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Table of Contents  

Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 3  

Chapter One ..................................................................................................................... 4  

Back to Reality .............................................................................................................. 4  

Understanding Your Role .......................................................................................... 4  

A VERY Brief Look at SEO and PPC ........................................................................ 5  

The Role of Planning ................................................................................................. 6  

Chapter Two ..................................................................................................................... 8  

The Big Ten .................................................................................................................. 8  

A Quick Solution ........................................................................................................ 8  

Management Mistakes ............................................................................................ 10  

Marketing Mistakes ................................................................................................. 11  

Money Mistakes ...................................................................................................... 12  

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Introduction  Affiliate programs are one of the most popular ways for people to earn a small “side

income.” When you are the owner or manager of a website, however, an affiliate

program can also be tremendously lucrative.

The problem is that they are “heavy” in terms of maintenance and management, and

they can often be a bit of a challenge if someone is not properly prepared. It is the lack

of preparation that tends to lead to trouble because it forces the manager to dedicate a

lot of time and attention in order to keep the affiliate program functioning, and this leads

to “burn out,” which results in the failure of the program.

This book is going to look at the ways that you might make some deadly mistakes in

your affiliate program, but also how to avoid them.

While no one will ever perish from the mistakes possible, the programs themselves

certainly can reach the end of their lifespan, and quite rapidly. Fortunately, most of the

mistakes appear in the earliest stages of the programs and can be due entirely to a

failure to make suitable plans.

We will cover all of the deadliest mistakes made in an affiliate program (or in its

creation), and we hope we can help you to steer your affiliate programs far out of harm’s

way!

 

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Chapter One

Back to Reality You got into an affiliate market program because you were told about the massive

potential that they offer. This is absolutely true, but the REALITY is that these programs

are not care free or self-managing. This is one of the primary reasons that successful

programs tend to utilize an affiliate network to help with the management of such a

complex system as an affiliate program, and many have website managers and

specialized software to support them too.

Understanding Your Role

This means that it is hard work to run any sort of affiliate program as the “merchant”

involved. Do you know the various “roles” involved in an affiliate program?

For example:

• As the manager of the program, you will most often be called the “merchant”, even if you don’t technically sell things.

• Your “affiliates” are the folks who are seeking to help you to drive traffic to your

site through the posting of links, banners or boxes, and special graphics on their

own related sites.

• The “consumers” are the people who use those links and who can then be

“converted” into leads or paying customers.

Within these three “roles,” a lot of mistakes can be made, and this often leads to failure

of the affiliate program. Let’s not confuse failure of the website with the downfall of the

affiliate program. However, let’s not also overlook the gravity of the issue. If you lose

out on the huge financial opportunities represented in the standard affiliate

program…well, it is a terrible shame! While it is a shame, it is not the end of the

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business. This means that one of the biggest mistakes that people make is to consider

the affiliate program MORE than the business!

#1 – The Biggest Mistake is a failure to build a strong business, and only then to begin affiliate programs.

This means that we do not recommend that you roll up your sleeves and develop your

affiliate marketing program until you have done all of the hard work of getting the

business (or the content based website) up and running. We also do not suggest that

you begin the affiliate work until you have paid proper attention to SEO and PPC.

A VERY Brief Look at SEO and PPC

Perhaps you already know about SEO and PPC, but if not, it is vitally important that you

do so right now. This is because you cannot consider alternative methods of driving

traffic to your website (which is the fundamental reason behind any affiliate program)

until you have exhausted your opportunities for “organic” SEO and purchased PPC.

SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimization,” and it creates the most “organic” results

where search engine results are concerned. True SEO is done in many ways, but the

most common include:

• Identifying the strongest “keywords” for your industry, site, or products

• Embedding these terms in all headings, tags, and relevant text related to the

primary website and HTML coding

• Relying on back links from other related sites

• Using social networking, blogs, and videos to enhance results

• Formatting the website in a way that makes it far easier for search engine

“crawlers” to read it and index it accordingly

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This is a very dramatic summary of SEO, and you could easily spend weeks reading

about it, mastering it, and putting it to work for your site. Most professionals, however,

tend to work with SEO experts who can give them a bit of help with their efforts.

The experts tend to also suggest the best “paid for” methods of making a site highly

visible to relevant “traffic” (visitors), and this usually includes the PPCs.

