optimized and pulling in new traffic plus is at the mercy of the search engines, these bloggers get backlinks and people develop a loyalty to specific bloggers and buy what they recommend.

Speakers:

- Deborah Carney, CEO, Team Loxly (Moderator)
- Wendy Limauge, Blogger, Sweeties Swag
- Carrie Rocha, President, Pocket Your Dollars
- Kim Rowley, President, Key Internet Marketing, Inc.
- Heather Sokol, Proprietor, Inexpensively

MommyBloggers are involved in many types of monetization strategies for their blogs, affiliate marketing being one, however they aren’t necessarily doing it in the “traditional” ways.

More details on Affiliate Summit at http://www.affiliatesummit.com/

Many thanks to Affiliate Summit for posting the replays of sessions from past summits. Many of these are still very relevant, like this one.

If you are unable to see the video below, please go direct to YouTube and watch it there.

Here is the replay to the Affiliate Program Agreement Essentials Webinar, along with the slide deck to go with it. If you join the Merchant ABCs mailing list we will send you the link to the podcast with Eric Nagel for you to download as well. Between this webinar and the podcast we cover pretty much all the basics that a merchant needs to consider before launching a program. Of course there is always more and as the industry evolves there will be new things to consider and include, but for now this will give you a solid start.

Some Resources:
http://ericnagel.com – Straight talk from an affiliate that knows his stuff
http://affiliateabcs.com – Hear from affiliates about what they deal with
Podcasts with info from Eric

Merchant ABCs hosts Deborah Carney and Vinny O’Hare joined Kim Salvino, Amy Ely, and Jeannine Crooks of buy.at to talk about preparing for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Topics include:

·         Important information affiliates need to promote your Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals
·         Considerations when designing a Black Friday/Cyber Monday deal

Key takeaways:

·         Plan and send Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals at least 4-6 weeks in advance so affiliates have time to prepare.

·         Communicating with your affiliates is very, very important.  If your deal details won’t be available far in advance, tell your affiliates if you’re planning to run a deal at all – this way they can prepare their sites.  If you send them a deal a few days before or on Black Friday, you’ll likely be out of luck.

·         Don’t try to pass off a standard promotion (ex. Free shipping on orders over $50) as a Black Friday/Cyber Monday deal if it’s something you already offer regularly.  Your customers and affiliates will find out and be disappointed if you’re trying to pull the wool over their eyes, and might take their business elsewhere.

·         If you’d rather not discount your entire online store, offer a special on one or a handful of items to drive traffic to your site, and keep the remaining items at regular price.

·         Ensure you have ample stock of the products you’re featuring for the deal, and if the stock runs out, be prepared to redirect the page to a similar item with a deal.

·         When sending affiliates (and/or your network) deal details, we strongly recommend providing all of the following information:

• Offer title & details
• Official deal start date & time
• Official deal end date & time
• Specific landing page URL
• Required coupon code (if applicable)

Helpful statistics:

·         Black Friday online sales totaled $595 million in 2009 and $648 million in 2010

·         The largest online sales day in 2010 was Cyber Monday and the peak week was December 5-12^th

Find us on Twitter:

Vinny O’Hare
Deborah Carney (a.k.a. Loxly)
Merchant ABCs
Geekcast.fm

Learn more about buy.at:
Visit the buy.at blog
Facebook Fan Page
Twitter: @buyatUS

Thanks to Geekcast.fm for hosting our podcasts, check them out for lots of other great podcasts about affiliate marketing and marketing in general.

Merchant ABCs host Deborah Carney joined Kim Salvino and Amy Ely of buy.at to discuss Q4 planning, including tips on how to effectively support affiliates and generate the greatest revenue from this channel during one of the most lucrative times of the year.

Topics include:
·         Important information affiliates need to effectively promote your program in Q4
·         Great Q4 holidays (beyond Black Friday) to consider for promotion opportunities
·         Activities to avoid during Q4 that may cause your program to lose affiliates

Key takeaways:
·         comScore 4^th quarter sales reached $39 billion in 2009 and $43 billion in 2010 – presenting a huge revenue opportunity this year
·         The largest online sales day in 2010 was Cyber Monday and the peak week was December 5-12^th
·         Plan out a promotional calendar and the dates you’ll provide relevant creative to your affiliates
·         Send a list of best sellers, new Q4 products, and (for PPC affiliates) suggested keywords
·         Update data feeds daily and consider “changes file,” top sellers, and category specific sub-feeds
·         DO NOT plan major site updates or affiliate network changes in Q4
·         If your gift cards are commissionable, let your affiliates know, if they aren’t – why not?

Find us on Twitter:
Deborah Carney (a.k.a. Loxly)
Merchant ABCs
Geekcast.fm

Learn more about buy.at:
Visit the buy.at blog
Facebook Fan Page
Twitter: @buyatUS

Thanks to Geekcast.fm for hosting our podcasts, check them out for lots of other great podcasts about affiliate marketing and marketing in general.

Here is the slide deck from our presentation at Affiliate Summit East 2011 in New York City about what you need to know before launching an affiliate program.

Drew Thorne-Thomsen from Ring Revenue, joins Merchant ABCs hosts Vinny O’Hare and Deborah Carney to discuss the Ring Revenue service. Pay per call has been around for awhile but it is getting more traction as more affiliates are looking for ways to monetize offline advertising or other untraditional types of advertising and pay per call gives affiliates, networks and merchants a way to start tracking those sales. In addition to the call tracking, there is also a corresponding link that can track. Plus if you think your program is too small or you don’t have a call center, there are other options for you to accept trackable and commissionable call.

A little background on Drew:
Drew Thorne-Thomsen, VP of Customer Development at Ring Revenue - Drew is responsible for partner development and support, as well as new business development. Prior to joining RingRevenue, he was CMO at Trident Marketing, where he was responsible for customer acquisition for several Fortune 500 brands. Drew drove millions of phone calls to their own performance call centers through traditional and non-traditional marketing strategies. Before that, he spent nearly a decade at Commission Junction, where he launched and developed CJ Media and CJ PayPerCall. Drew spent six years on the United States Alpine Ski Team and competed at the World Cup level. He has a bachelor’s degree in Business Economics from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Some of the main points for Merchants: 
- Pay-per-call is delivering millions in new revenue for merchants
- Access increased distribution channels online, offline and mobile
- Phone sales typically worth 1.5-2X online sales.
- Define caller quality criteria
- Pay only for quality calls
- Visit RingRevenue to find out more: www.ringrevenue.com

We would love for you to leave comments and let us know if you are using Pay per Call or what questions you have about it. We will be scheduling a webinar for later in the month and would love to have questions from you!

Find out more about Ring Revenue and Pay Per Call:
What is RingRevenue?
Advertiser Get Started Video

Contact info:
Drew Thorne-Thomsen
drew@ringrevenue.com

Find us on Twitter:
RingRevenue
Vinny O’Hare
Deborah Carney (a.k.a. Loxly)
Merchant ABCs
Geekcast.fm

Thanks to Geekcast.fm for hosting our podcasts, check them out for lots of other great podcasts about affiliate marketing and marketing in general.

Merchant ABCs hosts Deborah Carney and Vinny O’Hare joined Kim Salvino, Amy Ely, and Jeannine Crooks of buy.at to talk about the advantages and disadvantages of running programs on multiple networks.

Topics include:

·         Managing creative, promotions, and information across all networks
·         Considerations: Ts & Cs, setup and monthly fees, tracking, network quality measures
·         Identifying network benefits: different affiliates, tools, verticals
·         Actions that negatively and positively impact program growth

Key takeaways:

·         Avoid confusion – be consistent with promotions and communications across networks unless you’re running separate tests to gauge performance
·         Be strategic when beginning a new network relationship – consider the added value vs. added time and effort to manage another account
·         Grow 2-3 relationships vs. joining every network – this will enable program managers to work effectively with each relationship vs. reactive program management to simply keep up
·         Avoid network hopping – affiliate marketing is a marathon, not a sprint; don’t upset affiliates by repeatedly closing on one network and opening on another
Find us on Twitter:
Vinny O’Hare
Deborah Carney (a.k.a. Loxly)
Merchant ABCs
Geekcast.fm

Learn more about buy.at:
Visit the buy.at blog
Facebook Fan Page
Twitter: @buyatUS

Thanks to Geekcast.fm for hosting our podcasts, check them out for lots of other great podcasts about affiliate marketing and marketing in general.

Affiliates, in the comments, let us know if you will work with merchants on multiple networks, and why or why not.
Merchants, in the comments, let us know if you are on multiple networks and if they perform equally.

