Affiliate Marketing: Selecting the best Community

If you’re new to affiliate marketing, you may be wondering the place to begin. If you’re presently operating an associates program in-house or through a network, you may be wondering if there’s a better match out there for you. In working with a number of different retail purchasers, the Lever Interactive affiliate marketing group has been able to identify a couple of principal points to consider when choosing an affiliate network as properly because the strengths and weaknesses of two of the highest networks.

Issues to think about:

1. Network begin-up costs

Most affiliate networks cost an preliminary one-time setup fee starting from about $500 to over $2,000. This includes the technical set-up of the account and getting new advertisers educated concerning the community.

A number of the smaller affiliate networks, together with LinkConnector, don’t cost a setup fee, but keep in mind that the quantity and high quality of affiliates throughout the community will most probably be low compared to these within the dearer networks.

1. Monthly minimum

All affiliate networks cost a transaction price, which is only a small proportion of the fee paid out to every affiliate for each sale. What you need to look out for is the monthly minimal, which is the quantity in transaction charges an affiliate network requires each month. So if the monthly minimum is $a hundred, and also you solely pay the network $75 in transaction charges, you’ll owe an additional $25 at the end of the billing cycle.

This varies widely from network to community, so depending on the amount of sales and income you count on to come back by means of affiliates, you will want to decide on a community with a suitable month-to-month minimum.

1. Span of affiliate network

In case you have certain affiliates in mind, you’ll need to ensure they’re within the network you plan on becoming a member of. You can both look them up inside every community, or you can contact them instantly to search out out. Nonetheless, if you’re new to affiliate marketing, you’ll in all probability want a community that gives a big affiliate base from which to choose. As mentioned earlier, this could imply greater setup costs and monthly minimums, nevertheless it could also be value it in the long run.

1. Ease of communication

Ongoing communication with affiliates is crucial to maintaining a successful relationship. You’ll have to send out common newsletters with tantalizing incentives to make sure you keep top-of-mind throughout the affiliate community. Read about every network’s messaging capabilities ahead of time so you understand what to count on. Ensure there are no prices concerned and that the technique of formatting and sending out the emails is straightforward and never time-consuming.

1. Tracking & reporting capabilities

The nice factor about utilizing a network to manage your affiliate program is that they supply monitoring and reporting for you. In addition to fundamental transaction stories, every community has their very own distinctive reporting features, together with performance by hyperlink kind and affiliate first sale stories. Select a community that will provide you with the type of reporting that most accurately fits your company’s needs.

1. Buyer support

If you’re used to operating things on your own, this is probably not as essential, but when you’re new to affiliate marketing, you might have a variety of questions in the beginning. Learn up on opinions and ask others in your trade about the shopper support they’ve obtained on their affiliate networks.

1. A number of networks

In case you have the time and money, you may be a part of multiple networks, widening your pool of potential affiliates. However, many of the larger «super affiliates» are actually members of a wide range of networks themselves, that means you could find them on nearly any community you select. Therefore, when managing affiliate programs on a number of networks, you face the difficulty of duplicate (and generally triplicate) transactions. So at the end of the month, there is the extra step of determining which community and which affiliate ought to obtain the commissions and voiding the gross sales on the other network(s).