Where does my company go from here? Part 1 of 4

Now that you have created your landing page and set up the legal registration of your new affiliate marketing company, you are ready for the money to come flooding in. Think again, there are steps that need to be followed first. Merchants need to be identified, systems put in place to detect fraudulent leads, and a tracking system needs to be put in place.

Being able to build relationships with a merchant or many merchants is a never-ending process; your relationship will adjust on a daily basis. Many people believe you must get the highest payout before you have tested the quality of your traffic. This is clearly placing the cart before the horse. Before asking to receive the highest payout from any merchant, the best method is to contact that merchant directly and build the relationship via one to one communication. Now that you have built a report with this new merchant, continue to communicate regularly to foster a relationship of trust. If you are difficult to contact by phone, E-mail or IM, your merchant will lose faith in your ability to produce legitimate traffic. Any merchant who understands affiliate marketing knows that over 80% of sales are generated by less than 20% of their affiliates. . It is also important to understand that many merchants prefer quality trickle traffic to large volumes of bogus or inaccurate lead data. If you are still looking for more products to promote, contact other affiliate networks, example Revenue Gateway, Blink Ads, Get Ads, The Lead Stream, and others like this.

Keeping the Merchant

Merchants have affiliates calling on them all day long. You need to be different from the masses. One thing that will set you one-step ahead of the rest when contacting a merchant is not to ask for the sky when it comes to payouts at first. You need to prove the traffic that can be delivered at first. Keep in mind that some merchants work on the shotgun principle. The merchants make big promises; set a high payout threshold knowing that few affiliates will ever reach it, and then get as many affiliates to promote their products and services as possible, which equals maximum exposure, minimum cost and effort on the merchant’s part. The merchants are counting on the 80/20 rule, which is that only 20 of the affiliates will perform to produce 80% of the revenue.

Fraud is one of the leading challenges facing the credibility of the affiliate marketing company. Until now, merchants have not asked too many questions of their affiliates. Affiliates are paid on results, so if you are not successful the merchant does not stand to lose much. Merchants are risking their reputations on the affiliate. One of the ways that an affiliate is put on the black list from the merchants is to send bulk email spam to bring in the clicks and the sales or post old data to their merchant with poor quality data. Affiliates who deceive merchants creating automated scripts and that attempt to mimic the activity of legitimate, human visitors will put your company on the black list. Other affiliates will send very limited leads data in to give the appearance they are insignificant compared to other affiliates generating leads. Often, these leads are filled with fraudulent data. Keep an eye out for this affiliate who tries to fly under the radar. You may pay then a couple of hundred dollars at the end of the month. Over time, this adds up. Once the trust and the reputation is built between you and the merchant, then you can ask for a higher payout.

Using accurate tracking

The reason you went into business in the first place was to make money and to get out of the “rat race”. The last thing you want to be concerned with is tracking the quantity of leads and traffic being sent to your merchants and being paid for the work that you are generating. A few platforms in the industry are being used to track this process. One of these rising stars in the affiliate marketing software is the LinkTrust platform.

Overwhelmed

If all of this is has over whelmed you and you have no idea of where to start, you do not have to put your hands in the air and scream, “HELP”. Do not worry there are companies in the affiliate marketing industry who are ready to help with consulting, account management and even to help you enter into new verticals. There is generally a cost for these services, but you have to look at the benefits of receiving the guidance of a seasoned professional. You may just cut your set up time in half. Make sure you do your research to find the right company for you.

In the next part, I will be addressing how to run your business as a business rather than a hobby. Feel free to contact me for further information.