This podcast outlines what conversion optimization is and covers the most common questions associated with how conversion optimization works. Lindsay Viscount and Sarah Bundy from All Inclusive Marketing discuss with Deborah Carney of MerchantABCs the most essential “need to knows” about conversion optimization and how it works.

An ecommerce conversion rate is one of the most important KPIs to understand and maximize when it comes to online sales. With all things being equal, if your conversion rate increases, your website sales will increase. Conversion rate impacts every channel, from your SEO to your affiliate marketing program and is a main determining factor of each channel’s success.

Here is a quick overview of the questions discussed and some of the suggested answers provided by the All Inclusive Marketing team:

Q: What is conversion optimization?
A: The process of testing and improving the conversion rate of a website. Making sure that the website is generating as many sales, leads or whatever the goal of the website is as possible.

Q: Why is conversion optimization so important for ecommerce sites?
A: Generally with an ecomm website, you want your website to be your best salesperson and when you are directing customers to your website, you want it to be able to close the deal. If your website isn’t performing at the potential that it could be, you could be losing out on large amounts of revenue daily. Especially if you are spending $$ on advertising, you want to make sure that you are getting a generous return on ad spend.

Q: What things are taken into consideration when developing a strategy for conversion optimization?
A: Website goals (primary and secondary), page goals (moving traffic to where you want it to go), target audience, the product, current landing page and trends, sales pitch, and common objections.

Q: What are the most important pages to optimize and why?
A: Home page – this page usually generates the most traffic to a website
Category page – to move traffic to the product page
Product page – close the sale
Each step of the checkout process – once you have closed the sale you don’t want to lose it during the checkout process. Measure drop off and identify issues

Q: What are some of the key elements that you test with A/B testing?
A: Long page vs short page
1 page vs multiple pages
Product imagery
Color
Content – keyword usage, language, simplicity, headlines
Call to actions – buttons, wording, placement

Tune in to hear more detail and specific examples on conversion optimization and how this strategy can help your web sales, by some of the leading conversion optimizers in the industry.

Where to Find Lindsay Viscount and Sarah Bundy:
Sarah’s LinkedIn account (bio)
All Inclusive Marketing website
All Inclusive Marketing blog
All Inclusive Marketing Twitter:
Sarah’s Twitter:
All Inclusive Marketing phone: (604) 560 2542

Find Us On Twitter:
Deborah Carney
Merchant ABCs
Geekcast.fm

Thanks to Geekcast.fm for hosting our podcasts, check them out for lots of other great podcasts about affiliate marketing and marketing in general.

Affiliate and Consultant Eric Nagel joins experienced affiliate managers (OPMs) Vinny O’Hare and Deborah Carney in a very important episode of Merchant ABCs. Many merchants are not aware that if they don’t have an Affiliate Agreement in place they are giving affiliates carte blanche to do whatever they want to promote your affiliate program. Eric joined us today to help explain to merchants both new and existing why they need a properly created affiliate agreement. Affiliates want you to have an agreement so they have guidelines and so they know that your affiliate manager and company have thought about the many ways affiliates can promote the merchant’s site. Affiliates will also assume that once you have an agreement in place that you will enforce it appropriately.

Topics we cover are: Search Engine Marketing – both PPC and organic, Direct to Merchant Linking in PPC and social media, Domain names – including subdomains and subdirectories, Coupon site regulations, Loyalty site regulations, Email restrictions, Social Media links and posts, iFrames and other framing of the merchant site, Policy about adware, spyware, toolbars and other downloads, Prohibited Affiliate Website Content, Unacceptable Web Sites (Banner farms, PLR sites etc).

Find us on Twitter:
Eric Nagel
Deborah Carney (a.k.a. Loxly)
Merchant ABCs
Team Loxly
Vinny O’Hare

Thanks to Geekcast.fm for hosting our podcasts, check them out for lots of other great podcasts about affiliate marketing and marketing in general.

This should actually be the first podcast any company considering starting an affiliate program should listen to.

Karen Garcia of GTO Affiliate Management and Liz Gazer of Growthspurt Media Affiliate Management join Merchant ABCs Training Podcasts host Deborah Carney to discuss the realities of starting an affiliate program. Many merchants think it is an inexpensive channel that they can just put out an affiliate offer either in-house or on a network and the money will start rolling in. Below is a *basic* outline of what we discussed. This podcast contains so much valuable information that it will be made available in other formats, if you want to be notified when those formats are available, go to MerchantABCs.com and sign up for the mailing list.

Whether you are considering opening an affiliate program or already have one running, it would be helpful to you to spend the time to listen to three experienced OPMs (Outsourced Program Managers) that want to help you be sure that an affiliate program is a good addition to your company as a marketing channel.

CAN YOU AFFORD YOUR AFFILIATE PROGRAM?

What an Affiliate Program IS:
• A Cost Effective means of growing brand/sales online
• An effective way to reach segments of the market you might not otherwise be able to reach without a LOT more time, effort or money
• A real marketing channel, requiring all the same components as any other business channel you might employ to get your product to market and grow sales over time

What an Affiliate Program is NOT:
• Magic!
• Guaranteed to double or triple your sales overnight, or within a few weeks or even a few months.
• Something you can launch and leave running on auto-pilot – it needs daily management by someone well-connected, educated/experienced/seasoned and well-versed on the ins and outs of both business management and the ever-changing needs of affiliates
• Something you can launch and then NOT expect to pay for once the sales start rolling in

Affiliate marketing has always been and still is today, one of the most cost effective ways of growing brand/sales online – aside from the costs of actively managing the channel, this method of advertising is always performance based, meaning that you only pay out the commission after the sale has been closed – and usually, verified. Despite that, there ARE costs involved and being honest about whether or not you can afford them up front, can save you thousands of dollars, in the long run.

Examples of costs involved/what to expect:
• Monthly management fees – whether you pay someone in-house on a salary or outsource to one of the many qualified OPMs available to help you run your program
◦ varies depending on experience, reputation, etc.
• One-time network registration/set up fee
◦ varies by network from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand for set up
• Monthly network usage fee and/or network transaction fees
◦ % of sales or % of amount equivalent to affiliate commissions
• Email marketing/newsletter costs (if you hire an OPM this may be covered/included for you depending on your negotiated contract)
• Affiliate commissions as set by you – a % of sales
• Bonuses tied to volume or for promotions/seasonal lift
• Advertising the program in key industry locations online as well as offline and in person (conferences/tradeshows, etc.)
◦ Conference/tradeshow booths (the space, the booth, the materials, the staff) – optional but recommended for best results

COMMON MISTAKES MADE BY MERCHANTS WHO CAN’T AFFORD THEIR AFFILIATE PROGRAMS:
• Being dishonest about what kind of funding exists for the program expenditures during early talks with a prospective or newly hired AM/OPM
• Expecting the channel to pay for itself within a few weeks to a few months of launching
• Pitting internal channel managers against one another (i.e. PPC vs. AM) for “last click” so they work AGAINST one another instead of WITH one another as a team
• Looking for reasons to reverse commissions and where there are none, invent them!
• Cutting commissions – especially before you’ve been around long enough to establish presence & instill any confidence in your affiliate market that you’re “one of the good guys” or “worth promoting”
• Shutting down the program after launch – few weeks or few months in, realizing this actually costs $$

Merchants who can’t afford their affiliate channel often resort to scheming leakage/diversion tactics – excuses for not paying commissions. Remember – Affiliates are SMART – they DO pay attention and they DO expect to be paid for their efforts. Would you continue to work for free if your paycheck was withheld? Make no mistake – the expense you save by making unnecessary/uncalled for reversals to commissions today, WILL cost you down the line. The affiliate who goes unpaid today, will not promote you tomorrow.

Suggestions for managing costs and expectations:
• Look at your profit margins carefully and be realistic about what you can afford to pay, right up front.
• Be honest with your Affiliate Manager/OPM about what you can afford and let them determine if it makes sense for you to move ahead or not
• The biggest mistake you can make is by over-inflating the amount you can afford to pay in early talks with a potential or newly hired AM/OPM (claims like “sky’s the limit, there is no ceiling on what we can afford, whatever it takes to make sales, etc.). Doing so sets you, your AM/OPM AND your affiliates up for inevitable failure.