PPC means “Pay Per Click” advertising, which indicates that it is unlike SEO and not

organic at all. As a website owner, you simply purchase ad space from the major search

engines (currently Google Adwords is the biggest name in PPC ads) and they place

your ads on pages that are directly related to them. For example, if your site sells

sneakers for women, the PPCs will appear in search engine results related to women’s

fitness, clothing, etc.

When you do a lot of SEO and partner it with PPC ads, it is likely that your site will

appear or “rank” highly in all search engine results.

The Role of Planning

By now, you can begin to see that proper SEO and PPC involve planning. Just as you

drafted a business plan or designed the content-based website, you need to spend this

time planning your online activities and directing effort towards marketing through SEO

and PPC.

It is only when you have really established the site, formalized the content, and gotten

good “footing” in managing these things that you can feasibly direct your attention to the

affiliate program.

Your work in SEO and website design will have gotten you good placement in relevant

searches. This means that you are also going to get attention from those who work, or

have sites, in related fields. You can simply apply all that you have learned about these

things to begin enhancing the amount of attention that the affiliate program can attract.

Soon, the people who are looking for information or products directly relating to your site

will run across the details relating to the affiliate program too!

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You will also be ready to advertise the program directly on your site as well, and will be

sure that the web page design incorporates a very bold and clear link to the affiliate

marketing area of the site. This is the point when ALL of that planning and preliminary

work will “kick in” and pay off big time!

Unfortunately, it is also where any gaps in planning will lead to problems. In the next

chapter, we look at the top ten issues that tend to appear if planning was not done, and

if certain choices were not made.

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Chapter Two

The Big Ten This book is going to help you to avoid the top ten worst and deadliest errors that occur

in affiliate programs, and how you as the merchant/manager can easily avoid them. The

ten are split into common categories or headings based on the area of the business in

which they tend to occur.

For instance, there are:

• Management mistakes

• Marketing mistakes

• Money mistakes

Any of these can, sadly, lead to serious harm to the program. Some of them might

become such major issues that they bring the affiliate program to a quick end. The good

news is that you have total control of the issues and can prevent any of these things

from ever occurring.

A Quick Solution

Before we look at those ten issues, we’d like to take just a moment to point out that

there is a quick set of solutions to all of the problems about to be identified. While we

have already told you about the importance of planning in advance, we also have to

mention the use of affiliate networks.

What is an affiliate network? There is no short answer to the question, but they are,

fundamentally, websites that work as directories, which can guide interested parties

towards the kinds of affiliate opportunities that might be of the most interest to them.

Many people look for them as a way of finding an additional income stream, but the

ways that they can help affiliate managers are fairly substantial. This is because they

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tend to function as the traditional “middle man” in a business arrangement. They bring

the interested parties to the merchants who can provide them with the affiliate program,

but they then take on as many administrative functions as the merchant would like to

have handled.

For instance, they can:

• Recruit new affiliates

• Provide them with the entire “setup” process that includes any web page

creation, URL creation, and customized link creation

• Track all of the activity directly related to any affiliate, including the number of

visitors received through their links, the number of sales or leads generated, and

even when any payments are due (and the amount)

• Generate reports for the merchant site in order to facilitate bookkeeping,

management, etc.

What does this mean in financial terms to a merchant? It means that the merchant has

to share a percentage of any affiliate-generated profits with the network according to a

pre-arranged system. Usually, this is quite reasonable when compared with the

managerial and administrative expenses that would have been associated with the

affiliate manager doing the work independently or with additional professionals such as

IT specialists, website managers, and accountants or bookkeepers.

Consider too that the affiliate networks will provide the various “tools” that are required

for a successful affiliate program. These tools are the customized links that the affiliates

use at their sites in order to direct traffic to the merchant site. These will have to include

things like the special ID number for the affiliate, various links to pages and storefronts,

and more.

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Are we strongly advocating networks? If you can afford setup fees, we believe that

these are usually the simplest and most effective ways to avoid the Ten Deadliest

Mistakes.

Management Mistakes

Below are several mistakes that tend to be the result of ineffective management, poor

planning, or bad decisions.

1. Not Managing the Entire Program to the Best Levels Possible – You may be

doing the affiliate program on a DIY basis, or you may be relying on the help of

some professionals. You may even be using an affiliate network as

recommended above, but none of these choices means that you can allow the

affiliate program to run on its own at any time. You have to be prepared to “check

in” on the program on a daily basis and to handle regular managerial tasks to

ensure efficiency.

