Through many of the earlier chapters, we focus on becoming an affiliate and doing affiliate marketing — from making your first commission, to making a part-time income, to making a full-time income, to becoming a wealthy affiliate!
But the real mole is easily getting to the next level in the world of affiliate marketing – becoming a merchant. A merchant with an effective affiliate program, ie. Hopefully, as you set your sights on affiliate success, you reach your highest levels of success as a trader with an army of affiliates helping you build higher levels of financial success. It goes along.
In this chapter, we help you figure out if you’re ready to become a merchant, explain the different technologies you can use to run your program, and find and sell affiliates. Discuss ways to work together.
Knowing if you are ready to become a merchant
Having a large group of people referring prospects and clients to you 24/7 is tempting for any savvy merchant, but the first issue you should address before starting a merchant program is: Is your offering (product or service) ready or relevant? An affiliate program? The questions in the following sections may help you decide.
Keep in mind that the price of a product (or service) should be high enough to provide both you and the affiliate with a profit that is worth the trouble of making an affiliate arrangement. Many products have low profit margins so there is not much room for making affiliate commissions to think about. This is why most affiliate programs are run online — technology makes running an affiliate program relatively easy and inexpensive.
Imagine having hundreds or maybe even thousands of salespeople working for you 24/7, but you don’t get paid a dime until a sale is made. If only one sale is made, you only pay one commission. Cool, right? Affiliate marketing, for the beginner merchant, is attractive for several reasons:
This is performance based marketing. This is also called cost-per-sale compensation model. It’s certainly not the same as hiring employees and paying them because they show up or put in the hours. The fact that you can have a sales force where you only pay when sales are generated is one of the biggest advantages of starting and managing an affiliate program.
Costs are predictable and directly linked to sales revenue.
Today’s technology and online services (such as affiliate platforms) make global sales a reality even for one-person businesses working from home.
Keep in mind that being a merchant is not “set it and forget it.” Like anything else of value in your business, you must work at it. As with any sales force, you’ll need to stay focused and constantly offer support, guidance and resources. Administration and customer service are just as important to an affiliate sales force as they are to any traditional sales force.
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