The answer: Absolutely! With the exception of a few
products, almost every product or service online will be MUCH more
successful if you offer an Associate Program for it.
That is a pretty bold statement, isn't it? I'm probably a tad
prejudice here because we generate over a million dollars every year
just from our Associate Programs!
However, the plain fact of the matter is that I have never seen a
business, which invested in an Associate Program, that did not make
money with it! Yes, read that again, I was not exaggerating… I said
that every business I have seen introduce an Associate Program
has made more sales, and generated more money!
In my opinion, developing an Associate Program for your own
product or service is one of the most powerful ways there is to
market online today!
Just to recap from last month's newsletter, basically an
Associate Program is a "reseller program".
You are allowing other people to resell your product at their
website, through their newsletter, to their customer base, or any
ethical way they want to market it on the Internet (you get to set
the rules on the ways your resellers are allowed to sell or
represent your product).
Associate Programs have made a "level" playing field between the
big corporations and the small companies like you and I. Using
Associate Programs makes it ridiculously easy to harness the power
of other websites and all of their traffic... and it is possible to
set up an Associate Program for your own product or service without
mortgaging your house!
Yes, you can do it... but it takes an investment of time
and a small investment of money to do it right! And you have to do
it right the first time! I'll talk all about how to get set
up and how to run a successful Associate Program in several of the
articles to follow.
But first let's get to the heart of things.
So, why can an Associate Program make you so much
money?
If you have read my course,
"The Insider Secrets to Marketing Your Business on the
Internet" (if you haven't click here now to check it out),
you know how I love joint ventures and how they can be your easiest
path to success in any business (they have been mine, so I am living
proof). Basically, an Associate Program is the ultimate
"electronic" joint venture!
Just in case there a few of you who don't understand, let's go
through an example.
Let's say you have a protein powder (that you mix in with your
drinks) which reduces cholesterol and also improves a person's
health and vitality. It's a great product and your customers love
it! Now, if you can team up with someone else who has an
email list of past customers who are interested in improving their
cholesterol, and interested in health and eating properly... you
would make a boatload of money (the perfect joint venture)! So much
that you would be willing to give them a healthy portion of the
profits from all the sales generated from their list (called a
"referral fee"). You sell YOUR product to THEIR list of customers
and you both profit. You use Your product and his list.
It doesn't end there. What about websites, which are health and
nutrition oriented. What if you got them to post a banner at their
site about your product, or even got them to endorse it to their
visitors because they liked the product so much. Many of their
visitors would see the recommendation and visit your site… you sell
them the product, then give the website which sent the visitor to me
a "referral fee" for the business.
Do you see the power in that?
You don't have to go out and spend money on advertising... there
is NO COST in doing this joint venture. You only pay them per sale.
So if you don't make any sales you don't pay them a dime… but if you
make a thousand sales, you give them a lot of money. They are
motivated to make it work and you are motivated to make it work… as
the more you sell, the more money you both make.
This is an Associate Program in a nutshell. The person who is
promoting your products to his customer or at their website is the
"associate" and you are the Associate Program owner.
In traditional marketing, joint ventures of this nature were
complicated and time consuming and it was difficult to track every
order. But with electronic marketing, software can track
EVERY customer sent from someone's website, from someone's
newsletter, from someone's promotions, from someone's personal email
to his customer database, or from any associate … to
determine who gets credit for the sale.
Basically, an associate is an independent representative of your
company. They try to sell your product and they take a "referral"
fee for all the products sold. They just send people to your site
(using a variety of methods discussed later). You track those
visitors and sales, and give them a "referral" fee for all sales
generated from those visitors.
Isn't that beautiful? I love the Internet!
And it gets even better. By using the technology of the Internet,
it is virtually the same amount of work to track "1" associate as it
is to track "10000" associates...
Can you imagine having hundreds or even thousands of people
out there, selling your product or service for
you?
Can you imagine how many sales that would generate for you?
I think you get the picture. Are you excited yet?
So how do you get hundreds or even thousands of "associates"
(otherwise known as "resellers") to join your program?
Sometimes people will "ask" to be a reseller for your
product/service (usually customers who have bought your product, are
quite happy with it, and want to represent it), or you can actively
seek resellers (associates) who would be perfect for your
products/services.
The only way to be successful with Associate Programs is to do
#2 (search for resellers who have the perfect exposure to your
target clientele in order to sell your product or service).
Let me give you an example. If you were selling gardening
equipment, your perfect associates would be people who own gardening
related sites or newsletters, or those who own other related
businesses with a large database, selling products/services which
are complementary (but not competitive) to yours.
These are the people who would be your perfect "joint venture"
partners, therefore your perfect "associates".
When you set up an Associate Program you are deliberately going
out and finding joint venture partners! Your associates put a banner
or text link to you on their sites... and they will send their
customers and/or visitors to your site.
In order to do this you must have an accurate and reliable way of
keeping track of your associates and the visitors they bring to your
site (and which visitors come from which associate so you know who
to credit when there are sales). This is where Associate Program
software comes into the picture (more about that in one of the
following articles).
Okay, the beauty of all this is that you benefit from the traffic
of OTHER sites… and your associates benefit too by getting a cut of
the profit. It is a win-win situation for both of you. It
costs them nothing to join your Associate Program and resell your
goods, and you don't pay them a dime until they generate a sale…
it just doesn't get any better than that in marketing.
The power behind Associate Programs is that "there is nothing to
lose" (other than a few hours of your time).
