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Published by Peggy Champlin, Success with Ease is devoted to helping professionals and small businesses build their businesses, particularly in the area of passive income.

Message from Peggy
What Is An Affiliate Program?
Resources - Affiliate Announce
Final Note
Contact Information

Hello <$firstname$>!

If you celebrated Thanksgiving last week, I hope you enjoyed the break, family and friends, and NOT overindulging too much! I actually had a very low-key day. My big travel-to-large-family-gathering will be at Christmas this year.

We're starting a new series topic this week on affiliate programs. I decided to use a question and answer format and realized there are lots of questions to be answered, so we'll take a few weeks and work through them.

The one point I'd like to emphasize is that you don't need to have thousands of dollars a month in sales to start your own affiliate program! As soon as you have something to sell (usually a product rather than a service, but not necessarily!), you can start it. After all, you're only paying commissions when you get a sale, so whether you have few or many, you'll be able to afford it.

Take a look at the Affiliate Announce service in the Resources section. I think it's definitely worth the price.

Enjoy the rest of this issue and make it a great week!

Peggy

Many of you have heard me say that starting your own affiliate program is something worth doing sooner rather than later in the life of your business. So I thought we'd spend a few weeks discussing how you do that!

We'll start at the beginning, using questions and answers. Hopefully, you'll see your questions here!

What is an affiliate program?

Here's an example. Bob thinks you've got great products and services his clients might like to buy. He becomes your affiliate and you give him a special web address (URL) to put on his website, in his ezine, or in a special mailing to his clients. Ideally, he'll write some text recommending your products to his readers.

When a reader, Sally, clicks the link, she is sent to your site where she then decides to buy one of your products. The special link she clicked on indicated to your e-commerce system that this customer originated with Bob. So, you have now made a sale from someone sent by Bob and you owe him a commission, usually either a flat dollar amount or a percentage of the sales price.

In this example, Bob is the affiliate, you are the merchant or affiliate program manager, and Sally is the customer. The special web address is called the referral URL.

Why do I want to give away part of my profits?

At first blush, you might wonder why you should give away part of each sale. It helps to think of your affiliates as your sales force. They are finding and sending people to you that may not have found you otherwise. Combined with the credibility of the affiliate's recommendation, you're making sales you wouldn't make if it weren't for the affiliate. So, would you rather have a smaller percent of a sale or 100% of no sale?

How much commission should I pay?

Some large, well-known affiliate programs, like Amazon, pay 5-15%. Needless to say, no one's getting rich from these affiliate programs! More typical are commission rates between 20% and 30%. I do know some programs with 40%, 50%, and even 60% commissions! These higher rates are always for digital products that are essentially cost-free for the merchant to sell and deliver once they're created.

Again, you may be asking why you should give away so much of your revenues. And again I answer that you are making sales to people who may otherwise never be your customer - and getting the ongoing oppotunity to sell them something else. Better to keep a portion of a sale than have no sale at all! And the higher the commission rate, the more incentive your affiliates have to promote your products and services.

So, what should you pay in commissions? The most common commission rate I've seen is 30%, but there are no rules here. You need to balance what you feel you can afford to offer with the incentive effect the rate has on your affiliates. You won't get much business from affiliates, though, if your rate is under 20%.

Do I have to include all my products and services in my affiliate program?

No. For instance, I offer commissions on my products, but not my consulting and coaching services. You're free to offer commissions on whichever products and services you wish. Just make sure you are clear with your affiliates which ones are included in your program and which aren't.

How do I manage my affiliate program?

Ah, good question! We'll talk about affiliate tracking next week.

How To Recruit Affiliates With The Affiliate Directories

There are many affiliate directories providing searchable databases to help merchants find affiliate programs suitable for their sites. Think of them as the Yahoo's for the affiliate world. These directories are very popular some with loyal subscribers exceeding tens of thousands.

All of these directories will consider your affiliate program for a free listing in their database. If a directory editor chooses to highlight your program as a recommendation in their newsletter then you will benefit from even more great publicity!

If you want to attract new affiliate partners, your first step should be to submit your program details to all the leading affiliate directories.

As affiliate programs rise in popularity they are becoming increasingly selective as to which programs qualify for a listing making it important that you submit and present your program in the correct manner.

Each directory will have their own submission policies. In almost every case your submission will be reviewed by the directories editors before inclusion in the directory. Also bear in mind that they are very busy and if you haven't followed the submission policies correctly, the chances are your request will just hit the recycle bin!

Alternatively, instead of spending the next day or two tracking down the directories and form filling, you could fill out a single form at the Affiliate Announce service. For a small fee, they will ensure all your directory submissions are completed promptly and professionally while you concentrate on looking after your affiliates and building your business!

Promote your program with Affiliate Announce and they will

• Manually submit your program to approx. 40 leading affiliate directories
• Forward a report on each directory submitted to
• Provide all username/passwords supplied to update your listings

Every order is processed personally by Neil Durrant, proprietor of Affiliate Announce.

I'm planning to use it to help launch my next affiliate program (details in a week or two), so you may want to check it out, too!

In Srully Blotnick's research reflected in Getting Rich Your Own Way (Playboy Paperbacks, 1982), 1,500 people were divided into two groups and followed for twenty years. Group A made up 83 percent of the sample. These people were embarking on a career chosen for the reason of making money now in order to do what they wanted later. Group B, the other 17 percent, chose their career based on what they wanted to do now and worry about the money later.

The data revealed some startling discoveries:

• At the end of the twenty years, 101 of the 1,500 had become millionnaires.
• Of the millionnaires, all but one - 100 out of 101 - were from Group B, the group that had chosen to pursue what they loved!

According to this research, people who set out to make their million without serious consideration of their philosophy of life or what career would bring meaning and fulfillment are apt to be disappointed.

This ezine is published by Peggy Champlin, a small business coach who specializes in helping you convert 'what you know' into passive income.

To send me email, mailto:Peggy@SuccessWithEase.com.

To learn more about my coaching and program offerings, go to http://www.SuccessWithEase.com.

You are free to use the material from my articles in whole or in part on your web site or ezine (email newsletter) as long as you include the attribution below and also let me know where the article will appear.

"This article is by Peggy Champlin of Success with Ease. Peggy's web site is a comprehensive resource devoted to helping professionals and small businesses build their businesses, particularly in the area of passive income. For free marketing resources and valuable marketing tools visit http://www.SuccessWithEase.com."

Copyright Peggy Champlin, 2003. All rights reserved.