How to Grow Your Affiliate Program

Ten Tips for Growing an Affiliate Program

Affiliate marketing is the third largest paying marketing vector, falling in the row behind search engine and email marketing. Are you wondering why it is a tightrope economy with tens of millions of competitors? According to Glassdoor, the average affiliate makes between $58K to $158K per year. The affiliate industry is expected to generate $17.3 billion in 2023.  While businesses prepare to invest about  $10 billion in 2023. These stats indicate that the top ten tips for growing your affiliate program begin with your mindset.

Did you know that most online businesses make more than 16% of their annual income from affiliate program sales? However, some companies invest most of their marketing efforts into acquiring affiliates. One such company is Amazon. Due to its ease of affiliation, excellent tracking, and reputation, it has become one of the largest programs in the world. According to a recent report, the top four affiliate programs are

1. Rfersion
2. Amazon Associates
3. Clickbank
4. eBay Partner Network

If you were to review what they have done and how they managed to cross the 200 million affiliates line, can provide insight into how to grow your affiliate program.  How do we move from zero affiliates to generating sales from partner referrals? How do we attract working affiliates and keep them active? What do the big four offer in terms of profit sharing, bonus programs, tools, training, and affiliate resources? And can we copy their methods to enhance our success>

Benefits of an Affiliate Program

Your affiliate program can become your greatest resource.  It establishes a kind of partnership between your store and a party that now expands your market reach. The trust of those customers is now transferred to your services. You get faster sales and spend less on

advertising.  Affiliates are like a part of your advertising staff and a huge marketing force. When they are well cared for, your program will skyrocket in sales.  these are the key benefits of an affiliate program.

• • • Reduce advertising costs
• Large workforce working for your brand
• Worldwide representation
• Enhanced credibility and trust factor
• Low investment costs to maintain partners

Some 83% of businesses use affiliate marketing to build their brands. Companies like Clickbank allow partners to adjust prices and complete sales directly from their website without losing the brand focus. The process has no risk to either the user or the brand. The sale is secretly processed through Clickbank and the brand keeps a happy affiliate. This kind of flexibility makes affiliate programs famous, being promoted by the very affiliates.

Disadvantages of Affiliate Programs

Affiliate marketing takes patience and hard work.  It is not a gift that falls from the sky and will soon overflow your scoffers with cash. Sadly, affiliate marketing does have its downside. You will be faced with fake affiliates, scammers, and fraudulent people, equipped and experienced in exploiting financial programs. These, however, like all glitches can be controlled. Here are the most common cons of an affiliate program.

• Your profit margin is reduced per sale
• Affiliates may use your link in illegal advertising methods such as spamming
• Attending to affiliates is as essential as customer service and may require added staffing
• Monitoring affiliates to avoid fraud can be taxing until trust is built with each affiliate.

Ten Tips That the Big Four Used to Grow Their Affiliate Program

These affiliate marketing tips are not so new but are effective as seen in the top affiliate programs in the world. You may create similar strategies as the best fit with your program.  make sure that whatever you decide to do, does not seem drastic or becomes a roadblock for your affiliate.

#1. Promote  Competitive Affiliate Commission: 

One of the best deals about Clickbank is that some products pay up to 75% commissions!  Almost any affiliate would pounce on such an offer. The commission rate you decide to offer will influence affiliates to join your program. Amazon on the other hand pays rates as low as 1%, which is not so attractive.  Chose the middle ground, most programs offer between 15 – 35%.

#2. Make it Effortless for Affiliates to Promote Your Services

Amazon can be easily integrated into any place, website, email, or app. Your website should provide promotional resources to Affiliates. Provide them with a range of materials including banners, links, social media posts, and email templates.  Make sure that your software generates a unique link that each affiliate can use with text.

#3. Affiliate Care and Grooming

eBay must be crowned for the ease of use and attention paid to each affiliate. It makes one believes that they are the favorite partner. You must invest time to establish relationships with your affiliates. Create avenues for their input,  and when they do contribute, try to use it.  however, you should not extend the process to generate unruly affiliates. groom them into the terms and services of your company.

#4. Reward Performance

Each month be sure to reward your top-performing affiliates. This will empower them to keep performing and inspire others to try harder. Some companies allow additional percentages sharing or fixed bonus amounts. Affiliate management companies such as Refersion, automatically list the top performers and add bonus perks.

#5. Train Your Affiliates

Affiliates are not marketing experts, except for a few. This means they need all the help they can get in promoting your businesses. You can provide how-to guides, tips, webinars, and video clips. Refersion invites brand owners to share joint affiliate webinars. This way, affiliates get to meet the owners one on one.

#6. Help Your Affiliates

Create social media accounts where your affiliates are frequenting. Load supporting aids such as success stories, client feedback, and news on your product. You may even host question-and-answer sessions.

#7. Affiliate Tracking Tool

Have you noticed how satisfied you feel when Google shows you your monthly stats? This is due to the metrics used in generating the report: views, clicks, keywords, ranking, etc. Your affiliates want to know what is happening with the traffic that they are sending.  How many visits, clicks, purchases, and details. You should invest in good affiliate tracking software. There are many available for WordPress and other blog formats.

#8. Keep Abreast with Technology

as you progress and expand your reach, improve the quality of the technology you employ in your affiliate program.  watch for Apps that you can add to make it easier for them to integrate with your website from different platforms and devices.

#9. Give Sigon Bonuses

You can jump-start your affiliate program by offering a free signup bonus.  Affiliates may qualify once they have registered and placed a banner on their website.

#10. SEO Benefits

Offer affiliates to add links, reviews, and features of your services to their websites.

Growing an affiliate program is essential to any successful website or brand.  It will start slowly at the onset but patience and hard work will assure you of a good affiliate network.