Managing and Recruiting Affiliates - Tips and Hints

Online affiliate marketing programs are now seen as one of the most cost effective and practical methods of making money online. For most merchants, implementing an affiliate marketing program costs relatively little and will help generate a sustainable and consistent stream of profitable business.

Affiliate programs are often described as 'revenue-sharing systems' and are increasingly being used by firms to market their products or services. One firm (the "merchant" in affiliate parlance) will supply the products and services, whilst the other firm, or individual (the "affiliate"), markets them on their website, via PPC (pay per click) campaigns, email marketing or social/viral techniques, usually, for a percentage of the sales. Affiliate marketing programmes are thus a great way to build and maintain successful reseller relationships whilst only paying for the results. Most programmes now pay on a CPA (Cost Per Action) or a percentage of sales revenue generated, for example when a sale has been made after a click through from an affiliate website.

Arguably the most common way in which to attract new affiliates is to use the affiliate networks such as TradeDoubler, Affiliate Window, Commission Junction and so forth. These offer the advantage of an existing affiliate publisher base. Most serious affiliate publishers will belong to most, if not all, of the affiliate networks. Acting as middlemen in the process, the networks take care of tracking traffic, accounting and reporting revenues and commissions to both merchant and affiliate publisher. They will also provide marketing and promotional support to both parties and most now have fairly sophisticated online interfaces through which everyone can see relevant information. The downside of using the networks is cost. Most networks charge a monthly fee to merchants and often a percentage of commissions.

For those merchants wishing to 'go it alone' and seek out their own affiliate publisher base, Internet marketing conferences and seminars are usually a good place to look for serious affiliates. A good example at the time of this writing is the upcoming A4U Expo in London. When meeting potential affiliates you should always look out for people with a track record rather than those making promises. Established online businesses that compliment rather than compete with your own are ideal.

Searching for the right affiliate can be a time-consuming process. Most importantly when searching for a new affiliate, merchants should expect an understanding and knowledge of the industry and target audience. For example, if your product is high quality and at the higher end of the market, you should not look for discount or coupon-based affiliates as this is likely to damage and dilute your brand. Instead, you could, perhaps, look for loyalty or incentive affiliates to market your products.

Affiliate marketing has existed online for some ten years now and merchants are beginning to see a number of scams, known as affiliate fraud. Fraudulent affiliates can mislead merchants into paying them commissions that they shouldn't be receiving. Such fraudulent activity includes repeated clicks on cost per click programs by adopting sophisticated software that simulates human activity. Pay per lead programmes are also vulnerable with endless false names and nonsensical data provided via lead capture forms to the unwary. Other fraudulent approaches include sales with a high returns level. Not all affiliate programmes/tracking applications handle this particularly well and you may find you have made a net loss by paying and failing to reverse commissions on returns. Worse still, some buyers are found to be deceived into buying products by affiliates using misinformed marketing techniques. These activities lead to negative repercussions for both the merchant and the affiliate network. Finally, PPC campaigns require detailed management and a clear bidding policy to avoid brand name/typo bidding and poor quality arbitrage campaigns from less scrupulous affiliates.

If all of this sounds terribly negative, don't be alarmed. Most affiliates are honest, hard-working individuals and businesses who will drive good quality traffic - only a small minority are problematic and are relatively easy to identify and deal with.

So, if you have an affiliate program in place and it is not going as planned, you should invest some time in identifying the underlying cause. In most cases, this will be down to affiliate quality and quantity. It is worth looking at a decent affiliate marketing program directory for pointers to further information and, indeed, potential affiliates.

About Us: Lammo.net is one of the most popular Affiliate Marketing Blogs in the UK. With a reputation for 'telling it like it is', it has attracted a very loyal following amongst the Internet Marketing community as a whole. Lammo is updated several times a week with news, comment and opinion on the very latest topics to affect the Affiliate Marketing Industry.