Show Pricing & Shipping

We all hate surprises, especially when we're shopping. Don't hide the price and don't hide the shipping cost.

Some merchants may do this on their sites, but it doesn't mean you have to. In fact, if you clearly state the price when a merchant isn't, then you're doing the potential customer a service.

If you can state on your page that Product A costs $50, tax is an extra $5 and Shipping is $10 then the potential customer can dance merrily through the shopping cart without being stopped in their tracks by extra costs.

If a customer knows from the very beginning that to get Product A delivered to their door is going to cost $65 then their brains and credit card are prepared for the dreaded process of the shopping cart and parting with their money.

Also, remember people in other countries. If Product A is only shipped in the USA and Canada then state it early on. You're not going to lose a customer as they can't receive Product A anyway, but you do gain the trust and respect of that person as you've saved them the hassle of going through the whole shopping cart process only to find at the last page, in the small print, that they don't ship to the UK...it's frustrating, believe me.

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Recommendations

Shoppers have a tendency to research and shop around for the best deals. Don't fight this compulsion, embrace it. Instead of ramming it down the visitors throat that Product A is the best and they must buy it, why not say - "Here's Product A, but here's links to Product B, Product C and Product D too so you can decide what's best for you."

Open these links in new windows too so people don't lose track of your website and start again using someone else's.

It doesn't matter what one they buy because you get commission on all of them. The merchants care because it's their products you're selling, but you as the affiliate shouldn't care as you're just after a commission on any sale.

Here's another idea to gain friends around the world, Merchant A may not ship to the UK and Europe, but Merchant B and Merchant D do. Offer this as an alternative option for foreign visitors.

Allow your visitors to do all their research on YOUR webpages and not go back to the search engines and to find other online stores. 'Be the customer' and pretend you're looking to buy Product XX and then do research online to buy it. All the online stores you come across that sell Product XX AND have an affiliate program - Join them, then list them on your web page.

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Testing & Comparison

Continuing from the Recommendations section, you may highlight Product A as the main product on your page and then recommend/suggest others, but you should examine your stats and see which one actually converts the best.

Product A may convert 1 in 87 visitors, but that little link at the bottom of the page for Product G may convert 1 in 5. Why? Maybe Product G has free shipping, delivers globally, includes a free add-on, a gift certificate, merchant has a better variety of other products too, etc, etc.

If Product G is better at converting then change your page so Product G is the main product listed. Your webpages are NEVER static, there is a constant cycle of experimenting and changing. Always check your stats regularly as things can change due to many factors and don't rely on other people to tell you what's the best, as what may work on their site may not be the best for your site, and vice versa.

A merchants commission rate can also be a little deceiving. Merchant A may reward 30% whilst Merchant B may reward 10%, but the key is conversion rate. 30% of zero is still zero, so don't go flogging a dead donkey because a commission rate is higher, it's all about conversion.

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Page Design & Text

Once you have found your best merchant for a particular product, then you need to find the best way to present that merchant on a page. Do you have an image, paragraph then link? Multiple images? Detailed text? Do you use bold text? Do you focus on the price or features?

There are multiple ways of doing things. This doesn't have to turn into an intense exercise that bores you to tears, just simple changes to a page once a week or month can tell you a great deal of information. Statistics are an affiliates best friend. See how your page is currently performing - then make a change (eg. the price in bold text and a slightly bigger font) - then wait a week or month and see if there has been any improvement.

Now, to complicate things, any improvements or failures through your testing could be influenced by other factors such as seasonal, world events, etc, so you should look closely at the click-through rates. Number of visits to your page can be down due to all sorts of things, but of those visitors, what percentage of them clicked on your link to a merchant? That's the figure that your page presentation experiments can affect.

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The Car Salesman Approach

This method is NOT recommended. Does the text on your webpages inform, persuade or drill it into their thick skulls that this is the best product? "You Must Buy Zis Produkt!!"

The text on your webpages supporting the product should inform the visitor of the product, offer related options and entice them to click on your links. Feel free to add personal experience or opinion too. Be friendly, be approachable and be knowledgable.

Don't drone on and on and on and on about how it'll miraculously change their lives, and don't lie or deceive the visitor into clicking a link. If you state that Product A is only $10 but then the customer clicks through the shopping cart to see a bill for $65, then you've only succeeded in wasting your bandwidth and the time it took you to write the page.

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Direct Linking

Link directly to the product you are promoting. In the past I have seen something I liked, clicked on the link, been taken to the merchant's home page and then couldn't find the product I was after! Very frustrating.

Yes, it takes time to specially tailor your links to go directly to the product pages but it's well worth it. Some affiliate programs may not have the facility to do this, if so, get in contact with the merchant and let them know that you want to link directly to products and if they don't offer it soon then you'll go to another merchant who does.

You're an Affiliate - Merchants are there to serve YOU.

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Assumptions

Don't do it! Once you design your pages and put them online don't assume it's perfect and that if anyone can't use it then it's their problem, not yours. If someone can't use it then you're missing out on revenue.