KEY TAKEAWAY POINTS:
• Be transparent with your AM/OPM about what funding is like so they can determine whether you truly can afford to make this work – not doing so will only cost you in the long run when you have to cut your losses and pull out early after having invested heavily up front to get things running
• Remember the nest-egg concept – Long term investment garners long term sustainable results that will grow year over year with good management, proper funding and careful planning/analysis
• It can often take more than one advertisement in more than one channel to motivate a consumer to close the sale. Studies have shown consumers are exposed to an ad on average, approx. 7 times before they “tune in” to it. Expect that occasionally, some sales may track as having come through more than one channel (i.e. PPC/Affiliate) by the time the sale has been closed. Reversing an affiliate commission because it tracked as a PPC sale as well, is like stealing from Peter to pay Paul and is counter-productive to the mission, in the big picture.
◦ Example: TV/Print/Outdoor advertising. Hugely successful brands like Nike don’t cut billboard campaigns just because a customer who buys shoes says they saw a commercial on TV. They understand it costs money to make money. They understand the need for an intergrated marketing mix. Your online advertising channels are part of that mix. You may have to pay them both, in some cases. Chalk it up to the cost of doing business. If you can’t, you may not be able to afford your affiliate program.
◦ If MOST sales are tracking in multiple channels it may be time to reassess but unless the majority of sales are, see above – chalk it up to the cost of doing business.

• It’s not magic – it’s marketing. Goals should be S.M.A.R.T. – specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-based. The R should also stand for REASONABLE. Give your affiliate program reasonable time to produce results – it can take up to a year especially if you are a new program starting from scratch.
• Know your own business strengths/weaknesses and once again – be transparent/honest with yourself and your AM/OPM so you can build on those strengths and find ways to overcome weaknesses which will in turn make you more competitive in the long run
• Competitive analysis – know what your competition is offering and expect to do your best to meet – if not exceed it.

Find us on Twitter:

• Deborah Carney (a.k.a. Loxly)
• Merchant ABCs
• Geekcast.fm

To learn more about Karen and GTO Management:

GTO Management Outsourced Affiliate Marketing Manager
Twitter: @GTOMan
Facebook Fan Page

To learn more about Liz and Growthspurt Media:

Growthspurt Media Outsourced Affiliate Marketing Manager
Twitter: @lizgazer
Facebook Fan Page

Thanks to Geekcast.fm for hosting our podcasts, check them out for lots of other great podcasts about affiliate marketing and marketing in general.

Karen Garcia of GTO Management and Liz Gazer of Growthspurt Media join Merchant ABCs Training Podcasts host Deborah Carney to discuss how many merchants treat the affiliate channel as the “red headed step child” of their marketing efforts. Building on what you learned from Merchant ABCs Training Podcast #17 with Sarah Bundy of All Inclusive Marketing, this podcast goes in depth on how you need to treat your affiliate channel to be able to grow it. Below is a *basic* outline of what we discussed.

Whether you are considering opening an affiliate program or already have one running, it would be helpful to you to spend the time to listen to three experienced OPMs (Outsourced Program Managers) that want to help you be sure you are giving your affiliates what they need to help your company be more successful.

YOUR AFFILIATES ARE A TARGET MARKET TOO!

• Today’s e-commerce marketplace is saturated; affiliates have a lot of choice

• It’s not always about how great your products/site/offers, it’s about the service and the total value experience you provide – to AFFILIATES.

The Painful Truth

• YOU might think your product/website/business is the best thing since sliced bread (and it may well be!) but to Affiliates, unless you’re offering them something different than your competition is, you’re just another merchant. With your Affiliate Manager or OPM, you need to strategize on how you plan to differentiate yourselves. The best way is by providing your Affiliates with a total service experience that is both interesting & rewarding

• Just like you need to be concerned about your total customer experience, you need to worry about the total affiliate experience – put some thought into what kind of “feel good” factors you can offer that might set you apart from your competition.

Cardinal Rules of Affiliate Loyalty

Loyalty is hard to come by in an industry dominated by dollar signs. Affiliates need to be kept:

▪ Educated & Informed – What/Where/When/Why/How
• Product knowledge/Pricing Changes
• Customer service policies (shipping, returns, etc.)
• Distribution Channels
• Promotional Campaigns (on site, seasonal, coupon, etc.)
• Unique Selling Proposition & Brand Positioning (what makes you stand out amongst your competition?)

▪ Engaged
• Newsletters
• Promotions
• Contests
• Communication – timely, relevant, to the point & consistent
◦ Keep your program top of mind – Affiliates often have hands in multiple projects /merchants at once – a friendly touch base can instill confidence & encourage them to bump you to the top of the priority list
• Request feedback and accept suggestions/constructive criticism positively. Be flexible to make additions/changes where need be

▪ Motivated & Inspired
• Training & Support
• Timely responses to inquiries and requests
• Get to know them, and touch base regularly with encouragement and positive feedback about their efforts.

▪ Empowered
Affiliates are like your online sales team – only they don’t work for you exclusively. Empower Them. Make them feel like they’re a PART of something. If they have a sense of ownership they are more likely to be loyal to your brand and promote you above or in place of your competition.
◦ Provide the tools necessary to help your affiliates make the most of their promotional efforts (coupons, banners/text links, video, widgets, data feeds, etc.)

▪ Rewarded
• Commission structure should be competitive
• Leave room for incremental increases either as part of a bonus structure based on performance volume/sales, on an individually negotiated basis (i.e. For better placement, exclusive terms, etc.) or ideally, both.
• Timely payments
• Flexibility – custom creative in some cases where requested
• Keep the reversal rate as low as possible – remember, if affiliates are confident they’ll actually receive proper payment for their efforts they’ll be more likely to increase ad spend and time/effort allocation for your brand

Find us on Twitter:

• Deborah Carney (a.k.a. Loxly)
• Merchant ABCs
• Geekcast.fm

To learn more about Karen and GTO Management:

GTO Management Outsourced Affiliate Marketing Manager
Twitter: @GTOMan
Facebook Fan Page

To learn more about Liz and Growthspurt Media:

Growthspurt Media Outsourced Affiliate Marketing Manager
Twitter: @lizgazer
Facebook Fan Page

Thanks to Geekcast.fm for hosting our podcasts, check them out for lots of other great podcasts about affiliate marketing and marketing in general.

Sarah Bundy of All Inclusive Marketing joins Merchant ABCs host Deborah Carney to discuss why your company should have an integrated marketing plan that includes affiliate marketing as one component of many. Below are the outlines of what we discuss and links to Sarah’s sites that have more complete notes. Even with the notes, you really will want to listen to this podcast, even though it is a little longer than our average podcast.

5 Steps to Writing an Integrated Marketing Plan
By creating a strategic online marketing plan, you put your best foot (and brain, and dollar) forward in ensuring you achieve the best success for your new online presence. Here is a brief outline of what AIM usually covers in their integrated marketing plans for their clients.

1. Situation Analysis (research of the industry and online sales potential)
a) Product Description and Overview
b) Market Analysis / Potential
c) Identification of Target Groups
d) Selection of Primary Target Groups

2. Competitive Analysis
a) SWOT
b) Suggested Value Propositions

3. Positioning and Main Messaging
a) Suggested Brand Positioning
b) Suggested Main Messages (according to selected target groups)

4. Online Marketing Channel Strategy
a) Marketing Channel Analysis and Selection
b) Keyword Analysis
c) Competitive Analysis (narrowed down) with Competitive Edge
d) Customer Retention Strategy
f) Channel Rollout Plan (Setup and Execution)

5. Financial Analysis
a) Sales Projections
b) Budgets
c) Timelines

The 5 Decisions Every Customer Makes before they Buy (in this order!) are:

1. About you
2. About your business
3. About your product
4. About your price
5. About the time frame in which you can deliver.

These 5 decisions are almost ALWAYS made in this order and by almost EVERY customer. This decision process remains true whether you’re buying a car or a piece of pizza.

Where to Find Sarah:
Sarah’s LinkedIn account (bio)
All Inclusive Marketing website
All Inclusive Marketing blog
All Inclusive Marketing Twitter:
Sarah’s Twitter:
All Inclusive Marketing phone: (604) 560 2542

Find Us On Twitter:
Deborah Carney
Merchant ABCs
Geekcast.fm

Leave us some comments on points you agree or disagree on or how your company utilizes

Thanks to Geekcast.fm for hosting our podcasts, check them out for lots of other great podcasts about affiliate marketing and marketing in general.

Not enough info provided about products offered.
Some do not pay on time.

Leave your Sound Off comments in this form.

As a new but fast rising website, it is frustrating that some affiliate programs will not even consider allowing you to participate in their program. They don’t seem to look at the trajectory of a website, nor do they ask the questions.

Leave your Sound Off comments in this form.

Bad: I have had merchants on CJ, Shareasale, and GAN automatically decline me without giving me a chance for rebuttal or explanation. I would not mind if the criteria was delineated or summarized either prior to decline or even after rejection. Even a vague summary or what the merchants are looking for would help.

Good: I appreciate merchants who suggest keywords for the items they sell. I appreciate knowing what the popular items are.

Leave your Sound Off comments in this form.

The affiliate community is very sharing and giving. It’s a wonderful industry to be in.

Leave your Sound Off comments in this form.

