Lesson #45 Affiliate Program Marketing - Part #2
Written By Cyndalie

Figuring out what to pay your affiliates can be a daunting task. Just how much of your sales are you willing to give up? How much do you need to, to compete with other programs? Should you offer recurring or one time sales commissions? All these factors will help determine your bottom line, however selling your program to webmasters and giving them what they want is the key to a successful program.

Most affiliate programs are offering commissions on each sale the affiliate generates, including recurring sales. These are called Partnership Programs and pay an average of 50% depending on volume. If you offer trials at $5.00 for 5 days your affiliate will make $2.50 off the trial sale, and if the surfer converts to full membership the affiliate will earn 50% of the first billing of membership fee, say $15 of $30. Here the trail and first month sale earns you and the affiliate about $17.50. Each time the member recurs, your affiliate earns a percentage, therefore the more sales they generate the more money they will continue to earn on a recurring basis. Webmasters like this model because they continue to earn even after they discontinue promotions of the program. The disadvantage to this type of program is that not every trial membership converts to full recurring memberships. So an affiliate's cut can be as low as $2.50 per trial join.

Pay Per Signup Programs only pay a base commission to an affiliate for each sale they generate. Oftentimes the program will take an average hit of $35 paid to the webmaster for each trial membership they generate. say “hit” because the same situation as above can arise, not every trial membership converts to the full recurring model. If you payout $70 for two trial sales that generate you only $10, you had better hope you have 2 other sales that converted from trial to full members and recur for no less than 2 months to counterbalance the payout.

The main difference between the two payout models is with Recurring, the webmaster puts their own profits at risk by investing in the ability of the site to convert and retain to earn the most money. Whereas the Pay Per Signup model, the owner puts their own profits as risk by investing in their own sites ability to convert and retain. My advice for new or smaller programs is, if you run a Pay Per Signup Program do not offer trial membership, only offer trial membership sales for those affiliates who subscribe to the recurring model. By making both available you are more able to counterbalance your profit margin and better tweak your sites for increased retention and conversions.

Providing Marketing Tools for your affiliates is another essential part of recruiting and maintaining a strong affiliate program. Think beyond the banner, by offering free hosted galleries or free content. Here again is a major decision you must make. Do you let affiliates download content to use for marketing or should you structure and provide galleries for their use, helping to control how your site is advertised.

I have not done actual testing, but logic would dictate that pre-made galleries that truly represent the content of the site will drive more targeted traffic and joins that want to be there. However, the other side is that often the creativity that other webmasters provide, and need for different TGP requirements, may provide just as good if not better results. My advice? Make sure your URL is on every picture. Make sure to include offered TGP galleries in your own site tour or free area, and posted as new content "updates" and “free content”. The best solution? Provide base galleries and individual content. Webmasters will appreciate the grudge work being taken out of their time, however if they can edit pre-made provided gallery pages with provided reciprocal linking areas in the template will do just as good, if not better.

Providing multiple site programs allows you to brand your affiliate program under its own name which helps for advertising to webmasters. Most webmasters do not want to track 30 different individual site programs at the processor level. They would rather join one program, receive one check, and go one place for their stats and maintenance. If you run multiple paysites and want to bridge them under one program, register a domain and talk to your processor about combining your reseller programs under one main interface for your affiliates. TrueStats or TabooTracking can also be useful here. By adding new sites to keep affiliates interested in promoting your program, you can save yourself work promoting each site's affiliate program separately and bridge them under one main banner.

If you are a webmaster and promote multiple affiliate programs there are tools available to help you track them all in one place. RevStats is one program to which you can subscribe that combines the logins of most major programs so you can track them all with one click. If you would like to find out which niches and what programs are converting the best, Thestatistician.com is a great resource.

Other great affiliate program resources are Adultsiteaffiliates.com, Adultsponsortest.com, and of course, the Sponsor Programs directory located at Cozy Frog.

The advantages to running your own affiliate program for your paysites far outweighs the disadvantages, if you do the research and treat your affiliates as business partners and serve the best interests of your program and your site. Of course, having a sales team is important, but more importantly is the overall quality of your site and how you treat your customers. If you're not already promoting adult sponsor program, it is recommended that you test out several programs to see how each performs for your sites. Learning the ropes first hand will better help you determine how to successfully market your own program as well as others.