Carry out some user testing on your web pages and get a better idea of how people use your page and navigate around. 'User Testing' may sound like a massive expense that only huge corporations do, and in its purest form it probably is, but all I'm talking about is getting a few people of different ages and different internet experience to use your site whilst you look over their shoulder and see how successful they are in using your site.

Do the pages load quick enough for your young nephew? Can your gran read the text OK? Does your Dad understand what you're selling? Can your friend easily navigate your pages? Make a note of the questions people ask you, but don't help them out as you are there to "see" how they use the website.

Also, take this opportunity to ask them to find Product A online. Do they go to a search engine first? If so, which one? What phrase do they search for? How do they look at the results page? Is No.1 the best, or do they carefully read the descriptions and titles? Do they look at sponsored links? Do they even know about sponsored links? Ask them why they chose a particular site, what did they like about it?

Being on the Internet all day, everyday can easily blind you to how 'ordinary people' use it. Advanced computer and internet users operate differently from others. The masses that use the internet to shop online are important because they are the ones that will generate the bulk of your revenue in most cases.

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Know Your Users

Knowing this information helps you to write better content aimed at these visitors, plus it also helps you to find out where the best places are to promote your website.

Building up a mental image of your ideal visitor will help you target everything on your site to appeal to these visitors. Questions that you need to ask yourself are;

1. Are your visitors, men, women or both? Men and women are different and value different things, even in the same product. Both men and women drive cars, but men may appreciate the power, speed and technology more than women, who maybe more interested in the comfort, safety or service warranty. Know which gender you're mainly selling too and if it's both, then be prepared to duplicate your efforts in order to sell to both men and women individually.

2. How old are your visitors? Knowing the general age of the majority of your site visitors will also help you target your pages more effectively. Writing for 18-25 year olds is going to be different from writing for 60-70 year olds. As with the difference between men and women, different age groups are going to value different elements of certain products or services. Find out what those elements are then you can start to tailor your website copy for your target audience.

3. What is the lifestyle of your visitors? Finding out what is important in your visitor's lives can help you aim the content on your site more effectively. For example, if your visitors are married then there's little point trying to recommend wedding retailers.

4. Don't use 'Free'! 99% of the time you're going to be referring visitors to the merchants website in order for them to pay for something. Your ideal visitor therefore has money. Don't use the word 'Free' or any other tactic that may 'trick' a user to clicking through. The merchant won't be too happy with you misrepresenting their brand, nor will the visitor who was expecting something that wasn't delivered.

5. Where do your merchants deliver? If it's only in one country then you should just write copy aimed at that particular market. If they ship globally then you need to take into account that your visitors could be from anywhere. You could also include basic shipping prices and currency conversions to let foreign visitors know that they are welcome to buy stuff at your merchant's website.

Once you have written your copy for a particular page and it was targeted towards Men over the age of 50 who live in North America for example, then ask a Man over the age of 50 who lives in North America what he thinks of it. Does he understand what you've written? Does he understand what you are trying to sell him? Try to get feedback from your target audience to understand who they are and what they want. Testing is a very important element of affiliate marketing.

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Incorporation

The most basic way to feature a merchant on your website is by placing a banner up somewhere. What else can you do to promote your affiliate programs?

1. Recommendations/Reviews - you can write reviews of products and/or recommendations informing the visitor about different aspects of the product and how YOU found it useful and a good buy. People are more likely to buy from a personal endorsement than a simple, non-personal banner.

2. Related Links - if you're promoting one merchant selling cars then you can always find other merchants that sell related products, eg. car insurance, car accessories, car books, etc. Adding more affiliate links for related products means more opportunites to sell, plus it gives your visitors more information.

3. Newsletters - with a website you can start a newsletter and collect subscribers email addresses by promoting your newsletter on your website. Within this newsletter you can add affiliate links along with copy to help sell the product.

4. Resources - this is an extension of the Related Links idea. Instead of promoting one product on a page then having a few other related links, this involves creating a 'complete' list of resources. So for the car example, it would include all other merchants selling cars, all kinds of car insurance, car forums, car news websites, car magazines, car clubs, etc. Not all of them have to be affiliate links as this is a resource page full of information to help your visitors.

5. Email Signature - you could add a link in your email signature. Something like;

Regards, John Smith http://www.ready2drive.com - I recommend this product.

DO NOT send out loads of emails to people you don't know or who haven't requested an email from you. This is called SPAM. SPAM is bad and merchants do not accept this and could ban you from promoting their products in the future.

6. Create Individual Selling Pages - it is most effective when trying to sell one product/service per page than trying to save time and effort by placing 20 different products/services on one page. Take the time to concentrate on one merchant per page (along with a couple of related links).

Simply sticking a banner on a website is the easiest method, but it's not the most effective. The ideas above will take a bit more time but it will be time well spent.