I like when merchants don’t assume the worst and they contact affiliates about issues before acting.

Leave your Sound Off comments in this form.

Not properly paying attention to the creatives in their program or responding to emails.

Leave your Sound Off comments in this form.

When merchants aren’t available to contact, they don’t reply to emails and there is no place to ask questions or find answers. If I have a problem and I can’t reach someone for answers, it makes it difficult to move forward or work with them.

Leave your Sound Off comments in this form.

My pet peeve about merchants is when they don’t understand the need to deep link to their site.

Leave your Sound Off comments in this form.

I appreciate when a merchant (or OPM) presents their marketing data in an orderly fashion and includes the following: logo banners in all standard sizes using web-safe colors, a detailed marketing description that includes featured brands and value proposition, affiliate manager contact information, and summary data in table format that presents PPC and other policies, top keywords, commission rates, average order size, conversion rate, reasons for reversal, and seasonal trends.

Leave your Sound Off comments in this form.

Commission Junction’s $10 Inactivity Fee for Publishers and Low Earners is unfair

Leave your Sound Off comments in this form.

It irritates me when merchants deny my request to become their affiliate through automatic criteria filters and without contacting me. It tells me the merchant knows zilch about affiliate marketing potential nor do they care to learn.

Leave your Sound Off comments in this form.

2 things that drive us crazy:

1) Newsletters that include promotions/sales/deals/discounts-whatever without an expiration date.. please give us the information necessary to correctly post and remove anything you want us to use so you don’t email us next month telling us to remove a code that has expired. Or worse, if we get a code that doesn’t specify “ongoing” or something similar, we will expire it in 30 days even if it could run longer.

2) if you are going to the trouble to include links for us to use, the please, please, please auto-populate with our affiliate ID’s. We are not trying to be lazy, but efficient. It takes much longer to log in to a network, find your account – go to links page – find the relevant link to promote – copy and paste that back into our admin vs simply copying the link code from your newsletter and quickly pasting it on our sites..huge time saver for us and we will get the links up faster when you include the tracking links in your newsletters.

Leave your Sound Off comments in this form.

I just love it (/sarcasm) when an affiliate who has provided little or no information on their websites or how they plan tom promote your site rips you up and down when you decline their application.

Affiliates – if you want to get approved for affiliate programs at a high percentage, make sure to update your network profile with any and all current sites that you are proud of that show off the quality of your work and your ability to create unique content.

Leave your Sound Off comments in this form.

Merchant ABCs Training podcast hosts Deborah Carney and Vinny O’Hare joined Kim Salvino, Amy Ely, and Jeannine Crooks of buy.at Affiliate Network to talk about best practices when creating coupons and deals and how to effectively work with coupon affiliates.

Topics include:

·         The benefits of working with coupon affiliates
·         Best practices when creating a coupon code
·         Common concerns when working with coupon affiliates
·         Opportunities that could give your company an competitive advantage

Discussed in the podcast – when putting together a coupon code for affiliates, consider the following:

·         Test to make sure the coupon works
·         Ensure the promotion is a “real deal” vs. an everyday benefit (ex. free shipping on orders over $50)
·         Give at least 3 days notice to affiliates before the promotion goes live
·         Add time zones when defining coupon expiration dates and times
·         Clearly define any restrictions
·         Make sure the code is NOT case sensitive

Find Us On Twitter:
Vinny O’Hare
Deborah Carney
Merchant ABCs
Geekcast.fm

Learn more about buy.at:
Visit the buy.at blog
Facebook Fan Page
Twitter: @buyatUS

Thanks to Geekcast.fm for hosting our podcasts, check them out for lots of other great podcasts about affiliate marketing and marketing in general.

This is an ABCs Plus Special edition podcast that is being posted to Affiliate ABCs, Blogging ABCs and Merchant ABCs because of the importance of the issue. Your hosts Vinny O’Hare and Deborah Carney are joined by Karen Garcia, Outsourced Affiliate Program Manager to try and explain the Affiliate Nexus sales tax laws that states are enacting to attempt to get more companies to collect their state sales tax even though the companies do not have a physical presence in their state. States are trying to establish that affiliates and affiliate marketing gives companies a physical presence in their state, making the merchants liable to collect sales taxes in states they shouldn’t have to.

Some Resources we mention:
Coffee Talk with James Martell, Karen Garcia and Jeannine Crooks

PMA List of States and their status and links to their bills.

NexusAware – a listing of what companies already have to collect sales taxes in what states

There is a lot of information out there and much confusion by affiliates, merchants, bloggers and even the legislators themselves. If you are in a state that hasn’t passed this tax yet, check and see if they have a law drafted or on the table. Basically states are treating this as an amendment to their state sales tax laws and not as new laws, so they pass easier and sometimes with no press about it at all.

Please feel free to contribute additional information in the comments. We are not lawyers, so you need to check with a local lawyer familiar with internet law if you are in an affected state.

What we also discuss in this podcast is how affiliates can find merchants that already collect sales tax in their state, what types of merchants that sell items that are exempt and how to talk to your merchants to find out how they are going to handle it if their state passes such a law.

Do you use Twitter to communicate with your customers? Do you use Twitter to communicate with your affiliates? Are you interested in increasing the number of people following you?

You’ve probably heard of software programs that promise they can get you hundreds or even thousands of new Twitter followers instantly. The truth is, however, that the use of many of these software programs will put you in violation of Twitter’s terms and service agreements, and you could lose your account if caught using one.

So don’t risk it, there are legitimate ways to build your following.

The “Twitter” Thing

You might be surprised to learn that I haven’t always been so successful with Twitter. In fact, I didn’t get the whole “Twitter” thing at all when the concept was first introduced to me, but I decided to give it a shot. Now I use it every day to promote my brand and my products.

I might not have millions or even tens of thousands of followers like the big celebrities do, but I do have a loyal following of 5,000+ individuals. Plus, ever since I started using the strategies below, I have watched my following grow steadily each and every day. I know the same thing can happen for you.

My 3 Foolproof Strategies

If you’re serious about increasing your Twitter followers put my strategies into play. You will see results. Whether you’re promoting the latest creatives to your affiliates, or looking to increase leads or online sales for chiropractic services or exotic travel or even Golden Technologies lift chairs, these strategies will work for you.

Strategy #1 – Syndicate an Online Newspaper

Strategy 1 involves creating an online newspaper that is based on a particular Twitter list, user, and/or keyword using a service called www.paper.li. It allows you to easily and automatically publish and distribute a daily online newspaper to your Twitter following.

To give you an example my online newspaper is called The Guest Blogging Daily. You can view it here: http://paper.li/JamesMartell/1308523225. You’ll see that it is nicely design and has a very clean and modern look. It’s very easy on the eyes.

All of the articles that are used to create the newspaper are gathered up automatically by Paper.li using the Twitter list, user, and/or keyword I had provided.

The system sends a tweet to my followers on a schedule determined by me (usually daily) alerting them each time a newspaper is published. The contributing authors also receive notification in their Twitter account in the form of a “mention”.

I have found that many of the contributing authors not only end up following me back, but in addition, they also retweet the paper out to their lists giving me even more followers.

I encourage you to set up your very own paper.li newspaper on a topic that will interest your Twitter followers. Doing so is incredibly easy and takes only a few minutes of your time. Plus, you’ll start seeing results right away.

Strategy #2 – Become a Guest Writer

This next strategy is probably the most rewarding, and it really works. All you need to do is find a few websites that cater to the same type of people who would be interested in your products and services that happen to be looking for guest writers and become one yourself. Being a “guest blogger” gives you a whole new audience, all of whom are potential Twitter followers.

You can do the same if you’re looking to expand your affiliate base. Go guest blog on sites such as www.comluv.com, www.famousbloggers.net and the sister site to this one; www.affiliateabcs.com. Get involved, be helpful and get to know a whole new audience of affiliates by contributing helpful tips and advice.

And keep in mind the more you interact with and get to know your potential customers and affiliates, the more likely they will be to follow you on Twitter and to remain loyal followers for a long time to come.

If you’re truly dedicated to increasing your followers, then start guest blogging right away!

Strategy #3 – Use That “Thank-You” Page

This strategy is the one that has brought me the most success of all and, believe it or not, it’s also the simplest to use. It’s so very effective and easy that you’ll wonder why you haven’t been doing it all along. I know that I couldn’t live without it now.

I first learned this strategy from Joshua Sloan, the former VP of internet marketing for 1&1 Hosting, which is the largest and fastest growing hosting company. What Mr. Sloan promised was right – this strategy got me tons of followers and works 100% of the time.

