How to Set Up an Affiliate Program in 4 Easy Steps?

Wondering how to make your product prominent among the thousand others, get sales, and generate revenue? Well, there could be no better answer than affiliate marketing these days, especially for the small business owners. While there are many online marketing programs that can help you be in focus among the others, affiliate marketing is hands down the safest way to make profits. This is because you pay the affiliates only when a sale is completed.

Overall, you make added profits with an ROI of 1300%. So, for every $1 you invest, you get back $13. Isn’t that a reason enough to set up an affiliate program today? In order to achieve that kind of ROI, you need to set up your affiliate program and then carefully choose the affiliates or partners who can help you promote your product, get traffic to your website, and close sales successfully.

There is no dearth of affiliate programs on the internet these days and so, it becomes crucial that your affiliate program attracts the much-needed attention of the expert affiliate marketers. As you create a trust among them, you know that you are on your way to success. So, today we are sharing a few ideas on how to set up an affiliate program exclusively for you.

Find out which program will best suit your business requirements

Managing your affiliate program is one of the most important aspects that needs to be taken care of right at the start. So, choose a program that would help you process the payments smoothly. You must also find a leading affiliate tracking software like Leadydyno that will not just help you track the clicks and commissions in real time through the affiliate dashboard, but will also help you connect to their wide affiliate network who can start promoting for you right away!

You need to make a careful selection from the long list of programs and software. make sure that you check the cost associated and the advantages of each program or service. While you can use a script of your own, or join an affiliate network for example with Leaddyno, you can also use an in-built affiliate program and make use of their shopping cart.

Using your own script will help you keep a check on the sales made by the affiliate partners and the commission earned. You will then need to pay them their due commission for the sales completed. Joining an affiliate network on the other hand, will do all the required actions for you like tracking traffic & sales, recruiting affiliates, and even process payments every month on your behalf. The affiliate network will then bill you a certain amount for using their services. But, if you are looking for services that can help you manage your affiliate list and the different product info, using shopping cart services can be a better option. However, you may have to recruit the affiliates on your own.

Offer enough resources to your affiliates

Simply offering the products to the affiliate marketers will not get you the desired results. This is because the affiliate marketers are usually overwhelmed with the lots of different products in varied niches. If you wish to sell your product, you need to make sure that your products gain that prominence among the pool of other similar products in the market and get the much-needed attention of the prospective associates. So, how do you achieve that?

It’s not that tough as we thought. Offering enough resources to your affiliates to help their campaigns take off fast and easy can be one of the best methods to get started with your promotions right away. Helpful resources like sample product descriptions, blogs/articles, colourful banners, marketing strategies, and more. So, in short, the more resources the affiliates have, the easier it is for them to market your product and make more sales.

Get affiliate feedback regularly

Remember, that regular communication between you and the affiliates is one of the crucial steps of how to set up an affiliate program. By talking to the associates frequently you would know which strategies are working for them and which ones are not. If there’s no consistency in the sales volume every month, it would be smarter to talk to the affiliates and find what’s wrong. Take their feedback using survey websites like SurveyMonkey, or simply send emails to your affiliates and ask for their feedback. Ask them for the reasons why the sales numbers are low, just as would do in an office environment with the sales executives.

It’s highly likely that in the process you may find that your affiliates are getting poached by a new competitor. Affiliates may also get attracted with new offers with adversaries due to payments not made on time on your end, or the resources provided are not good enough. There can be umpteen reasons for affiliates leaving, so make sure that you get to the bottom of it with regular feedback. Based on the feedback, then make any necessary changes that will help shoot the sales number up once again.

Give time to affiliates

Your availability as the mentor or the guide is extremely important for the overall motivation of the affiliates. If you don’t have the time to lend patient ears to the concerns of your affiliates and ensure that they are successful, you are most likely to lose them. There are just a few simple things that you need to do to stay in touch with the affiliates for instance;

1. Keep your contact details updated at all times and should be easily visible. This will help the affiliates to reach you out whenever they have a concern.
2. Days are gone when a single email address would be enough. An alternate email address can help you keep in touch in case if there’s a glitch with the primary email address preventing your affiliates to reach you.
3. You can also connect with your affiliates via your social media accounts, blogs, or forums.
4. Holding a webinar featuring question and answer sessions, or offering help through phone are some of the other alternatives to keep in constant contact with your affiliates.

Conclusion :

Affiliate marketing is no rocket science and neither setting up an affiliate program. The trick is to know how to setup an affiliate program with the right approach (as discussed above) that offers a fruitful deal for both you (the merchant) and the affiliate marketers. So, understand what goes into it and get going with a successful affiliate program today!