Affiliates and Merchants Working Together

I’d like to relate a story, that was actually part of the inspiration to write about split-testing affiliate pages a few days ago. One of the previous merchant’s programs I was managing was doing pretty well as far as sales. We had solid growth across the program with productive value-adding affiliates.

One of those affiliates however, one who I had a prior relationship with, felt that we could be doing better. He’d observed that the traffic he was sending us should probably be converting at a higher level. It WAS converting, but he was expecting a >5% conversion rate, since the traffic he sent was highly qualified and he wasn’t just pushing anyone and everyone our way. Many affiliates in this situation would dump the merchant, pick up a competitor, or deprecate the page and links on their main site. Nothing wrong with that, it’s the path of least resistance and will probably put the affiliate in a position for better earnings.

However, this particular affiliate took a different path. He liked our program and liked the merchant’s products. Also, his having a relationship with me probably helped as well :) He took a look at the merchant site and had a few ideas on how conversions might be improved. He reached out to me to let me know he had some ideas. I immediately offered a commission boost to our top-line commission in exchange for ideas. This was a total win-win for him. If his ideas did help conversions, he’ll benefit from the increased sales and conversion rate, and he’ll benefit doubly from the higher permanent commission boost.

Now, the more cynical amongst us might point out that IF his ideas did help merchant conversions, the merchant will benefit significantly more since conversions should improve across all their sales. It might be the difference of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. This is all true, there’s no sugar coating it. IF his ideas did help conversions, but that is a mighty big if, then the merchant will benefit significantly. But so will the affiliate, and when you get right down to it, it DOES benefit the affiliate more so than by keeping the knowledge to himself.

Yes, he could have gone to a competitor, but he had started promoting us first for a reason. He felt, for good reason, our stuff will do better in the long run. Also, keep in mind, there’s no reason as an affiliate you can’t go to the competitor anyway and offer competing products side by side. Let the customer decide with their purchases. Back to this affiliate now. So keeping this “conversion advice” knowledge to himself doesn’t add cash into his wallet, but by sharing it, it DOES potentially add cash to the wallet. It’s a pragmatic decision to share.

So let’s get back to this story. The affiliate shared his ideas with us, and we took them, implemented and split-test. Some of his ideas had no discernible impact at all, but one of them DID have an impact, And it was pretty big. Conversions improved by a significant margin across the whole site, and his conversions also improved right along side. The merchant was incredibly grateful, and with just a little bit of lobbying on my part, awarded that affiliate with a healthy cash bonus. Probably less that what the merchant might have paid by hiring a consultant, but the affiliate now has the top end commission rate in hand also to benefit for months and possibly years into the future.

So, affiliates and merchants keep this in mind. Affiliates, be receptive to building relationships with your affiliate managers, and merchants keep in mind that your affiliates can be very valuable partners and help your bottom line in many more ways than one.

Affiliate Marketing Education and Learning Resources

To be a really successful affiliate marketer, one must have to have a fair bit of understanding of many different skill sets. I say understanding because you need not necessarily be at an expert level at all skills yourself. You do have the option of outsourcing. However, to be an effective “manager” of outsourced work, you must have an understanding of all skills.

To be an effective affiliate manager, does one have to be an outstanding affiliate? Not necessarily. But you certainly must understand what’s involved to be an outstanding affiliate, and also have a keen knowledge of “black hat” tactics that might damage your program and/or the merchant brand in the long run. Also, you must be able to grasp the “big picture” on the merchant’s objectives.

This all leads me to my main topic. I wanted to write a brief piece to highlight some great resources out there that can really help beginning and also experience affiliates and prospective affiliate managers get a solid understanding in many aspects of affiliate marketing.

Let’s start with a couple great books written by Geno Prussakov. First his most recent book, Affiliate Program Management: An Hour a Day a solid update to his first book, A Practical Guide to Affiliate Marketing: Quick Reference for Affiliate Managers & Merchants. Just look at those Amazon reviews! As of my writing this, 52 five star reviews, and 1 four star and no reviews below that. That is one well-regarded book!

I have an actual physical copy of his first book, , and found it to be an incredible resource. It was published in 2007, but much of the material still holds up today. Especially relevant are the sections on launching an affiliate program, key mistakes made in affiliate management, and ideas for affiliate program promotion. I know his more recent edition will even be more jam-packed with useful info, both for the manager just starting out, and the seasoned experience pro.

If “listening” is more in your preferred wheelhouse for consuming content, you must check out Affiliate ABCs. Debbie and Vinny (the hosts of AffiliateABCs) put together some great interviews with 1st hand perspectives and valuable insights relevant to both affiliate managers and to affiliates. Mixed in for good measure are quote a few interesting interviews with Kindle/iBook/Nook/PDF authors telling about their experiences writing, publishing and marketing their books.

Affiliate Summit, organized by Sean Collins and Missy Ward, is THE go to conference series for affiliates, merchants and vendors. 50% of the value is the networking and relationship building that takes place at the conference, but the other 50% are the informative sessions. Sean and Missy are gracious enough to release videos and slides from these presentation for public consumption (for those who aren’t able to attend. Check out the Affiliate Summit Youtube channel for videos of these great sessions.

Now, most of affiliate marketing is done online though websites, so we shouldn’t neglect forums and blogs.

First, let’s talk about Abestweb, one of the oldest and most legendary affiliate forums. Abestweb built it’s reputation on taking a firm stance against parasitic marketing tactics and helped shape current industry opinions toward the positive. It’s gone through a lot of transitions over the years, shake-ups with older users leaving, new users emerging and even older users returning. There’s still a tremendous amount of content there, and anything “moving and shaking” in the industry will get discussed and you’ll be exposed to a variety of viewpoints by reading the threads. A great place to start consuming some of the Abestweb content would be the (newbie and helpful article section][http://www.abestweb.com/forums/newbie-faqs-helpful-articles–156/].

Revenews is a great multi-author blog to catch write-ups on current industry issues and opinions. Some of those most valuable content comes from the comments on articles, so don’t neglect reading those.

Last, but certainly not least, I want to call out Sugarrae’s Affiliate Marketing Blog. When I first came across Suggarrae’s blog, I slotted it into the top spot of my reading priority list. Her forthright style is such a great contrast to some of the typical, “glossy” and bland style of other blogs (especially regarding marketing and marketing techniques). She’s a great affiliate marketer, and the views and tips she writes about really give tremendous insight into “real” affiliate marketing.

There are hundreds of other resources I can put here. After all, an affiliate should keep up to date on general marketing and sales techniques, copywriting, web page design and conversion blogs, analytics, SEO, paid search tactics and social media best practices. Yep, there’s a lot involved in creating a successful online web business. It’s both a credit and a curse to our industry that non-industry folks will never truly understand the tremendous work, knowledge and skills we must develop to maintain a relevant online business.