Practical Affiliate Marketing

Tuesday 9th June 2015

Stephen Whitelaw

35 years technology experience

•Internet, Web, Digital, Social Media.

•www.linkedin.com/in/stephenwhitelaw

•www.kimtag.com/stephenwhitelaw

•@toowist

About

• Your name?

• What you your job role/title?

• Affiliate Marketing and Online Advertising experience?

• Expectations from today?

“

Affiliate marketing is a type of

performance-based marketing in which a

business rewards one or more affiliates for

each visitor or customer brought by the

affiliate's own marketing efforts

WHAT IS AFFILIATE MARKETING

Affiliate Marketing a.k.a...

Also known as...

» Associate Program

» Internet Affiliate Marketing

» Direct Marketing

» Performance Marketing

» Partner Marketing

» Pay-Per-Performance Marketing

» Referral Program

Some definitions …Who’s who?

Advertiser (also called Merchant or Retailer)

Has products (or services) to sell

Pays commission on referral/sales

(e.g. Uses Adwords)

Publisher (also called Reseller or Affiliate)

Earns Commission

Accepts ads on their website

(e.g. Uses Adsense)

Affiliate Networks

These are 3rd party companies linking Advertisers and Publishers

How it works …

A performance based relationship with ‘Action’ and ‘Reward’

Advertisers provide you with ..

• Text links

• Banners

• Widgets

• Flash Animation

• Email templates

What is An Affiliate Network?

An Affiliate Network is a third party that acts as liaison between Affiliates and Merchants

•Allows Affiliates to find Merchants which are suitable for their site

•Allows Merchants to find Affiliate sites that expands reach to their target audience

•Services include tracking technology, reporting tools, payment aggregation and processing

•Provides a creative bank or repository for storing and accessing creative assets

• Is no cost for an Affiliate to join

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Affiliate Commission Model

• Pay-per-Performance (Revenue Share) - merchant pays affiliate commission based on a percentage of the total order value

• Pay-per-Lead / Cost-per-Acquisition – merchant pays affiliate commission for every lead or order referred from their site

• Cost per Impression – merchant pays affiliate commission for every 1,000 impressions of their banner on affiliates’ site

• Cost per Click – merchant pays affiliate commission every time a visitor clicks on their banner on the affiliates’ site

Some more definitions !

• PPC – Pay Per Click (Google + Facebook)

• CPA – Cost Per Action/Aquisition

• CTR – Click Through Rate

• CPC – Cost Per Click (Facebook)

• CPM – Cost per Thousand (Facebook)

• eCM – effective Cost Per Thousand Impressions

• CPL – Cost Per Lead

• CPS – Cost Per Sale

• CPI – Cost per Install

• CPE – Cost per Email

• CPD – Cost per Download

• CPV – Cost per Video View

Cost Per Action …

Cost Per Lead …

Cost Per Click (CPC) or Pay Per

Click (PPC)

The Key is Tracking …

Cookies …

• The most common cookie drop is a 30 day

period

• 60 days can incentivize affiliates to deliver

a lot more traffic

• Lifetime will mean all repeat business will

also be paid out to the affiliate

COOKIE TIMES Most common set-ups

Affiliates are as fickle as cats they will

always go where the cream is richest!!

Always remember…

• Getting the payouts right can make or

break your campaign

• Tiered payment structures where the big

affiliates get big payouts usually work best

i.e.

< 50 sales - .20 / sale

> 50 sales - .225 / sale

> 100 sales - .250 / sale

>500 sales - .300 / sale

SETTING THE RIGHT PAYOUTS AND INCENTIVES

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• Pay per Sale (PPS/CPS) – 80% of all programs

• Pay per Lead/Cost per Lead 20% of all programs

• Pay per Click/Cost per Click (PPC/CPC)

• Pay per Call

Most common performance based models

www.ahrefs.com

www.moz.com/researchtools/ose

USE LINK ANALYSIS SOFTWARE TO UNDERSTAND YOUR COMPETITORS AFFILIATE BASE

Why use an Affiliate Network?

3 ways to work …

• Go direct

e.g. Sign up with Amazon Affiliate program.

• Go through an Affiliate Network

e.g. CJ, Linkshare, ShareASale, ClickBank, PepperJam, Affiliate Window (own buy.at), Affiliate Futures, Tradedoubler.

• Go through an Affiliate Aggregator.

e.g. Viglink, Skimlinks, Adsense, Kontera, Infolinks.

Huge Affiliate Companies are now

houshold names …

MoneySupermarket.com – Floated for £1 billion

Confused.com - £700 million valuation

uSwitch.com – Acquired by EW Scripps for £210 million

Kelkoo – Acquired by Yahoo for €475m

© Stephen Whitelaw 2010

Amazon Associate model

© Stephen Whitelaw 2010

OfferVault

http://www.affiliatefuture.co.uk/

© Stephen Whitelaw 2010

Commission Junction

Affiliate Window

Advice for Advertisers (those who have a service/product to sell)

THE STEPS TO A CREATE AFFILIATE PROGRAM

Decide how and what you want to

sell

Set-up a tracking and reporting

solution

Test and validate sales are tracking

Configure daily disposition reporting

Decide on the affiliate payout

Define a brand and affiliate guideline

Create a go-to market strategy

Build creative off the back of your

strategy

Empanel the affiliate

Give the affiliate creative with their unique Affiliate ID integrated to track

Affiliate publishes

On a monthly basis, take stock of sales

made by the affiliate validate and payout

Set payment cycles 30-60 days after

month end

Pay on time, never default or say

goodbye to the affiliate!

Test, Hone, Refine Build and generate

sustainable ROI

Who pays who what?

Advertiser has a product that retails (RRP) at

£100

Affiliate/Merchant gets say 10% of RRP = £10

CPA Network (e.g. CJ) gets 30% of affiliate

commission = £3.33

Thus the advertiser gives away £13.33

Time to sell some stuff on Pinterest

Advertising on Linkedin

Checkout…

Useful Affiliate Marketing & Online Advertising Books