Ever thought about using affiliates?

This post is about how to using affiliates to increase your online sales.

What is an affiliate?

An affiliate is somebody who will advertise your products or services via their marketing channel, such as a blog or website. The best thing about using affiliates, they only get paid a certain percentage if they generate a sale or lead. Also affiliates are responsible for their own marketing costs.
Using affiliates for your online marketing is another way of getting your brand out to the masses, which in turn generating traffics, sales or leads.

What does a Affiliate Marketeer bring to the party?

In short a affiliate marketeer brings sales, lead generation and traffic generation to the party. Also a good affiliate marketeer understands how to use social networks, have web designing skills, an email marketing database and the ability to get your brand to the masses very quickly.

Consider this, how much would it cost you to employ a web designer, SEO specialist, an e-marketing specialist and a brand awarness specialist?

It would cost you a fortune, but this are the qualities you should be looking for in a affiliate marketeer and this are the skills an affiliate marketeer brings to the party as well as sales, traffic and lead generation.

Where to find affiliates

An affiliate network can be defined as an body that manages the affiliates and manages the companies looking for affilaites. In marketing terms an affiliate is also known as a advertiser and the company looking for affiliates is called the publisher.

The publisher will also pay a percentage of sales to the affiliate network, as well as to the affiliate / advertiser.

There are many affiliate networks out their, but the main ones are:
Tradedoubler, Commission Junction, Buy at, Click Bank, Google merchant network. If you want to find more affiliate networks just Google affiliate networks

Does Affiliate marketing work?

In short, Affiliate marketing works. The way to justify the cost of affiliate marketing against other marketing channels is to go ask yourself this question -"How much would it cost me to employ a sales person to be able to generate at least £100,000 plus sales and to generate a e-mareting database of about 30,000 plus subscribers". Another question you need to ask yourself -"How much would it cost me to get my brand out to the masses?".

Considering most retail publishers pay affiliates between 3 to 5 % of sales generated and some publishers pay £50 per lead. This may seem a lot of money to pay somebody who is generating traffic, sales and leads to your website, but again how much would it cost you to employ a sales person to get the same or better results?

If you want to find out more about affiliate marketing, I recommend the following book:

A Practical Guide to Affiliate Marketing: Quick Reference for Affiliate Managers and Merchants