affiliate marketing
Affiliate Marketing Q & A with Sarah V. Bundy
Friday, May 8th, 2009 | Industry Interviews, affiliate marketing | 5 Comments
Sarah V. Bundy
As you may know, 49Above founder and leading director Sarah V. Bundy is an Affiliate Marketing expert. She is very well known and highly respected in the industry. Over the years, she’s made connections with high profile industry leaders and learned a great deal about affiliate marketing.
Because affiliate marketing is still relatively new, we’re always bombarded with questions about it. To answer some of the most common ones, we’ve interviewed Sarah V. Bundy:
What is affiliate marketing?
Very simply, it’s a form of online marketing, similar to having an online sales force, where affiliates receive commissions based on performance. By joining a merchant’s affiliate program, the affiliate promotes a product or service and receives a commission based on the desired action being completed, like a sale or form completion.
Only a small percentage of businesses are incorporating affiliate into their marketing mix. Why is this?
Affiliate Marketing is still either a new or unknown concept to many businesses. The businesses that have incorporated an effective affiliate program into their marketing mix earlier on are usually technically more advanced or more up to date with the trends of online marketing. They have done the research to see how they can lower their costs and increase their sales through a performance based marketing model and thus turn to affiliate marketing. Now, lots of businesses are starting to hear about how effective it is now and are looking for expert guidance or management, which is smart.
But it’s becoming more popular.
Yes. Businesses are seeing results from this very lucrative marketing channel. Their costs decrease as their sales increase leaving room for higher margins or more incremental sales. For any business owner, this is an attractive model to follow.
It’s also becoming mainstream, so the more businesses that find out about it, the more want to give it a try. The affiliate marketing industry, though still small, is growing. There are now several affiliate marketing conferences held annually worldwide making it easier for people to learn what they need to about getting involved in the industry.
How do you know if affiliate marketing will work for your business?
At lot of it will depend on your product, your price, how much flex room you have with your margins, your ability to deliver your products quickly and efficiently and the quality of your website. Affiliates want to join programs that have a high commission payout, a high average order size, good tools and an attractive conversion rate. They also want to be taken care of so having a dedicated affiliate manager is key.
Something else to consider is whether your target market IS online or not. You need to know where your demographic shops. If they’re not online, you might want to consider keeping your marketing efforts away from an affiliate program for now.
Will websites that sell only one product work for an affiliate program?
Yes, they can, it depends on the affiliate program and the product. Will every affiliate program work? Not necessarily. You will need top quality affiliates who know how to get results active in your program. If you don’t then it might be worth spending your marketing budget on other online strategies or seeing what you can do from an offline perspective. For the most part though, you could potentially have an affiliate program for anything.
How do you get started? Do you need external consultation?
If you don’t already have experience in affiliate marketing or know the industry well, I would recommend doing your research by talking to several OPMs (Outsourced Program Management Companies or Affiliate Managers), attending conferences or asking questions online. You can sign up for free affiliate forums where people in the industry hang out to work together,
keep up to date with industry events and issues and help each other. Otherwise, we would also be happy to help anyone who has questions.
A good forum to learn from is ABestWeb where you will find merchants, affiliates, networks and OPMs and Affiliate Managers to communicate with. Each manager has their own style. I recommend doing your research to find one you like, feel comfortable working with and that has a history of producing solid results.
When should you expect results?
An affiliate program takes time to launch and build. You need to build tools such as banners, text links, datafeeds, coupons and more while sourcing good affiliates to join your program.
Once these affiliates are signed up for your program it’s a matter of getting them set up, active and fully participating in your program. From there you want to continue to maintain your strong relationship with your affiliates, provide them with new information and tools to help them sell better. Also, look for fraud or misconduct in your program and help train the less experienced affiliates so they can get results too.
A realistic timeframe for launching a successful affiliate program is between two - four weeks.
It usually takes about 6-12 months for an affiliate program to really get rolling and become profitable, however you can start to see results within the first 3 months of the program being live. Just keep in mind that the returns are usually going to come around the six months mark.
Generally about 5-10% of your affiliates will generate about 90-95% of your affiliate sales revenue, but everyone is important and can contribute something. Also, you never know when someone who’s new ends up boosting their sales over the course of the year so they become one of the top perforating affiliates in your program as well.
My recommendation is be patient and keep recruiting top performing affiliates who want to work with you. Improve your program so it is more attractive and performs better for affiliates.
If the tools they need are not available to them then it’s the job of the affiliate manager to get them what they need fast, before they lose interest and move onto another program that’s not yours. Be consistent and focused, open to change and suggestions from your affiliates and keep pushing forward.
Why is choose 49Above?
The team at 49Above has been in the industry for over 10 years. We have great connections and have maintained friendships with some of the top performing affiliates in the world.