All you have to do is set your account up so that when someone fills in your option form, to subscribe to your newsletter, get a free report, or affiliate join page, they are automatically taken to a special “Thank You” page. On those thank you pages, you’ll write out an enticing invitation to follow you on Twitter.

I understand if you might be a little shy about doing this, but stop and think for a moment.

The people who fill out your option form are obviously people who are interested in what you have to say. Furthermore, they already trust you enough to give you their name and e-mail, so it’s practically a given that they’ll also want to follow you on Twitter.

Get Started Today

Now that you know my three strategies for how to get more Twitter followers, it’s up to you to go out and put them into action. The sooner you do, the sooner you can gain more followers and better promote your dental services, bar stools or Pride lift chairs or anything else.

James Martell discovered the lucrative world of affiliate marketing in 1999. He is a self-taught Internet entrepreneur and a leading expert in affiliate marketing, outsourcing and SEO. James is the host of the “Affiliate Buzz”, the first and longest running affiliate marketing podcast -free. James is the host of the “Affiliate Marketers SUPER BootCamp”, a series of first rate affiliate marketing video trainings best known for developing affiliate success stories. James resides in White Rock BC, a seaside suburb of Vancouver on the West Coast of Canada with Arlene and their 4 children. You’ll receive actionable tips, strategies and money making advice directly from James Martell when you subscribe to his weekly Affiliate Buzz podcast by email, RSS feed or iTunes. You can also follow James on Twitter. You’ll be glad you did!

As we have announced before, Team Loxly is focusing on educating affiliates, bloggers and merchants. We would like to invite you to come and be our guest at the following sites, you can submit more than one topic, or more than one site. We have guests that have discussed topics that cover all three audiences.

We have three ABCs series of podcasts where we give advice and pointers on how to achieve success as an affiliate, monetize your blog or run the perfect merchant program. Part of the success of our podcasts are listening to the people that listen to the podcasts and hear what they want to learn about or when they propose a topic that they want to share their expertise on. We encourage people to introduce us to guests we should have on our shows, and also offer to be guests and speak on a topic or ask us questions about a topic. Our podcasts are all discussion style and not necessarily interview style. We often will have a panel of up to 4 people that will discuss a topic.

We also like to keep the podcasts short and one specific topic so that our listeners have one main takeaway from our shows and are not bombarded with information that they can’t absorb. We also like our guests because we feel that the affiliate industry is in constant growth and there is no one “voice” that can keep up with all the changes. We may create some ebooks from our podcast topics and create some formal training (we are developing that on Merchant ABCs first) but we are not interested at this time in producing print books that are almost out of date by the time they are published.

Here are the links:
Be our guest on Merchant ABCs podcast: Tell merchants what you want them to know to make their programs stellar
Be our guest on Affiliate ABCs podcast: Ask us questions, tell affiliates about your timesaving tips, what things work for you
Be our guest on Blogging ABCs podcast: Ask us how to monetize your blogs, offer your style and writing tips, software and plugins you use

And on Merchant ABCs we have a very special page where you can share the things that Merchants, Affiliates, and Networks do that annoys you or makes you happy. Come share your pet peeves and your props about all aspects of the affiliate industry. We are going to start posting the responses this week. There are some very similar peeves/props that have us already thinking about future podcasts and looking for guests to cover those topics.

Finally, other places to find many affiliate voices discussing industry issues Affiliate Summit Affiliate Forum and FeedFront Affiliate Industry Magazine.

Merchant ABCs hosts Deborah Carney and Vinny O’Hare joined Kim Salvino and Amy Ely of buy.at to talk about affiliate program SEO policies and important considerations when constructing terms and conditions.

Topics include:
·         The impact of placing restrictions on affiliates who rank for SEO/natural search terms
·         Understanding why advertisers may put restrictions in place and how affiliates use SEO
·         Suggestions on how to structure a search policy and additional Ts & Cs

Key takeaways:

·         Be smart – advertisers benefit by learning industry best practices and from other programs before finalizing their affiliate terms and conditions
·         Be aware – think about the impact on affiliates in addition to the impact on the advertiser
·         Be clear – write terms and conditions in a way that affiliates can clearly understand the rules

Also, be fair –affiliates are an advertiser’s marketing partners.  Great communication will go a long way in developing a profitable relationship.
Find us on Twitter:
Vinny O’Hare
Deborah Carney (a.k.a. Loxly)
Merchant ABCs
Geekcast.fm

Learn more about buy.at:
Visit the buy.at blog
Facebook Fan Page
Twitter: @buyatUS

Thanks to Geekcast.fm for hosting our podcasts, check them out for lots of other great podcasts about affiliate marketing and marketing in general.

James Martell joins Merchant ABCs hosts Vinny O’Hare and Deborah Carney discuss what merchants should and shouldn’t have in their newsletters and how frequently they should be sent out. They also dive into what merchants should include in recruiting emails.

Find us on Twitter:
Deborah Carney (a.k.a. Loxly)
James Martell
Merchant ABCs
Geekcast.fm

Thanks to Geekcast.fm for hosting our podcasts, check them out for lots of other great podcasts about affiliate marketing and marketing in general.

Affiliate Summit is presenting a series of webinars leading up to Affiliate Summit East in NYC, which we were invited to participate in. Since a lot of new merchants and merchants without programs yet are always looking at why affiliates aren’t signing up or want to know how to recruit affiliates, this webinar shows the elements that super affiliates look for in a merchant’s website before they will look at joining your program or posting your links.

Here is the link to the slidedeck if you want to print it out for reference:

We have a related podcast with affiliate Eric Nagel, a super affiliate that explains what he looks for in a merchant site and why.

Affiliate program terms and conditions (or lack thereof) are often misunderstood. Some merchants set up in-house affiliate programs on networks without giving thought to how affiliates might promote their products.

Suddenly an affiliate is successfully promoting a merchant via a pay-per-click campaign that includes the merchant’s brand name. The merchant is shocked, quickly turns off that affiliate and then reverses commissions with the attitude that those sales would have occurred anyway from the natural search results.

But wait, the merchant didn’t specify in their terms that affiliates aren’t allowed to bid on their brand name. They quickly add that in. Problem solved? Maybe.

At the same time, the merchant is noticing that affiliates are ranking higher than the merchant themselves, in the natural search results. The merchant changes their terms to not allow affiliates to have the company’s brand name in their meta tags, titles or file names.

These are two examples of merchants actually hurting themselves.

They need to protect their brand name, but in many instances the merchants do not have an in-house PPC campaign and are not bidding on their own brand. Their competitors could very well be.

In the case of the natural search results, this is what affiliates do. They create pages to get indexed for brands. If an affiliate is ranking higher in natural results for a brand name, then the affiliate is doing their job, and the merchant isn’t doing a good job of SEO on their own.

Merchant terms need to be constructed in a way that is fair to both the affiliate and the merchant. If a merchant has internal staff that overlaps with their affiliates, the terms can be a little more strict.

But, in the case of SEO, even the affiliates that are very good at it can’t control everything the search engines include in natural results. Having terms that exclude paying affiliates that rank high in search results for company names or products will result in fewer affiliates working an affiliate program. Top affiliates won’t give these programs a second look.

Terms and conditions that acknowledge the various types of affiliates that are out there, like coupon, loyalty, and incentive sites are very helpful. Merchants need to think about how to harness the advantages of those types of sites, and encourage affiliates to promote the merchant by creating terms that allow for ethical affiliates to do so.

Balance is the key, along with understanding what you want to gain from your affiliate program.

Download the entire FeedFront issue 14 here

FeedFront issue 14 articles can be found here as well

I have been thinking a lot about affiliate programs that are on auto approval lately. I think the days of auto approval affiliate programs are coming to an end and will either soon either disappear or become rare.

A month or so ago we moved the rest of the affiliate programs we manage to manual approval since most of the applications we were getting were just plain junk. Sites claiming that WordPress.com or Google.com was their domain name and coming from a foreign country was starting to become the norm. Some of these are not exactly who you want to be partners with. These applications on auto approve can easily get bad players into your affiliate program to do harm to good affiliates as well as your brand. You are giving access to trademark bidders, bad ppc bidders, PPV and even spyware.

Lets say a user goes to Google and types in your brand name. They end up clicking on either some ppc ads or a link that automatically puts spyware or malware on the end users computer. That end user is only going to remember typing in your brand name and when they tell friends about your company this is what they will remember, not exactly how you want to be known.

With the FTC cracking down on websites and affiliate programs you should have it in your best interest to know who you are dealing with. Having 1000′s of affiliates in your program isn’t going to help you with sales if they are not doing anything so why bother wasting time policing them. Just announcing that you have a million affiliates tells serious affiliates that your program isn’t performing correctly and you are trying to get sales any way possible. Affiliate programs may better off having a few hundred or a thousand affiliates that are performing then being stuck on trying to raise the number of affiliates in the program.