2. Canceling Inactive Affiliates – You need to understand from the very beginning

that ALL affiliates matter. Whether someone seems to be working on their

program or not, you must never close the proverbial door to possible leads,

contacts, or visitors. By all means, create a system that communicates with an

affiliate who has not shown any activity, but be aware it could be due to a

problem with links, because the affiliate has not yet had time to do the initial

work, or for many other valid reasons. The point is to NEVER cut them out of the

process!

3. Not Having a Terms of Service Arrangement – Any affiliate program has to very

clearly itemize the terms of service. How much is paid? How many clicks are

required? When will payments be sent? What are the terms of the contract?

Remember that we have already said that a failure to plan is often the death knell

of an affiliate program? Well, failure to do this basic type of legal documentation

is much worse than a simple failure to plan, it is actually setting yourself up for

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HUGE headaches. This means that the basic planning stages must incorporate

the creation of all obligatory legal documents.

4. Not Responding to Affiliate Questions – How do you feel about a company when

they totally ignore you? Do you REALLY want an affiliate to view you in that

same way? Probably not, and that is why you have to check in with the program

every day, tackle all of the emails sent, and respond to any affiliates straight

away. Remember, the question that they have could lead to a sale or lead, or it

could identify a problem with your system and allow you to handle it before it

grows out of proportion! It is also just good business to behave courteously

towards colleagues!

Marketing Mistakes

You may be surprised by some of the marketing mistakes that can lead to the failure of

an affiliate plan, but each of them have been made in the past and with disastrous

results.

5. Promoting the Affiliate Program NOT the Merchant Site – While you might have

all kinds of enthusiasm about that affiliate program, and it may be your actual

only official “job” within a company, if you notice that too many resources and too

much attention is directed at the affiliate program…well, you’re headed for

trouble. It is hard to be affiliated with any business if it is a flop or is not well

marketed. This means that you must be realistic about the energy you give to the

affiliate program because you cannot use it if the business is built on sand!

6. Do Not Ignore the Value of Leads – One of the BIG marketing mistakes is to

overlook the value of data. If you have a visitor to the site, you can eventually

convert him or her to a customer. There are all kinds of statistics that show it can

take from four to a dozen or more visits to a website before a visitor becomes a

paying customer. This means that if you fail to gather the vital information for a

“lead” (meaning name, address, email, etc.), it means you have actually failed

altogether.

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7. Failing to Pre-Sell – You might see that you are paying out a lot of money in

affiliate commissions on leads, but your sales are not increasing. This is because

you are not “pre-selling” the site or products accordingly. For instance, you create

a strong landing page for the affiliate links, but what do you “do” with the visitors

once they arrive? Unless you have pre-sold the goods, you will lose the potential

sale.

Money Mistakes

There is nothing that can kill a business or affiliate program as fast as the

mismanagement of money. Here we can see the biggest affiliate program killers where

money is concerned, and all of them are easily avoided.

8. Paying Affiliates Late – If you created Terms of Service and developed a formal

affiliate program, it had to have included all of the specifics about the ways that

your affiliates would be paid their commissions. This, however, does not mean

that the document outlined what YOU would do with the monies generated from

your affiliates’ hard work. What we suggest is that you never view any profits

from affiliate programming as entirely yours. Instead, instantly reduce the

percentage that you have guaranteed to the affiliates and set this aside in a fund,

account, or other area where it cannot be used by accident or even intentionally.

You can then pay them (or have the affiliate network pay them) directly out of this

fund or account, and according to the terms that you provided when they joined

your program.

9. Not Having a Good Commission Rate – In the essential planning stages, we

suggest that you find out what other related affiliate programs are paying their

participants. We then suggest that you “plug” such numbers into your budget to

see if they can work. For instance, you should know what it costs to get a client

and to serve a client. This will let you understand how much you can reasonably

afford to direct back to the affiliates for each sale, lead or enrollment they have

provided.

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10. Choosing the Wrong System – did you provide your affiliates with a “residual”

system when it should have been a “tiered” system? The planning stages of any

affiliate program will show you which of the two most common systems to use.

For instance, if you are going to have visitors come to your site once through an

affiliate link, and then use your homepage to “log in” in the future, you don’t want

to pay a commission to that affiliate for future sales. You have to understand the

nature of the traffic coming to your site through the affiliates, and only then can

you choose the best system.

Though we have covered the most common blunders made in an affiliate program

management, there are certainly many more. We encourage you to plan, plan, and plan

some more before launching an affiliate program. It is only through SEO, market

research, and good planning that you will be able to create a system that rewards your

business or website, as well as those who help you promote it, through affiliate

marketing!