Affiliate Help

[doublevision]

Hi everyone,
As some of you may have seen our site sells fitness podcasts. We have had major problems with the download section of the site and its still not right. The actual podcasts themselves are all sorted and its frustrating not being able to sell them properly.

As such we are considering offering them out for others to sell and obviously make an affiliate fee. Due to the fact this is the first time we have embarked on this any advice would be appreciated. ie what sort of percentage should the affiliates get? How do we control the selling of them? Where should we try and recruit affiliates?

Thanks in advance!

Mark

[jonparker83]

Technically you're going to need some more coding to deal with the signing up for affiliates, tracking, payment etc

Commission for affiliate depends on a number of things. Is this it for your products or do you intend to make money on the back end?

If you want to get customers so you can upsell them, you should consider paying your affiliates a higher amount.

If this is all you intend to sell, then you're going to be making all your profit on the front end, so you need to give the affiliates less.

Let me know what the problems are with the downloads section of the site if you want. I'll see if it's anything I can help with.

Cheers

Jon

[doublevision]

Hiya,
The podcasts are all we are looking to sell.........


cheers

[FrozenCanuck]

doublevision - go check out ClickBank to get a sense of what publishers are paying affiliates.

The successful products pay 50-75% commission. Remember, these affiliate sales are ALL sales that you would otherwise NOT GET, so it pays to be generous here.

I sell a product that pays me 50%.
I am putting out my own audio course within a couple of months and I plan to start on my own website but migrate to ClickBank as soon as I'm comfortable, and I think I'll be paying 75% commission to affiliates to recruit as much selling help as possible.

[doublevision]

Thanks for your help. Just another question....As the products are digital, should we hand over the actual podcasts to affiliates or provide a link for the downloads?

Cheers

Ps if anyone has any other advice they don't want to put on a public forum then feel free to pm me

[kamakiri]

If you can't figure out how to get the downloads working on your own, how are you going to support your affiliates?

Fix the obvious problems first, then try and push your products on others. Completing a product half assed, then trying to push your junk on others is a real route to failure. Correct your mistakes before moving on.

[doublevision]

the podcasts don't just have to be downloaded from our server......that is why were looking at this as we could sort it at a lot of extra cost but as our speciality is in the making of the podcasts not the selling why do something that others could do a lot better!!? A web marketing guy won't be able to design Pt programs any more than I can sell products on the web.......

[kamakiri]

why do something that others could do a lot better!!?

There you go! You hit the nail on the head. I don't design web sites, but I have one. The problem is that your product is not proven. That you can't make them easily downloadable (who can't use youtube?) doesn't matter at all. There are thousands of people you can outsource to.

You need to get your own profit model set up, even if it only makes you 25 cents. Then you can think about getting bigger, otherwise, you are putting the chariot ahead of the horse.

You are exactly like the pizza shop I consulted for last month. The guy had an unprofitable pizza shop, but was dead set on selling his store and franchising his idea. The problem is who in their right mind would buy a pizza franchise (or any for that matter) that doesn't have a profit producing model already in place and set up.

[FrozenCanuck]

doublevision:

With platforms such as ClickBank, you keep your digital file. People get to your website and decide to buy. When they buy, the are re-directed to ClickBank for payment. Then they are redirected to your page again for the download (usually it would work this way). So your site would support the download (or you could offload to some third party, your call totally, but OUTSOURCE THE IMPLEMENTATION !!!)

Affiliates get a special link that they advertise. When a customer clicks on this link they end up at YOUR website, but ClickBank knows that the affiliate sent the customer, and when ClickBank takes their money, they know to pay the affiliate their percentage. You don't need to deal with it at all. You just need to deliver the product electronically. The affiliate never touches your product at all. They just bring you customers and collect money.

[doublevision]

it is not a matter of trying to get bigger too early.....I simply do not want to waste any more money on web developers who do not deliver as is promised in their contract. That is why were looking to find distributors/attiliates who can sell the products and perhaps handle their own downloads etc......

[blackhatontherocks]

Are you out of your mind?

No offense, but ... If the affiliate handles the downloads, he can sell everything without paying you a dime for it. How do you want to check if he's not selling this stuff on the side? Constantly check the internet for apperances of a product sounding similar to yours? Yeah, thought so.

BAD Affiliate Marketers excel at not selling anything or just without profit.
GOOD affiliate Marketers excel at rewriting and repackaging and cross-selling stuff. If you're not a neccessary middle man, you're practically asking to be screwed over.

Man, I think you need a break.
Take a good week off, and don't do or think at all about anything related to the project. Then in the last day of your week of, go back to the drawing board and think about ideas. Any sane web developer who can't design a download page IS NO WEB DEVELOPER but a fraud.

If you want to make this work, get back into that frame of making this work no matter what.

Then realise that you have a number of options on your hand.
First: Make an elance ad that states "you won't get payed unless downloads are working. This is all we need, A small task actually, and you'll probably need less then an hour to implement this. I realise this and am still willing to pay you "x" dollars for the job since our last web developer stood me up and this is the only step left I need to be able to sell the product.


If you don't want to SELL stuff, stop selling stuff. Partner with someone who's decent at internet marketing and knows how to drive traffic and concentrate on content creation. OR suck it up and just get to work learning the basics. I don't really know if marketing is your problem or not, the site looks solid, but the tech stuff definitly seems to bother you, so get this handled.

If all else fails, drive to the nearest university where they teach computer sciences or call someone living close by and put a simple ad at the blackboard. You'll have your capable tech guy in no time.