If the FTC comes knocking on the merchants door saying this affiliate is doing this and that, the only answer they can give them is that they were auto approved into the program and we didn’t know what they were doing. Needless to say this isn’t a good answer. The FTC just gave a huge penalty to a merchant and will require them to monitor their affiliates for a few years. Do you want this to happen to you? I don’t think so as you can avoid all this by putting the affiliate program on manual approval and carefully screen affiliates. You can either do manual approvals and know who you are working with or pay later. You have to make sure the affiliate uses some sort of disclosure that they are being paid to endorse the product especially if they are doing review sites.

As a business you don’t partner with everyone in the world so why should your affiliate program be operated in the same manner. It just doesn’t make good business sense. What I see in the future is serious affiliates not joining affiliate programs that are on auto approve. Wouldn’t you rather have a serious affiliate then 100 that will never do anything at all? Of course you would. Being on manual approval also gives you a chance to contact an affiliate that doesn’t initially look like a good fit and find out how they plan to promote your program.  Many affiliates that don’t look right on first look, can end up being great performers because you reached out and talked to them.

Out of the top 100 programs in the Shareasale network, 44 are on auto approval. That means over half are already on manual approval. I would bet that by the end of the year that number of affiliate programs on auto approval will be less then 10. I see no reason to have an affiliate program on auto approval except you having no one running the affiliate program or a lazy affiliate manager is in place. One of the programs we use to manage on the Google affiliate network got 300 affiliate applications a week and we would approve maybe 5 if we were lucky.

If we were on auto approval with them that would be 295 affiliates lousy affiliates that would have been in the program. We now have to watch these affiliates and 90% of them wouldn’t perform anyway so why have them at all. Just the amount of time we used going through the applications was time we could have spent better helping good affiliates get better or recruit better affiliates. It would waste more time being the policeman by letting these affiliates in and having to monitor them more closely.

Is there a benefit to having your affiliate program on auto approval? Yes, It allows the affiliate to get links up sooner, including the bad guys. If you manually approve affiliates the most it should take is 24-48 hours or so.  Is that really a long wait. Odds are if an affiliate is looking to work with a good affiliate program waiting a day or two at worst is not that bad.

Most serious affiliates have no problem waiting a day or so to get approved. If they were smart they already emailed the affiliate manager explaining how they would promote the program. Losing affiliates because you are on manual approval is not really the way it is.

Some managers think that they can go back and remove bad affiliates that slipped in by being auto-approved.  That is a bad practice for several reasons the biggest being that by the time you remove the affiliate, they already have links up and now they are mad at you when you remove them and will talk trash about your program.  Some affiliates you won’t care, others will have better sites that you didn’t give them a chance to talk to you about.  Also, with the links already out there, part of the damage is already done.

By having your program on auto approve you are not checking to see if websites are any good and if they have basic things like a terms of service, privacy policy, about us, etc. What if an affiliate joined your program, bought a list of emails and sent out a mass marketing email mentioning your company? Now you have your brand name creating spam and maybe even a Can-Spam issue on your hands. Not exactly what you were thinking when you decided to have an affiliate program.

I mentioned a few reasons why if you are running an affiliate program you should think more about how you are approving affiliates. If you are serious about your business you should be serious about your affiliate program as well.

Join Merchant ABCs hosts Vinny O’Hare and Deborah Carney as they discuss how Jeff Grill, Vice President, Marketing at Mimeo.com decided to start their affiliate program and the steps they took to find the right fit for a network and an OPM (Outsourced Program Manager). We discussed the following:

OPM Selection/Starting a New Program – Merchant View:

1. Preparation
- Documented recruitment and revenue goals
- Affiliate ready website in terms of conversion rates
- Product margins that will allow all parties to make money
- Internal program support
- Familiarity with the Tax Nexus issue and implications for your business
- Get educated – attend affiliate summit, listen to podcasts
- Ask question in the affiliate groups on LinkedIn

2. OPM or no OPM
- Internal resource availability
- Margin allowance of your product or service
- Expertise in starting a program

3. Network, no network and OPM Selection
- Self hosted or network solution
- Networks such as CJ offer OPM services (pro/con)
- It pays to research networks and OPM’s concurrently (OPM expertise with specific networks)

3. Selection Criteria

Networks:
- Similar Merchants to your product/service and their success
- Fees, Commissions
- A la carte pricing
- Support
- Geographic Reach
- Policies regarding coupon sites etc.
- Publisher access

OPM:
- Experience with specific networks
- Familiarity with your product/service (also consumer, B to B)
- Case studies
- Track Record
- Team Chemistry/who will work on your specific business
- % of recruitment time allotted to your business
- Reporting/frequency
- Industry reputation/awards
- Fee Structure (monthly, % of revenue)
- Access to merchant/publisher events
- Documented process
- Recruitment approach (coupon sites etc.)

4. Final Selection
- Should be clear after going through above
- 3 month process
- 1 month setup prior to launch

5. About the Mimeo.com program
- Who we are
- What we offer
- Program Structure

Find us on Twitter:
Jeff Grill
Vinny O’Hare
Deborah Carney (a.k.a. Loxly)
Merchant ABCs
Geekcast.fm

Join Merchant ABCs host Deborah Carney and guest Jeannine Crooks as they discuss why merchants need to use an editorial calendar to provide information and creatives that are appropriately timed for affiliates to use to promote products appropriately. If you sell a product you should listen to this podcast for tips and advice on getting materials to affiliates in time for them to be able to create pages ahead of the holidays.

Find us on Twitter:
Deborah Carney (a.k.a. Loxly)
Jeannine Crooks
Merchant ABCs

Learn more about buy.at:
Visit the buy.at blog
Facebook Fan Page
Twitter: @buyatUS

Thanks to Geekcast.fm for hosting our podcasts, check them out for lots of other great podcasts about affiliate marketing and marketing in general.

Deborah Carney of Merchant ABCs hosted a panel discussion that included James Martell of Affiliate Buzz and Affiliate Marketers Boot Camp,and buy.at regulars Jeannine Crooks and Amy Ely to continue the discussion on supporting affiliates with content and creative.  Moving beyond the basics, this episode focuses on creating, sharing, and using video creative.

Topics include:

· Why video is important for merchants to consider

· Tools available to create and tag video on different networks

· Video formats – product reviews and demonstrations, the manufacturing process, testimonials, and more

· Creating professional and polished clips vs. simple and personalized video

·  The three main video components – the establishing shot, mid shot, and close ups

·  Methods to share videos with affiliates

· Creating motion graphic videos and slide shows with audio

During the conversation, participants shared a few recommended video editing companies and software to help merchants get started.  These include: Elance, Camtasia, Jing, and ScreenFlow. Also mentioned are the Shareasale network video players for both affiliates and merchants, the buy.at video tools available through Coull.com and an article by Rosalind Gardner about how affiliates can create players with links using LinkedTube. One more not mentioned in the show, but that was posted as another alternative by Shawn Collins on the subject is ViewBix (powered by Qoof).

Find us on Twitter:
Deborah Carney (a.k.a. Loxly)
James Martell
Merchant ABCs
Geekcast.fm

Learn more about buy.at:
Visit the buy.at blog
Facebook Fan Page
Twitter: @buyatUS

Thanks to Geekcast.fm for hosting our podcasts, check them out for lots of other great podcasts about affiliate marketing and marketing in general.

Deborah Carney of Merchant ABCs hosted a panel discussion that included James Martell of Affiliate Buzz and Affiliate Marketers Boot Camp, as well as Kim Salvino, Jeannine Crooks and Amy Ely of buy.at.  Everyone joined in to provide guidance on content and creatives that help affiliates promote a merchant’s business more effectively.

Topics include:

·         Why supplying a variety of creative is key to program growth

·         The types of content and creative to consider

·         The value of text links, banners, and offering unique sizes

·         Providing a comprehensive list of product information, company facts, and statistics for affiliates to use when creating articles and unique content

·         Ideas for communicating creative changes and key messages

·         Best practices in the merchant-affiliate relationship

·         The under-utilized power of video

This podcast wraps up with information on video creative, which will be covered in more detail on the next episode.  Enjoy!

Find us on Twitter:
Deborah Carney (a.k.a. Loxly)
James Martell
Merchant ABCs
Geekcast.fm

Learn more about buy.at:
Visit the buy.at blog
Facebook Fan Page
Twitter: @buyatUS

Thanks to Geekcast.fm for hosting our podcasts, check them out for lots of other great podcasts about affiliate marketing and marketing in general.

