Affiliate Promotions

If you're in the business of e-commerce -- and especially if you offer any kind of unique downloadable product, affiliate sale promotions should be high on your list of marketing to-dos. Here's how affiliate sales works.

You have a unique product (or lots of them) to sell, and you know that the more who know about your offering, the better chance your have of making sales. But the old model of paying big bucks for advertising just isn't going to fly in the internet age.

Somewhere out there are people with lots of contacts. Perhaps they have a popular blog, or they've marketed their own product long enough to have built up a nice fat email list. These people are your potential affiliates.

You need to get those potential affiliates to become actual affiliates, and you do that by making them an enticing offer. For every referral sale that comes through, they get a handsome commission. How handsome? If your product is downloadable -- i.e. no manufacturing expense -- it should be at least 50%. Remember that these are sales you never would have made otherwise. If you've got physical products, you have to do the math. But essentially, affiliates are like wholesale accounts, so measure accordingly.

All kinds of affiliate software and affiliate networking sites are available, and they make it possible to track the click path of every referral.

How should an affiliate promote your product? More on that next time.

For a look at an affiliate marketing page, visit my own product website, The Healing Waterfall, and check out what's there.

For help setting up your affiliate network, or getting your website up to speed, call me at my office!