A very
interesting way to use an affiliate program for your Web site is
to have a free offer from an affiliate program bundled together
with your own offer.
One of the best
types of affiliate programs to pair with is a pay-per-lead
program. These programs usually pay you a one-time bounty for
each of your site visitors who takes advantage of the affiliate
site's free offer.
What kinds of
free offers? The most common are: opting in to a mailing list to
receive a free newsletter; signing up for a free trial of a
service; or just registering as a user of a community site, free
of charge.
The fees you will
be paid by the affiliate site range from 50 cents up to $5
(U.S.), depending on the type of offer and required actions that
need to be taken by the customers who take advantage of it.
Pairing Your Offer With Others
What kinds of
deals should you offer? Think of your Web site users and what
they are interested in, and then pair your free offer with one
or more free offers from affiliate sites to increase the
incentive for customers to sign up.
You can also add
free offers as bonuses and incentives if you are selling a
product or service. If your product is unknown, you can (by
carefully selecting a good offer from a well-known brand) make
your visitors feel more comfortable at the point of purchase by
leveraging their recognition of that brand.
Two generic
product categories you might consider as affiliates are
magazines and software.
enews.com
offers a free trial of magazines in almost every category. If
you offer your site visitors a free trial of a magazine through
enews.com, and they decide to continue with a paid subscription,
enews will pay you a commission.
At the
Affiliate Force conference in Miami earlier this year, I met
Jeff Hansel from
UnbeatableDeals.com.
Jeff´s company gives away hundreds of titles of commercial
software free of charge. The user only pays a nominal fee for
shipping and handling of the CD-ROMS.
In the
UnbeatableDeals affiliate program, you get paid 25 cents for
each software title you give away to your customers. (The
average user orders four to five different titles, according to
Jeff.) Here's a chance to add incentive for your customers to
take advantage of your own free offers. For example, you could
tell them that if they sign up for your free newsletter, they'll
also get free software!
Another
example of an affiliate program offer that you can bundle with
your own free offers comes from the online payment system
PayPal.com. PayPal gives you $5
for every person who signs up with it free of charge. In
addition to that, your users get $5 deposited into their PayPal
account. How's that for a good offer?
Article
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Looking at Other Possible Offers
Research
the various
affiliate directories to find
interesting offers to bundle with your own. Many merchants have
special limited-time-offer campaigns with high commissions, so
it could be profitable to shop around for the best rates.
There are
also brokers who specialize in negotiating pay-per-lead offers
on behalf of affiliate program members. Take a look at companies
such as
WebSponsors.com,
onResponse.com, and
Cyberbounty.com for examples.
What are the
parameters you should look for in a good free-trial offer? From
many talks with site owners who specialize in participating in
pay-per-lead offers, I have come up with the following list of
things you should look for:
- Easy
registration for customers
- No requirement for customers to give
their credit card information in order to take advantage of
the offer
- Reliable tracking and reporting of
commissions by the affiliate program
- Prompt payment of commissions
- Offers that appeal to the widest
range of your customers
As always, it all
comes down to testing. You have to test to see what works and
what doesn't work.
Getting
Paid for E-Mail Sign-Ups
If you can get an
extra 50 cents to $1 for every person who signs up for your
newsletter or mailing list, it could be worth it, right?
Many opt-in
e-mail marketing companies, such as
PostMasterDirect.com,
yesmail.com, and
Focalex.com offer anything from
one-time commissions for e-mail newsletter sign-ups to 50/50 ad
revenue sharing for newsletter ads if you end up distributing
their newsletter to customers on your e-mail list.
If you know your
cost for getting a new subscriber to your newsletter or mailing
list (or even for attracting a new Web site visitor), you can
use a pay-per-lead program to finance your own promotions and/or
reduce your marketing costs dramatically. For example, what if
it costs you 25 cents for each new newsletter subscriber, and
you can get a 50-cent commission for each piece of free software
that person signs up for through an affiliate program offer?
You'll be making money while you market your site!
As I said
earlier, the most important things you can do in all your
marketing efforts are tracking and testing. Always test
carefully before you spend money on advertising. See what works.
If something works really well and you make money while
marketing your own site at the same time, you have found what is
almost any marketer's dream: a tested, proven customer
acquisition campaign that breaks even or turns a profit!
The views of our authors don' t necessarily
reflect the views and policies of this company or its
advertisers.
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