Launch Your Affiliate Program

By WorkZ Staff

Once you've developed an affiliate program, it is time to decide what types of affiliate sites you want to target and plan a marketing campaign to get their attention. Visit each applicant's site to determine if it is appropriate for inclusion into your network, and be prepared to provide members with the necessary links and graphics to promote your affiliate program on their site.

Decide What Types of Affiliates You Want to Attract

When you are ready to launch your affiliate program, you'll want to be proactive about finding the right types of affiliates, rather than just accepting those that come to you. Of course, you will want to target sites that are credible and share your target market. You may also want to attract affiliates that are already successfully involved in other affiliate programs, because they will already have a steady stream of customers coming to them to make purchases. To find active affiliate sites, visit top affiliate merchants, such as Amazon.com or CDNow, which typically offer links to their affiliates. Send an e-mail letter to sites that share your target market to introduce your own program.
Market Your Affiliate Program

With a target audience in mind, spread the word about your affiliate program. Again, many merchants choose to join an Affiliate Network, such as CommissionJunction, LinkShare, or IncentaClick, to leverage their marketing advantages. If that's not in your budget, however, grassroots marketing can be effective in promoting your program. It includes:

Incorporating banners that tout your new affiliate program into your online marketing plan.

Giving your new affiliate program a prominent position on your site and/or including details in your site's "What's New" section. Provide as much detail as possible about the program potential affiliates may be turned off by a program that is poorly defined or confusing.

Providing selling tips for affiliates. Affiliates will be more interested in joining your program if they know that you will assist them with increasing sales by identifying selling opportunities. These tips will be based on your selling experiences. Perhaps you have found that placement within a certain area of your site increases sales. Or maybe you have developed a way for affiliates to describe the program to customers that works especially well. Try to make these tips as clear as possible.

Including details in your blog, electronic newsletter or other e-mail promotions. Your current customers will appreciate knowing that your site is growing. Note: In all marketing efforts, be careful to avoid making unrealistic claims about your program's expected performance, and never promote your program through the use of spam.
Evaluate Affiliate Applications

As tempting as it may be, because of the potential for increased revenue and traffic on your site, it is not advisable to accept affiliates indiscriminately. You need to cater to the specific interests of your target audience and make sure the merchant's products are complementary to your own. Develop a list of criteria to use to ensure that potential affiliates are a good match for your program.

Provide Technical Requirements for Affiliates

In your Web site's affiliate section, you will need to provide company logos, banners, or art that should be used by your affiliates on their home page, online store page, or some other prominent location to promote your products. You may want to offer different graphics to correspond with different product lines, so you'll have to work with affiliates to determine which ones are right for their program. You will also want to provide detailed instructions on how to copy these images.

You should also display a short description, review, or other reference for affiliates to use to describe each product included in your affiliate program, or provide a link to the appropriate page or pages. If you require specific placement of these descriptions, provide instructions to your affiliates on your site describing how it should work.

You will need to provide affiliates with a unique code to use for their links to identify sales coming from their sites. These coded links will take affiliates' viewers to the corresponding ordering page for products on your site. At that point, your staff will take over to close the sale, including managing order forms, processing payments, shipping, cancellations, returns, and related customer service duties.

Finally, it is a good idea to provide a frequently asked questions (FAQ) list to answer any commonly asked questions about the technical requirements of your site. Since proper order tracking depends on proper link formatting, you may lose sales, and your affiliates may lose commissions, if any of the technical elements aren't properly formatted. For any questions not covered in the FAQ list, be sure to provide a telephone number and/or e-mail address to your customer service department.

About the Author:
The WorkZ staff is made up of gurus in many areas of expertise including Sales, Marketing, all aspects of the Internet, Technology, even starting and running businesses.

Launch Your Affiliate Program