As an online marketing specialist, working mainly in the field of affiliates, websites reaction to trying out an affiliation deal is constantly a shock to me.
Lets analyse a bit here; so we know that the world is in an economic crisis, advertisers cant risk or dont have the money to invest into advertising campaigns because they cant ensure that there is a beneficial ROI. However when approached by affiliate marketers most large websites turn these deals down – not because of issues with their product but because they want advertings campaigns.
Really! Now lets look at the benefits of affilaite programs. You arent necessarily tied to try something for a month; you can negotiate your revenue share and most companies are willing to be quite competitive with this and if you work with companies who have strong affilaite programs then you will probably find that their campaigns are much more optimised than any type of advertising campaign.
Does it kill adwords… maybe a little however in most cases the loss is made up through that campaign.
I think the most important thing is to trust the company you are working with, check out their products yourself, offering good products to your customers will only add value to your site, ask questions, negotiation you revenue share if you know you have a good amount of traffic and most of all trust the people behind the campaigns, they know what works and really nothing ventured nothing gained.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Carla, just wanted to throw my two cents in as I come from the publisher’s perspective. I work with BrightHub.com. From a publishers perspective the largest issue for us is managing all the different affiliate platforms, accounts, and relationships, tracking, reporting, and analysis. We probably have about a dozen different affiliate platforms that we have to use in order to support the 500+ different companies we work with. We don’t have the time to monitor the effectiveness of all these relationships. The benefit of us working with companies who choose to advertise with us is that we can leave the tracking/analysis with the marketing individual of the company who decided to advertise with us. If after several months of testing they decide that they’re not seeing a ROI they like then they can stop advertising with us and try another company. If however they see that the results are looking good and they’re getting a good ROI then they’ll continue to spend money with us. By doing this we (the publisher) get to stay focused on what we do best and leave the the rest up to the advertiser.
You’ve got to realize that affiliate marketing is only one piece of a marketing mix and there’s other areas such as advertising that are just as important to the success of your business. Publishers of our size can only take an affiliate relationship so far before we need to start looking at taking the relationship to the next level (advertising/sponsorship deals).
Thank you,
Nick Taylor
Director of E-Marketing
BrightHub.com
@ Nick Taylor
Hey Nick,
Thanks for your feedback, its really great to get this level of input! Coming from a site like Brighthub.com I understand your point of view entirely and its my fault for not elaborating a bit more on the level of client I was refering to here
Definitely room for a clarification post here!
Thanks again
In this case, you compare like this is not fair anyway. Because Advertising talking about almost method for promote your product and website. But Affiliate is just use for promote product.
Also, if you want to make more incoming and more sale, you should have a plan for development affiliate program.