Encourage your affiliates to know your product so they can seriously recommend it to their site visitors. In addition, provide affiliate support pages on your site that
Help them create a successful Web site
Point them to resources on the Net that help them improve their site design and content
Help position and market their site
Build a newsletter mailing list
Well-position their site in the search engines
Using the resources of the Net is a great way to offer marketing and promotional help to your affiliates. Finally, encourage affiliates to build an opt-in e-mail list that they can use to periodically stay in contact with their site visitors who subscribe and to constantly promote your product or service offer.
Just as it takes work to successfully run your affiliate program, it also takes work for your affiliates to earn decent revenue from it. Simply creating a Web site, putting up your offer links, and waiting for the commissions to roll in is not enough to earn money for them and increase sales for you. Keep in mind that the bulk of Web sites that join your affiliate program have little know-how about how to market their site on the Net.
Affiliates need to work hard at developing and promoting their sites and convince people to visit them. And you can help. After all, the more successful your affiliates are at generating traffic to their sites, the more impressions your offer will make and the more click-throughs and sales you will receive. Putting it simply, the more successful your affiliates sites are, the more successful your affiliate program will be.
This doesn’t mean you have to go into the e-commerce consulting business to help your affiliates become a success. Far from it. But there are some things you can do to help your affiliates optimize their sites and merchandise your offers that will increase their commissions and your revenue. Affiliates are your business partners and are a direct arm of your sales department. And just as a new employee has to be brought up to speed, your affiliates cannot be expected to perform at their highest level without training and guidance. This can take the form of both offline and online guidance—offline with direct one-to-one contact and online with access to resources on your site.
The formula for a successful affiliate program is simple. Increase the number of potential customers who view your offer on your affiliate sites, increase the number of sales they produce, and increase the number of times they return to buy again. To do that you need to service your affiliates properly, support and train them to sell your offer, and help build a list of prospects and customers to encourage new and repeat sales.
18.221.47.203