As some of you know I now have an intern. You can meet him here: http://whatdoesjoethink.com/2009/05/my-new-intern/
Basically my goal is to train Seth over the summer and teach him affiliate marketing. How do I condense 10 years of my own learning into 3 or 4 months? I have no idea but I will do my best. For the first couple weeks I have been going over some of the basics of affiliate marketing with him and giving him some background on what affiliate marketing is and how to get started. I will be posting a bunch of the stuff I am teaching him here with the hope that it will help some of you out. So here is what I taught him his first week. I am sure I am missng some stuff here but here is my basic layout of “What is Affiliate Marketing”:
What is affiliate marketing?
– Affiliate marketing is a performance based marketing system where an affiliate directs traffic to a merchant in return for a commission for any resulting sales, generated leads, etc..
– There are 2 primary ways commissions are paid out:
o A percentage of the sale. If you sell a $20 book and the commission rate is 10% you get
o CPA – You get a flat fee based on a customer action. This generally isn’t used with consumer products (but there are some markets such as As Seen On TV products) where this method works well. Usually CPA is used for lead generation, or a site that markets a single product. But there are CPA offers showing up for more and more traditional merchants as well
– The traffic is tracked by the use of a tracking link. Every affiliate network (more on this in a bit) or affiliate program has a different format they use for a tracking link but generally speaking the link contains the affiliate’s unique ID number, an ID number for the merchant, a place to put a subid or something of that nature for the affiliate to track which links are making the sales, and other pertinent information.
– When a consumer visits the merchant’s site through one of these tracking links a cookie is set on their computer. On the “thank you” page a customer sees after a purchase is made or the customer fills out a form or whatever that sale is tracked back to the affiliate.
– So basically an affiliate drives traffic to a merchant and gets paid based on the consumer’s transaction with the merchant.
Affiliate Networks and Programs
– Affiliate networks are companies that work as a “middleman” between the merchants and the affiliates. The affiliate networks aggregate multiple merchants, handle all the tracking, payouts, provide stats to the merchants, give the merchants an interface to work with the affiliates, and get the merchant’s program in front of many different affiliates. For an affiliate they provide an interface to track generated sales, provide access to many different merchants, make it easy for an affiliate to get their tracking links, banners, and other ads, and help the affiliate find merchants to work with. There are some great advantages for merchants and affiliates to work with a trusted affiliate network. Here are just a few:
o For the merchant
§ Easy way to track the affiliate activity
§ Fraud safeguards in place in many of the networks
§ Make one payment a month to the network rather than hundreds or thousands of checks to the individual affiliates
§ Access to thousands of affiliates
§ They take care of a lot of the technical side of the affiliate marketing process
o For the affiliate
§ Many merchants in one place.
§ One big check a month as opposed to many smaller checks from the individual merchants
§ Easy to get tracking link, banners, ads, etc.
§ Easy interface to see which merchants are doing well, where the sales are coming from, etc
§ Quality affiliate managers who are there to help you
§ The networks have different sorts of fraud protection to assure that the traffic you send is tracked properly back to you
– Some of the top networks I work with
o Shareasale – http://www.shareasale.com – My favorite network to work with by far. They have a good selection of merchants to work with, an easy interface to use, and the people who work there are great to work with. They mostly have smaller merchants but there are a few big ones on there as well. Shareasale also has the tightest policy in regards to parasites and other shady practices of all the major networks
o Linkshare – http://linkshare.com – Lots of bigger, “brand name” merchants but their interface isn’t that good
o CJ – http://cj.com – Lots of merchants to choose from. A good mix of big merchants and smaller ones as well.
o GAN – http://www.google.com/ads/affiliatenetwork/ Google Affiliate Network – Haven’t done much with them but they do have a pretty strong selection of merchants
– CPA Networks – There are dozens of these out there but here are a few I work with currently and have worked with in the past. There are positives and negatives to most of these. Just a matter of trying them and seeing which one works best for you.
o http://www.motiveinteractive.com
o http://www.marketleverage.com
– In-house affiliate programs – Many merchants choose to run their affiliate programs in-house rather than using an affiliate network. The benefit of this is they save the money they would be paying the network but it also creates more work for them. If they have a dedicated affiliate manager running their program this usually isn’t a problem but if they don’t they are missing out on a lot. In-house programs are sometimes more flexible than the programs on the networks and in many ways can be more creative and can give higher payouts. Many merchants also have in-house programs in addition to using the networks.
Which is best?
I can’t really say. I know people who are very successful using all these different networks and many different types of programs. There are some networks I really hate but people make millions off of them so what I suggest is try a bunch of them. Find out which one has the merchants you want to work with, which interface you like the most, read around different forums and blogs to see what people suggest, and make your pick.
If you put a gun to my head I would tell you to stop pointing a gun at me and then suggest http://www.shareasale.com as a good place to start. They are easy to work with, have a great selection of smaller merchants, and have a bunch of merchants who will be very helpful to you and point you in the right direction to get started.
So there it is. Week 1 of Seth’s road to success. I had Seth write up a quick paragraph on what he learned from this week and what stuck out to him:
“During the first week I learned about what the idea of this whole affiliate marketing thing is. I learned how affiliates make money and how the interact with the merchants. The way affiliates make money is basically advertising for merchants. When someone goes to an affiliate’s website, the site will try to convince him that he need some product and when he clicks on the link to buy it from the merchant a cookie is downloaded that makes sure when he makes a purchase the affiliate gets his money. How an affiliate gets signed up with a merchant is usually through Affiliate Networks like Shareasale.com or CJ.com. There is one problem, parasites, but that’s why Joe and I think we will end up liking http://www.shareasale.com most.”
I will be putting up Week 2 soon which will be covering how to pick a niche, how to do some research, and how to figure out what would be the best products to target.
BTW, right after I decided to do all this work coming up with stuff to teach Seth I saw that Jeremy “Shoemoney” Schoemaker was releasing his own 12 week internet marketing course. I have read the first 3 weeks of it and it is very, very good. The first couple weeks are eerily similar to what I have been teaching Seth which shows me I must be doing something right (and also shows me Jeremy is doing something right as well). I would highly recommend going to http://shoemoneyx.com/ and signing up. It is very good information for someone just starting out but also for people who have been doing this for a while.
Did I miss something? Do you have something to add? Have a question about any of this? Leave a comment below and let me know.
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