We understand the industry and we have a solid track record of producing exceptional results for the programs we manage. We have brought a 1500% increase in sales to one program and had a 98% close rate at a conference for another.
We love the affiliate marketing industry and try to be involved as much as possible, helping people understand the benefits of having an affiliate program, speaking at conferences, hosting Podcasts and we continue to work to support and make the industry better.
Additionally we offer great packages to our clients who are looking for an “all in one” online solution as we also specialize in Search Engine Optimization, Email Marketing, Pay Per Click (AdWords) Campaign Management, Social Media, and Website Usability and Analytics.
We are the only company in North America that we are aware of who can service all of these strategies fluently in German, Spanish, English and Persian with more languages being added each year. This allows our customers to have an experienced and fully “all in one” marketing team who can reach growing markets which others cannot.
Most importantly, we are fun to work with, passionate and extremely hard workers. We take pride in what we do and bring that to the table with each of our clients we work with, no matter who or where they are. Our focus is on getting the best possible results for you.
To find Sarah online, visit her blog or follow her on Twitter.
The Affiliate Tax: An End to the Affiliate Industry?
Monday, March 30th, 2009 | affiliate marketing | No Comments
As you may know, with 49Above being one of the leading affiliate marketing agencies in North America and many of our clients and affiliates being located in the United States, even here in Canada the affiliate / advertising tax that is going to be introduced in several states could be hugely damaging to our industry.
To date, 49Above has introduced many of our clients to affiliate marketing, and the results have been astonishing!
Until recently, online business strategies and sales, including affiliate marketing, have been free of regular sales taxes and business laws. This relatively simple business model has enabled many individuals, usually stay at home mothers and entrepreneurs, to enter into the affiliate market and make a decent living. This line of business has proven to be very profitable for merchants and affiliates alike and has been growing at a steady rate over the past few years.
Recently though, the state of New York has complicated matters by passing an affiliate sales tax, and many other states are following suit. Hawaii, North Carolina, Tennessee, Minnesota, Connecticut and California are currently considering implementing their own version of the law. In California for example, Bill AB 178 imposes a sales tax on all retailers engaged in business in the state. This includes online businesses and affiliates by definition. But what’s a stay-at-home mom of three to do when this is her only source of income for her family?
Although laws concerning online businesses are inevitable, critiques of the state sales tax movement are urging legislators to consider the consequences of such bills being passed. One of the largest criticisms is the increased confusion in dealing with different state tax laws as opposed to a standard federal law. In addition, many of the large online merchants have threatened to end affiliate marketing efforts due to the new tax. The online affiliate community is worried these new laws will mean lost revenue and lost jobs, and ultimately an end to the affiliate industry! This doesn’t only affect the United States, but the companies in Canada and all over the world who are managing them.
We are working with the affiliate communities to raise awareness about the current situation. One of the key ways is by showcasing the impact of these laws on individuals. By putting a face to the industry, affiliates, affiliate managers and those utilizing this very lucrative form of marketing, hope to raise awareness of their cause and stop the passage of these types of bills.
As always, we love to hear your thoughts on this current situation! How are you personally being affected by these laws? What are some ways to governments can compromise with affiliates to come to a mutually beneficial agreement? Please tell us what you think.
On-Site SEO Optimization
Sunday, December 14th, 2008 | affiliate marketing, search engine optimization | 1 Comment
We learned from previous posts that SEO is split in two general parts: On-site and Off-site optimization. Todays article will cover the On-Site optimization and we will look into web site structure and HTML code.
Web Site URL Structure
The way a web site is build has a huge influence on its search engine optimization. When optimizing your site, take the following points as a construction guideline.
Use static URL’s instead of dynamic URL’s:
e.g. www.examplesite.com/example1/subcategory-of-example1.html
NOT
www.examplesite.com/articles.php?art_id=25&page=2%%true&ytg
This is very easy to implement when building a new website from scratch. Keep in mind that you want to use keywords in the URL instead of numbers or other irrelevant data. As well, use hyphens instead of other separators, like in my example above. To sum it up, keep the URL as short and descriptive as possible.
Web Site Structure
When setting up your site try to read the code like a search engine spider. Many web sites feature the link menu on the right instead of the left side. However, in order to let the search engine read the page content and paragraphs instead of sending it away to other pages, your menu should be located on the left side of the page.
Title & Meta Tags
Every page is a placeholder for different keywords on your page. Lets say you have a web site about cars. Title and meta tags for different pages could be about e.g. cars in general for your homepage. Sports cars for another page and maybe SUV s for yet another page. Below an example of a meta and title tag in your code:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd”>
<html lang=”en” xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml” xml:lang=”en”>
<head>
<title>My Car Site – All about cars</title>
<meta http-equiv=”content-type” content=”text/html; charset=utf-8″ />
<meta http-equiv=”content-language” content=”en” />
<meta content=”Find your car on this easy to use site” name=”description” />
<meta content=”cars, cars, vehicles,new cars, all cars” name=”keywords” />
</head>
An example for a title tag could look like this:
<li><a href=”http://www.my-example-cars.com/2009-SUV.html” title=”2009 SUV Models”></a></li>
Make sure you keep the keywords used in your title and meta tags relevant to the page content and construct title tags in a way that it will attract people to click and visit that page.
