How To Manage And Run An Effective Affiliate Program

In this article we will discuss an element that will assist you in developing a successful and effective affiliate program

. You can implement this element and others in conjunction with your membership site to develop an affiliate program which is beneficial to your affiliates and yourself. Let's take a look at 'Remembering the 80-20 Rule.'

We have all heard about the 80-20 rule where 80% if your sales come from 20% of the people. Well in our case with the affiliate programs, it is more like the 95-5 rule and more specifically like the 97-3 rule where 97% of your total affiliate sales come from 3% of your affiliates. The fact of the matter is this. You could and probably will have thousands of affiliates but on average, each and every month, you will find only a small pocket of affiliates are promoting and actually generating sales.

WishList Member has an affiliate program, which consists of thousands of affiliates but we usually only send commissions to a few hundred who are selling products every month. So it is a dramatic difference in terms of the 80-20 rule and the lion share of the affiliate sales are coming from a small group of your affiliates.

It is important that you identify who that small group is, that 3% and then it is important that you focus your energies on those affiliates who are generating the most sales. It goes without saying that you would want to take care of the people who are generating the most sales but a lot of people do not do this.

They treat all of their affiliates equally and I understand that in principle but you also want to take much more care of the affiliates who are responsible for the majority of the sales because those are the most important affiliates to you.

Focus your energies on taking care of those who are generating the most sales. What does that mean? It means staying in contact with them on a personal basis. Find out how you can support them in their promotional efforts. It means how you can provide perhaps custom materials like personal website, banners, etc. It means finding out how you can best support them so that they can best support you with your particular products.

The other side of that is to try to identify what we call "rising stars." These are affiliates who perhaps are not at the point where they are generating huge amounts of sales but there is a lot of potential for them in the sense that they perhaps have a growing customer base.

They perhaps are rising up in terms of their search engine rankings; The rising stars could be gaining more influence in your particular market, so you want to be able to identify who they are and begin developing relationships with them as soon as possible. Attempt to pick up who your rising stars are.

Thirdly, under that is look for deeper promotional opportunities. When you've identified who the 3% is, look to do deeper promotions with these affiliates. Perhaps you could do a custom promotion just for that one affiliate. Perhaps you could create materials just for that one affiliate. Perhaps you can identify more opportunities for that affiliate within their existing marketing efforts.

Perhaps they are not promoting in a particular way that they could and they would probably be open to it. So looking for deeper promotional opportunities with very high quality affiliates is a great idea because again, these people know how to generate sales. Those affiliates have proven they are successful, so you want to focus on them.

Here are other elements you should look to improve as well: Number 1) Communication. Number 2) Give your affiliates a reason to promote your product. Number 3) Provide tools and training materials. Number 4) Remember the 80-20 rule. Number 5) Build relationships.

by: Stu McLaren

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