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Traffic & Search Engines

Using your website to refer visitors to merchant sites means that you need to find visitors in the first place. How do you get visitors to your site?

The most popular method of attracting new visitors is by ranking well in search engines such as Google.com, MSN.com or Teoma.com. Search engines use algorithms to automatically rank sites, these algorithms look at many different elements of a webpage such as meta tags, content and the number of other websites linking to your own.

The most important step is to research the key phrases that visitors will use to find sites like yours.  Simply brainstorm a list of every possible phrase that you think a searcher might use to find your site or the products you're promoting. Check your site logs too and see what users are already using.

You also need to add meta tags to each page on your website, if you haven't already. These meta tags go within the here section of your site and should look like this;

[head]
[title]Insert title here with keyphrase[/title]
[meta name="description" content="Insert description here with a few keyphrases"]
[meta name="keywords" content="Insert keyphrases here that you have used above, plus your url"]
[meta name="robots" content="index,follow"]
[/head]

These are just the basics of optimizing your website for the search engines, but it's still a good start. The Kolimbo Training area has more links and articles where you can learn more about optimizing your site.

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Traffic & Directories

These are similar to search engines but instead of relying on automatic algorithms, directories have actual human beings checking websites! Yahoo!, The Open Directory Project and JoeAnt are all human edited directories.

The 2 most important directories to submit to are;

Yahoo - http://www.yahoo.com (Costs $299 for commercial sites)

The Open Directory Project - http://www.dmoz.org (Free)

DO NOT submit more than once during a 3 month period, and do not submit one website to multiple categories. Read the submission guidelines for each site if you're unsure about anything.

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Glossary

Here are some definitions & some of the most common terms used;

1. Affiliate - An Affiliate is a person or a company that assists the merchant in marketing products and services in return for a commission. This is you!

2. Merchant - A merchant is a person or a company that markets their products and services on the web. Your merchant is the person/company whose program you joined.

3. Tracking and Management Solution - In order to track the incoming Affiliate-referred traffic to their sites, merchants need to purchase or create software to Track and Manage their Affiliates and their activities.

4. Affiliate Networks - there are many networks that have a wide variety of merchants to choose from.  The way they operate can be different in the details, but basically they all provide a central site from which you can join and manage many affiliate programs.

5. Click-through - A click-through is the action that takes place when a visitor clicks on a banner or a link on your site to go to your merchant's site.

6. Impression - An impression occurs when a page containing your Affiliate code is loaded on your site or in your HTML email messages. Impressions are also called page views.

7. Conversion Rate - this is the most important figure to look out for as it tells you how effective your performance is in actually generating revenue.  A conversion maybe making a sale, or generating a sign up, or simply an impression or click through - it all depends on the type of program the merchant is running.

8. Commission/Reward - this is the whole point of becoming an affiliate and using affiliate programs, the money!  The commission is either determined by a percentage or a fixed rate each affiliate program will specify this.  Cold hard cash isn't always the method of payment, some merchants may reward you by offering products, services, discounts, vouchers, points, etc, although this is quite rare.

9. CPS (Cost per Sale) - this where the merchant rewards you for each sale you make.  It can either be a Percentage, e.g. 20% of the final sale - or - it can be a fixed rate, eg. $10 for every sale you make.

10. CPC (Cost per Click) - the merchant will reward you for every click through you generate to their site from your own.  A CPC deal maybe something like $0.05 CPC, this means you get 5 Cents for every click through you produce.

11. CPM (Cost per Thousand) - this is to do with impressions.  Every time a banner appears on your website then that is counted as one impression.  A typical deal could be $0.50 CPM, which means you'll get 50 Cents for every thousand times a particular banner or creative is served on your website.

12. CPL (Cost per Lead) - a lead is something which a company can use to contact someone in order to solicit a sale, eg. This usually involves getting someone to fill in a form with some personal details and their contact information.  Every form completed is a 'Lead' for the merchant.  A CPL deal could be $2 CPL, which means you get $2 every time a visitor you refer fills in a particular form.

13. CPA (Cost per Action) - very similar to CPL but it can refer to something other than completing a form, eg. Downloading something, joining a newsletter or forum, watch a movie, etc.  Basically, any action that a merchant wants visitors to perform on their website can be rewarded if they wish.

14. Cookie Life - most affiliate programs need to use cookies somewhere in their tracking process.  A cookie is a small text file that is placed on a user's computer when they click on an affiliate link and visit a merchant's site.  This cookie has the affiliate ID on it so if the user then buys something, the merchant's site can look at the cookie and see that the merchant needs to reward Affiliate XX with a commission.  A cookie life is the length of time this cookie will remain on the user's computer.  Some last 24 hours, others 1 week, 30 days, 1 year or even forever.  So, if you have joined a program that has a cookie life of 30 days, if a user clicks on your link, visits the site and then decides 40 days later to buy something, YOU will NOT get a commission.  A longer cookie life is preferred especially if you are selling a product or service where there is a considerable 'decision making' process, eg. An expensive item.

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