Larger companies say that around 50% of their website traffic can come from affiliates. These companies usually have the brand strength and budget to take advantage of such systems as Tradedoubler and Commission Junction. But how about if you are a small to medium sized business who wants to take advantage of affiliate traffic? What do you need?
- An affiliate system for example JROX there are open source affiliate systems and relatively cheap systems which make integration easy.
- Website Integration Skills
- Personal and sales Skills to develop relationships with affiliates and to drive them on with promotions.
- Intermediate HTML, CSS and graphic skills to help with visual creative and also assist larger affiliates in the construction of landing pages and deep linking.
- You need to allow up to 30% of your profit margin to pay your affiliates, remember its a pay per sale model so your affiliates are actively making you money.
Larger systems such as commission junction can be a cold and non personal experience, but if you don’t have any of the above skills you will be hard pushed to maintain a self run affiliate system.
You can try more local affiliate systems that deal with your country only, you might have limited exposure but your business might not be fit for global distribution.
Affiliate marketing is an essential part of your ‘Active Return on Investment’ marketing techniques for your website. Other ‘Active ROI’s’ included cost per click advertising. Search Engine Optimisation for natural search is relatively passive but essential to your marketing strategy as a whole.
