This post is about how to use affiliates to increase your online sales.
What is an affiliate?
An affiliate is somebody who will advertise your products or services via their marketing channel, such as a blog or website. The best thing about using affiliates, they only get paid a certain percentage if theygenerate a sale or lead. Also affiliates are responsible for their ownmarketing costs.
Affiliate marketing is also another way of getting your brand out to themasses, which in turn generating traffics, sales or leads.
What does a Affiliate Marketeer bring to the party?
In short a affiliate marketeer brings sales, lead generation and traffic generation to the party. Also a good affiliate marketeer understands how to use social networks, have web designing skills, anemail marketing database and the ability to get your brand to the massesvery quickly.
Consider this, how much would it cost you to employ a web designer, SEO specialist, an e-marketing specialist and a brand awarness specialist?
It would cost you a fortune, but this are the qualities you should be looking for in a affiliate marketeer and this are the skills an affiliate marketeer brings to the party as well as sales, traffic andlead generation.
Where to find affiliates
An affiliate network can be defined as an body that manages the affiliates and manages the companies looking for affilaites. In marketing terms an affiliate is also known as a advertiser and thecompany looking for affiliates is called the publisher.
The publisher will also pay a percentage of sales to the affiliate network, as well as to the affiliate / advertiser.
There are many affiliate networks out their, but the main ones are:
Tradedoubler, Commission Junction, Buy at, Click Bank, Google merchant network. If you want to find more affiliate networks just Googleaffiliate networks
Does Affiliate marketing work?
In short, Affiliate marketing works. The way to justify the cost of affiliate marketing against other marketing channels is to go ask yourself this question -”How much would it cost me to employ a salesperson to be able to generate at least £100,000 plus sales and togenerate a e-mareting database of about 30,000 plus subscribers”.Another question you need to ask yourself -”How much would it cost me toget my brand out to the masses?”.
Considering most retail publishers pay affiliates between 3 to 5 % of sales generated and some publishers pay £50 per lead. This may seem a lot of money to pay somebody who is generating traffic, sales and leadsto your website, but again how much would it cost you to employ a salesperson to get the same or better results?
Comments
Otherwise, you could do the same for free.
At The South West Landscapers Centre we are offering Trade Suppliers free spaces at our Nursery to exhibit their products to hundreds of Landscapers and Garden Designers, every week of the year.
The service we offer is free to the suppliers that we work with, no rent, no commision, nothing, but genuine Trade prices. This way, all within the Trade can source both plants and products from one location with no hassle and no commision.
We will set up reciprocal web links between all suppliers.
Our ethos is suppliers working together, for free, for all of our common good. Simples :-)
Any kind of social networking is good and what you are doing by adlinking your site to your competitors and visa verca, helps with the rankings.
The disadvantage with adlinking is that you lose visitirs and possible a customer to somebody else, because it takes effort and time to get visitors to your site.
Overall it is good what you are doing and if it works keep doing it.
Good luck with the exhibition for next week.
Attica Services
I tried before to find this sort of network, but some were so expensive to start with, others seemed not relevant to gardening. I suppose I should dig into it deeper.
if you know of any let me know.
Try looking at Tradedoubler - http://www.tradedoubler.co.uk or the Google Affiliate Network - http://www.google.com/ads/affiliatenetwork/.
Attica Services