For example, the associate joins your Associate Program for free.
They invest 30-60 minutes to post the banner or links to your site
from theirs (or emails their customer base or newsletter base about
your product/service)… and if it doesn't produce as many sales as
they expected, they simply remove the banners or links.
What did they lose?
An hour of their time, at the most! That is not much of a
risk considering there was a potential to make thousands of dollars
over a few hours of work.
What is the verdict? It is and offer them next to impossible to
lose money by offering your products through an Associate Program
if you have the right associates.
Just in case you didn't get it yet, let me put it in plain
English:
With an online Associate Program you can have hundreds and even
thousands of websites online selling your product or service. In
turn, they receive a commission for every sale generated by their
links.
This is a fantastic deal for you, as you are not paying a dime
for advertising! You only pay for results.
Think about it. How can you lose money? If you are not paying a
dime until a sale is produced, you can do nothing but make
money!
It is a very low risk method of advertising. You are always
going to make money!
Let's say that you are selling a product for $100 and you offer a
$20 referral fee per sale. If an associate has your banner up for an
entire year before he makes a sale, you don't pay them a cent until
that sale is produced… there is no way you can lose! It doesn't
matter what kind of traffic your associate's site has... whether the
site gets 10 visitors a day or 10,000 visitors a day...
you are paying on a per result basis... and you will make
money every single time!
That's the power of Associate Programs. If you have the right
contacts... it is basically a "no risk" form of advertising.
You are only paying your advertising dollars (in this case a
referral fee or commission) for sales which are made. You always
make money!
In the past, this kind of advertising was laughed at. If you
phoned up the New York Times and asked them to publish a full page
ad and then told them that you would pay them only a percentage of
the sales that were made from that ad... they'd laugh at you! They
charge $25,000+ for an ad.
If you advertised on TV during the Super Bowl you'd be paying a
million dollars for airing a 30-second commercial. But instead, say
you approached them and asked them to place the ad for free and you
would pay them a percentage of the sales that were generated...
they'd laugh at you as well!
On the Internet this type of joint venture deal is commonly
accepted! In fact, it is taking the Internet by storm.
The technology of the Internet has made this type of arrangement
very easy to do and quite profitable for both parties involved (the
associate and the owner of the Associate Program).
I should mention that Associate/Affiliate/Reseller Programs are
becoming more and more popular... even with the big sites using
extensive prepaid banner advertising, which would have never
considered this type of advertising. They are accepting some
associate/affiliate arrangement to increase their profits and eat up
their available banner space. The reason they are turning to these
methods of revenue is that a lot of people are getting sick and
tired of paying for banner advertising which doesn't produce sales.
Advertisers want results and many are not getting them!
Side note: As you know, banner "cost per impressions" have
been drastically dropping all over the Internet. We talk about how
to buy banner space for as low as $5 CPM and to never pay more than
$17 CPM, in my private newsletter called "The Cutting
Edge" which comes free of charge with my Internet Marketing Course (check it out you will be
glad you did). If you are a Cutting Edge subscriber,
please read those details in the March issue if you have not yet
done so.
Now, I should also mention that another reason why Affiliate
Programs are becoming popular is because the marketing is done not
just though banner ads but through a variety of other methods!
Associate Programs are marketed though graphic links, text links,
autoresponders, ezines, letters of referral, etc. This is
advantageous for the following reasons.
There are software programs that can actually filter out and
basically eliminate banner ads... so visitors who use this software
don't even see them! So if you were only using banner ads to
advertise your products or services... some prospects would never
even see your offer.
However if an associate recommends your services through a text
link or writes an endorsement letter... this can't be filtered
out... it exposes a prospective customer to your service or product
in spite of the fact that they filter out banner ads!
And it's not just the filtering software... there are lots of
people out there who are "immune" to banner ads! They don't need
filtering software... they simply ignore all banner ads. In other
words they automatically filter out the ads before it hits their
eyeballs! So one of the BIG advantages of Associate Programs is that
the information gets to prospective customers in a variety of ways,
circumventing human and software filters.
You aren't relying on one method of advertising... and you
only pay for results!
In closing, let me state one rule. With only a few exceptions,
the only products or services which will not do well in an Associate
Program are those that do not have a high margin to work with. If
you are only making 10% profit on an item or service it is very
difficult to give an associate a large piece of the selling price as
"motivation" or incentive to sell your product or service.
So, as long as you have a product to sell and as long as you have
some kind of margin to work with so that you can offer a reasonable
referral fee, you'll make money with an Associate Program.
If you have a low markup (unless your product is really unique
and it is going to sell like hot cakes), it is going to be difficult
to generate a lot of sales from your associates as there is not much
incentive to motivate them. A commission of only 5% of the sale is a
very low incentive and you will not get many associates out there
marketing your wares with those small referral fees.
However, some good news for those who have low margins in your
product; there is one reason why you might still consider setting up
an Associate Program... read the article "Our SECRET Weapon... a
Unique and Creative way of using Associate Programs" to find out
why!
Generally speaking, with a good product or good service and a
reasonable margin... I cannot think of a company that should not
have an Associate Program!
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Corey Rudl is
the owner of four highly successful online businesses that attract
more than 1.8 million visitors per month and generate over $6.6
million each year. He is also the author of the #1 best-selling
Internet Marketing course online.
Click here to check out his site that's
JAM-PACKED WITH THE EXACT INFORMATION YOU NEED to start, build, and
grow your very own profitable Internet business starting from
scratch.
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