Affiliate marketing networks provide an environment where companies who have something to sell (Advertisers) meet with companies who know how to sell it (Publishers). Many large Affiliate marketing networks provide hundreds of products to be sold to their network of thousands of publishers.
Affiliate marketing networks generally work on a performance basis (CPA), where you only pay when a sale or lead is generated for you. The Affiliate network then pays their publishers for generating sales on your behalf, minus what the network keeps for itself for putting the deal together.
Affiliate marketing networks place your products in direct connection with publishers (marketing or media companies.) Not every product or service will work with an affiliate marketing campaign, and many affiliate networks will not accept your offer unless certain criteria are met.
The average website is not “marketing ready” for an affiliate marketing campaign, and often requires a redesign or a separate website to allow for easy sales or lead conversions. The overall sales potential of affiliate network marketing can be enormous, and any time gigantic sales numbers come into play, so do gigantic risks.
Many affiliate networks have what are known as “Super Affiliates” who have the potential to generate hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales commissions each month. For the most part, the publishers who do the selling through the affiliate networks are greedy.
If a good offer comes across an affiliate network, where a lot of money can be made, many publishers will market the product and sales will come streaming in. All parties must be happy in order to yield a successful affiliate campaign.
Affiliate Network Marketing Risk:
Not enough business You have put significant time and resources into building an Affiliate marketing campaign. Your offer is hot and the publishers love it. Your affiliate marketing campaign is generating a lot of leads, but sales are not happening. Many Affiliate marketing networks will also ask if they can run your campaign exclusively.
Exclusive Affiliate network Campaign Advantages:
Your Affiliate marketing campaign manager may pass your campaign on to other affiliate marketing networks, and manage your account for you. You will not have to pay startup fees or sign contracts for the affiliate marketing networks that your affiliate manager passes your campaign on to. Affiliate marketing networks use exclusive campaigns as “bragging rights,” and often give priority to their exclusive campaigns. This helps to get your campaign noticed by the publisher, and ultimately increases sales or lead flow.

Exclusive Affiliate network Disadvantages:
Your campaign manager will outsource your campaign to other affiliate marketing networks. Your campaign may not get passed on to other affiliate marketing networks, and because it is an exclusive offer you can’t pass it on to other networks.
The publishers who run your campaign through outsourced affiliate networks will not receive as high of a payout (sales commission). There are effectively two affiliate marketing networks: Your direct affiliate network and the outsourced network.
The decreased publisher bounty with result in decreased interest in your campaign, so the outsourced affiliate marketing networks will not be as productive as if you worked with them directly.
Most affiliate networks will want to incorporate email marketing into your campaign. You must then supply the suppression file to your affiliate network so they can in turn pass your suppression file to their publishers.
Launching affiliate marketing campaigns that convert:
Design your campaign to maximize conversions. You may have to build a unique website for the affiliate marketing campaign if your current website is not fine-tuned for affiliate marketing.
Publishers optimize the offers they market and drop the poor performing campaigns. Design an offer that works both for you and your publishers; your affiliate manager can help.
Make the steps necessary to allow your campaign to be email marketed by the publishers. Email marketing will significantly amplify your campaign’s effectiveness.
The risks associated with affiliate network marketing are many, and they are significant.

by. Cris W

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 13th, 2010 at 4:22 am and is filed under Affiliate. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.