Merchant ABCs host Deborah Carney talks to Jeannine Crooks and Amy Ely at buy.at about key merchant takeaways from Conversion Conference (started by Tim Ash), which took place March 14-15 in San Francisco.  This podcast discusses several ideas that merchants can implement right away to increase their conversion rates.

We covered six main points during the conversation:

1)     Look at your site through the eyes of your visitors – acknowledge that we (the digital marketers) are online regularly and can be considered super users.  As such, we may not think and interact with the site the way that 99% of our visitors do.  Learn how they search, how they look for products or categories and improve your site based on the user’s perspective.

2)     A clear call to action is key – make the call to action prominent with colors and placement.  Avoid common roadblocks (discussed further in the podcast).

3)     Address the “peakaboo” problem - if a user fills out a field incorrectly, show the message to correct their entry at the relevant location, not at the top of the page after they submit the form.  Don’t make your users scroll up and down to figure out how to fix their information.

4)     Use the power of “scarcity” – if your site sells products, list the remaining number of that product to encourage visitors to buy while they can.  If your inventory is large, use messaging similar to “9+” to still incite a level of urgency.

5)     Never stop testing – enough said

6)     Don’t force a user to login when making a purchase – if they forgot their credentials, they may give up and purchase elsewhere.  Instead, give them the option to shop and purchase as a guest, then sign up as a member after the sale completes.

Learn about these points and more on the podcast.  Enjoy listening!

Find us on Twitter:
Deborah Carney (a.k.a. Loxly)
Merchant ABCs
Geekcast.fm

Learn more about buy.at:
Visit the buy.at blog
Facebook Fan Page
Twitter: @buyatUS

Thanks to Geekcast.fm for hosting our podcasts, check them out for lots of other great podcasts about affiliate marketing and marketing in general.

Continuing on from Merchant ABCs #6 – Tips for B2B Merchants in the Affiliate Industry, this podcast answers two great B2B Merchant questions:

1) What is keeping more B2B companies from starting up affiliate programs?
2) I’ve often read that the B2B buying cycle is a different creature than the consumer buying cycle, so how can an affiliate program be structured to ensure that an affiliate gets paid appropriately?

Merchant ABCs hosts Deborah Carney and Vinny O’Hare discuss answers to these questions with Kim Salvino (Sr. Account Manager & Affiliate Evangelist) and Amy Ely (Marketing Manager) of buy.at.

Topics include:
• Common concerns of running B2B programs in the affiliate industry and how to address them
• The benefits of B2B affiliate marketing, and how networks have adapted
• Tips on how to structure a program for success and establish strong affiliate relationships
• How to adapt programs to accommodate a longer buying cycle

Key takeaways include:
• B2B companies may not start affiliate programs because they think they’re:
1. Too small scale or niche
2. Unable to track sales offline
3. Too complex to market
4. Unable to effectively manage an affiliate’s promotion of their business

• To alleviate these concerns, B2B merchants should consider that:
1. Many affiliates prefer small scale or niche products because they can focus on that topic
2. The B2B space is far less competitive, which is also attractive to affiliates
3. B2B products typically generate a higher margin and commission for affiliates
4. Many networks can track conversions offline
5. Merchants can manually approve affiliates to ensure relevancy
6. Merchants with clear, well constructed Ts & Cs reduce the likelihood of any promotional issues

• Concerns regarding the B2B buying cycle apply to many B2C programs as well, and can be mitigated in the following ways:
1. Set the cookie duration to 365 days
2. Develop a commission structure (ideally using a batch upload process) that pays on an initial lead as well as full customer acquisition
For example, Raven Tools pays 1 cent for initial signup, then a much higher payout for a full registration
3. Establish an offline tracking solution to ensure affiliates don’t lose out on sales

More questions are welcome!
Find us on Twitter:
Vinny O’Hare
Deborah Carney (a.k.a. Loxly)
Merchant ABCs
Geekcast.fm

Learn more about buy.at:
Visit the buy.at blog
Facebook Fan Page
Twitter: @buyatUS

Thanks to Geekcast.fm for hosting our podcasts, check them out for lots of other great podcasts about affiliate marketing and marketing in general.

Merchant ABCs hosts Deborah Carney and Vinny O’Hare talk to Kim Salvino (Sr. Account Manager & Affiliate Evangelist) and Amy Ely (Marketing Manager) at buy.at network about the upcoming Affiliate Summit January 9 – 11, 2011 where you can come by the buy.at booth to be recorded on Merchant ABCs Live

We are inviting Merchants to come ask questions about starting or running an affiliate program, and inviting Affiliates to come tell Merchants what your pet peeve is or what you would like to see them doing differently. This is your chance to ask industry experts your questions and share your own thoughts about affiliate marketing.

We will be at the buy.at booth #300 Monday and Tuesday, but you can email questions in advance to dc@merchantabcs.com if you are unable to attend, but would still like to ask a question for the group to answer, or tweet your question to @buyatUS or @merchantabcs, we will be monitoring both accounts before, during and after the show!

Find us on Twitter:
Vinny O’Hare
Deborah Carney (a.k.a. Loxly)
Merchant ABCs
Geekcast.fm

Learn more about buy.at:
Visit the buy.at blog
Facebook Fan Page
Twitter: @buyatUS

Thanks to Geekcast.fm for hosting our podcasts, check them out for lots of other great podcasts about affiliate marketing and marketing in general.

We got this question today via our Contact Form and decided it would be a good idea to start a section for these. Shawn Collins answers questions like this on his video blog, but for now, I’ll be posting text posts with the questions and answers so that all our site visitors can learn from them. I won’t be using real names, just the questions and our answer.

Now for our first question:

Is it possible to have an affiliate that refers leads to your site by word of mouth. Example: Lets say I email a person a promo flyer (they own a store) they print it out (it has a code on it) and when a potential customer comes in that they think they could use the product/service, they hand them the flyer. They go home and go to the site and they buy the product and they enter their unique code. Will that track?

This is a great question, and one with one of those answers people hate – It depends. Can it be done? Yes. The merchant needs to be on a network that can capture that code, there are a couple that do. Also the merchant cart (or lead form) needs to have a place for that code to be entered. There are more affiliates that are using offline methods of promotion so it isn’t uncommon for affiliates to ask for a special code that tracks uniquely to them.

If the network can’t track it, but the cart has a place for the code, then the merchant can manually credit the affiliate for the sale. This is becoming more important because there are more companies that are creating b2b affiliate programs, and in those cases the person doing the research might not be the person that makes the purchase and there may be phone calls involved. The transaction may not even be “closed” online but may be closed via a purchase order. So that code needs to be transmitted somewhere along the line for the affiliate to get the credit for the sale.

If affiliates don’t trust the tracking, then manual tracking or offline via a code won’t be viable for them. This is where oversight by a network (instead of an in-house program) can become very valuable. Since the affiliates know the networks get paid (usually) based on whether a sale tracks or not, the network is going to be checking to be sure all is working as intended.

Merchant ABCs hosts Deborah Carney and Vinny O’Hare talk to Kim Salvino (Sr. Account Manager & Affiliate Evangelist) and Amy Ely (Marketing Manager) at buy.at network about ways that B2B merchants can succeed in the affiliate industry. B2B customers might not be the same as defined a few years ago, and more B2B merchants are establishing affiliate programs on traditionally B2C networks. B2C affiliates are realizing that more of their audience is in need of B2B products. In this podcast we discuss this plus what merchants should expect and what they need to provide to succeed.

Topics include:

·Observing the growth of B2B advertisers in the affiliate industry
·How B2B services apply to many affiliate sites and audiences of all sizes
·Helpful tools, creatives, content, and resources that B2B merchants can provide to support their affiliate partners

With a sampling mentioned during the podcast, examples of B2B programs that gain traction in the affiliate industry include:

·Email marketing support – ex. Aweber and Vertical Response
·Tools for SEO and social media – ex. Raven Tools SEO Tools
·Resources to start a business – ex. CorpNet Incorporation Services
·Business and office supplies – ex. Carrot Ink
·WordPress and Blogging platform premium themes and plugins – ex. Thesis Theme

Find us on Twitter:
Vinny O’Hare
Deborah Carney (a.k.a. Loxly)
Merchant ABCs
Geekcast.fm

Learn more about buy.at:
Visit the buy.at blog
Facebook Fan Page
Twitter: @buyatUS

Thanks to Geekcast.fm for hosting our podcasts, check them out for lots of other great podcasts about affiliate marketing and marketing in general.

Merchant ABCs hosts Deborah Carney and Vinny O’Hare are joined by long time affiliate manager and OPM/AM Wade Tonkin to discuss expectations of new merchants that are starting affiliate programs. Managers and OPMs (Outsourced Program Managers) are challenged by companies that expect big things right after launching an affiliate program. Experienced managers often have to bust the bubble to be sure everyone understands that good affiliate programs don’t bring “instant money”.