Internal Page Links and Sitemaps
All your pages should be interlinked so that it is easy for the search engine spider to find all pages on your website. As well you might want to have a site map that outlines the web site structure. You can either have a page with a site map on it or have a XML sitemap in the main root of your website like e.g.
www.my-example-site.com/sitemap.xml. There are many free tool on the internet that create a sitemap for you.
Duplicate Content
Avoid duplicate content as search engines will not credit this content to your site if it was published and indexed on another before.
H Tags
Your paragraphs should feature H tags like H1, H2, H3 etc. The first paragraph should be keyword rich and start with your main keyword in BOLD.
<h1>Cars</h1>
<p> We help you find all cars on the internet. Here, you can find information on price,sports car
features, family car reviews, and car financing etc.</p>
Structure of The Footer
The footer is another excellent opportunity to provide keyword content. The below example has proven to work just fine:
<p>my-example-cars.com is an independent information website about <a href=”/” title=”Cars”>Cars</a>,
not affiliated with any manufacturer or distributor.</p>
<p>Copyright © 2006-2008 <a href=”http://www.my-car-example.com/” title=”Cars”>My-car-example.com
</a> - All Rights Reserved.</p>
<p>Didn’t find what you’re looking for? - Search for <a href=”javascript:OpenAd(’http://dmoz.org/Shopping/cars/’);
” title=”Cars”>Cars</a> at Dmoz.</p>
You will see that your ranking will improve greatly just by having the above points implemented in your web site. Results may vary depending on the niche you are in and other factors discussed earlier.
Published by:
Director
Lasse Kubiack
49Above Marketing Inc.
lasse (at) 49above.com
office: 1.778.785.0080
Twitter: http://twitter.com/lassekubiack
CPA is King in this Economy
Thursday, November 27th, 2008 | affiliate marketing | 2 Comments
For many years the affiliate CPA model was widely embraced by the online gambling industry due to the legal restrictions to market their services in traditional online channels in many jurisdictions, as well as by some traditional merchants.
However, the battleground has changed and more and more traditional online merchants and service providers turn their heads to affiliate marketing and its Cost-per-Action commission model. Why is that? Since the battle for customers in a challenging economy got fiercer and advertising dollars lesser it is simply a matter of efficiency. The merchant incurs an expense only in case a transaction occurrs and redundant spend, like in Pay-Per-Click, is eliminated.
Lasse Kubiack, Director at 49Above Marketing Inc. noticed a shift in services requested by clients asking for more security in advertising spend. “Affiliate Marketing is now shifting to industries which never have utilized this kind of marketing channel before“, Kubiack says. A prime example is an Adoption Agency which now utilizes affiliate marketing to find families for orphaned children or children whose parents are not able to provide for them.
“With affiliate marketing you get what you pay for” explains Director Kubiack, and this is true in every sense. To make your affiliate program stand out and generate the sales volume that your company needs, you need to have an affiliate manager, who knows the ins and outs of this industry and who has the connections to the high performing affiliates who are able to drive traffic and results to your organization. “Many clients come to us, because they tried to run the affiliate program through their marketing department, however never got the results they hoped for” reports Mr. Kubiack.
North America has a few very capable affiliate managers and 49Above Marketing is one of them. The company however is not restricted to North America, because its Affiliate Managers are multi lingual and serve German, Spanish, French and of course all other english speaking markets outside the US as well.
Published by:
49Above Marketing Inc.
sales (at) 49above.com
office: 1.778.785.0080
Welcome To Our Blog!
Monday, October 13th, 2008 | 49above Clients, 49above Updates, Industry Events, Industry Interviews, Website Usability and Analytics, affiliate marketing, email marketing, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, social network marketing | No Comments
Hello everyone and welcome to the 49above Marketing Inc. Blog!
We will be featuring all kinds of treats on these pages so please stay tuned to find out about program launches, industry updates, our thoughts and stories on Internet Marketing events and more!
Here you will learn all about our affiliate programs, affiliate marketing management, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, PPC, PPL, email marketing, social network marketing, tools and tips for conversions, website usability, analytics and pretty much anything you’ll want to know to be more effective in Internet Marketing.
We’re looking forward to having you visit our site. We’d love to hear your thoughts too so if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to post them on here. You can also check out our website at http://www.49above.com!
To your ongoing success!
_______________________________
Sarah Villeneuve Bundy
Leading Director and Co-Founder
49above Marketing Inc.
PH: 778.785.0080
sarah@49above.com
http://www.49above.com