Affiliate Marketing is a marathon not a sprint.

Show Notes and Points:

It can be 3 – 6 months or more before a new affiliate program makes a sale. Site issues can extend that out even farther. Managing expectations is important.

Developing long term relationships, can’t rush the affiliates to promote a new program.

Affiliates need to know a company isn’t going to disappear. Not only do they need to know you have a good manager, they need to know you are in it for the long haul.

Reality:

If affiliates are making good money with your competitor you have to convince them why they will make more with you.

The metrics aren’t there (within the network) for affiliates to see when a program is new. Non-affiliate channel metrics – a merchant needs to show affiliates that they convert without affiliate traffic. The affiliate program shouldn’t be a merchant’s only traffic source.

Affiliates take their time and vet programs. Merchants need to get on their radar, on their todo list, then stick around long enough and be patient so that when affiliates are ready the merchant is still there.

Good OPMs will tell merchants that they aren’t ready or will let merchant know what needs to be done before they can launch a program. And will not manage a program that will not make the changes that are needed to make the site and company successful.

Money vs Reputation: Reputation first. Good OPMs will not take money for management from clients that aren’t ready. They will consult to get them ready, or recommend someone else that can help them get ready based on their needs.

Merchant needs to be affiliate friendly, don’t reverse affiliate sales because you think that you should have gotten the sale yourself. Don’t make a change to your TOS that restricts a type of promotion, then change your mind and expect affiliates to come back.

PPC affiliates have their place and establish a good policy from the beginning.

Offer development, be sure you can afford what you are paying out because moving commissions to a lower level after being established will kill your program. Do short term promotions instead. Be very clear what your payouts are.

Offer bonuses and tiers instead, tiers based on volume. Go to top affiliates and offer higher right away, based on better placement. Include room for network and management fees. If you have higher conversions than the competition.

Make sure you budget for ongoing management, whether inhouse or OPM, for at least 6 months. This is a long term channel, not PPC or CPA lead gen for a quick hit.

Once you are established affiliates will come to you and your management.

Contact on Twitter:
@gtoman
@merchantabcs
@loxly
@vinnyohare

Websites:
GTO Management
Merchant ABCs
Team Loxly
ABCs Plus Affiliate Marketing Forum

Many thanks to GeekCast.fm for hosting Merchant ABCs podcasts and many other podcasts that marketers should be listening too. Check them out!

Join your hosts Deborah Carney and Vinny O’Hare with their guest Angel Djambazov, Managing Editor of Revenews and Affiliate Manager extraordinaire – Custom Tailored Marketing. Today’s topic is using analytics to help merchants find affiliates to target for recruiting, and to find their traffic sources to help budget to advertising and affiliate channels.

Google analytics, Omniture

Traffic Sources – who is sending you traffic that isn’t an affiliate? Could be using Adsense, get them to be a direct affiliate.

Hitwise – Who is sending you or sending your competitors traffic
Alexa.com – url of your website and do lookup, under details – clickstream and related links
Compete.com

Social Media
Find people interested in and talking about your products
Radian6 – agregator of topics
Raven Tools – Social Media Monitor

Twitter – data mining about your products or services and your competitors. Who is talking about you?

Two cookie system to track first referrer plus last affiliate referrer to find out your traffic patterns and what the click path is.
In Google analytics – set traffic sources and goals so that you can find where your traffic is coming from.

Twitter:
@merchantabcs
@loxly
@djambazov

Many thanks to Geekcast.fm for hosting our podcast. Be sure to go check their site out so you can listen to not only our podcasts, but podcasts from many other great marketers.

Join your Merchant ABCs host Deborah Carney and Affiliate Eric Nagel as they talk about things merchants need to consider before they start an affiliate program.

Look at merchant site from shoppers perspective
- missing images
- broken links
- lack of professionalism, would you give them your credit card
- links on same site? Go offsite right away?

As affiliate:
- goes through checkout looking for leaks, places where shoppers could abandon cart, phone prompt,
- live chat that is commission based (bad)
- cart recovery – giving away info to 3rd party
- privacy policy
- bad color combination
- bad design
- about us should be complete
- consistent branding, does tracking carry over

Is merchant acting as an affiliate?
Here is an article Deborah wrote for FeedFront Magazine about this topic.
- sending traffic away to same or complementary products
- if you are running affiliate program can’t do that, need to get the merchandise in your cart

Really Basic:
Must link to only your own products on your own site or sites of yours that still track all the sales to your affiliate
Have very clear privacy policy, about us, and contact us pages and information
Live Help – not commission based, convert the sale with the affiliate retaining credit for sale

Make it clear to affiliates about non-commissionable items

No adsense, affiliates can target you
Adsense is a separate bot from the Googlebot, Adsense doesn’t bring search engines to you

Phone numbers:
Sales
- must be trackable, via tracking ID visible on site for operator to ask for, operator must ask for it, affiliates will test this before they promote you
- Pay per Call: affiliates get paid for the call by time in call, may be able to track percentage per sale soon

If Customer Service – as long as sales are completed by the customer online, not a problem

Make sure tracking works, test test test

Back up analytics so you can track where transactions came from and can find problems if they exist.

Get a good management firm, at least do a consultation with an expert, don’t try to do it all yourself.

Find us on Twitter:
Eric Nagel
Deborah Carney (a.k.a. Loxly)
Merchant ABCs
Team Loxly
Geekcast.fm

Thanks to Geekcast.fm for hosting our podcasts, check them out for lots of other great podcasts about affiliate marketing and marketing in general.

Merchant ABCs Episode #2 is a Case Study with Mom Entrepreneur Stephanie Elie, owner of LaLa Baby Boutique. Your host Deborah Carney talks to Stephanie about taking her existing online store to the next level with an affiliate program. We will be following Stephanie through the process and hope that other merchants will “learn as we go”.

LaLa Baby Boutique is an online baby and maternity boutique that caters to mom who aren’t afraid to maintain their sense of style when they become parents. You will find unique baby t-shirts, stylish diaper bags, flattering maternity t-shirts and more at LaLa Baby. We look for unique products that can’t be found out your local chain store.

LaLa Baby Boutique
@lalababy
LaLa Baby on Facebook

Follow Host Deborah Carney on Twitter @loxly and our show @MerchantABCs

Many thanks to Geekcast.fm for hosting our podcasts and many other educational and entertaining podcasts related to all things geeky

Merchant ABCs is hosted by Deborah Carney and Vinny O’Hare of Team Loxly internet marketing. In this first episode they talk to merchants that are considering setting up an affiliate program and outline what merchants need to know before making the jump into creating an affiliate program.

Things we will be doing in future podcasts:
Case Studies
Merchant reviews

Covered in this podcast:
Setting up and starting an affiliate program.
Whether you should have an affiliate program.

What is an affiliate

Our podcasts focus on Retail, not ebooks or information products, or lead generation affiliate marketing

Something that people need

PMS – Solve a problem – Problem Make Solution
Set up your site to sell – affiliates won’t promote a site that isn’t already converting.

Get a consultant to optimize your site for conversions before you even think about about adding an affiliate program.

After your site is optimized to sell, decide if you want to have an inhouse or network affiliate tracking solution.

Affiliates get paid commission, networks get a commission and may have a monthly minimum.

Managing your program – networks don’t manage and recruit, they are just for tracking and payment. We don’t recommend adding the network services for management, they may not be in your best interests.

Some things to think about for your program Terms of Service

Network Vs Inhouse

Set up – Graphics, text links, other creatives

Affiliate Manager – Inhouse or Outsourced. Sales manager or PR person shouldn’t be the guy running the affiliate program. Outsourced Program Manager – OPM – company that manages multiple programs, short term or long term.

OPM – can find you good graphics people, help you decide on a network, introduce your program to appropriate affiliates – they are your shortcut to do things the right way.

Merchant – Affiliate – Network – OPM/Inhouse AM

Affiliate links to your site, the links track through the Network or your inhouse tracking – shopper goes to your site and completes purchase. Network takes the affiliate commission and their fee at the time of the purchase, but is invisible to the shopper.

Links to companies mentioned in the show:
Outsourced Program Managers
Shareasale
Commission Junction
Google Affiliate Network
Linkshare

Zen Cart

Affiliate Summit West and East

Follow us on Twitter:
Merchant ABCs @MerchantABCs
Deborah Carney @loxly
Vinny O’Hare @vinnyohare

Many thanks to Geekcast.fm for hosting our podcasts and many other educational and entertaining podcasts related to all things geeky

Merchant ABCs is the place to learn how to run your affiliate program. We have free content and courses, plus paid courses that include videos and templates that will help you run your affiliate program profitably and professionally.