How to start your own affiliate program? Step by step instructions. Creating an affiliate program Make an affiliate program
My blog is mostly read by smart people who have a good understanding of Internet marketing. Let's imagine the following picture when for your business:
1. Work has been done to optimize the site
2. Optimized and maintained contextual advertising
3. We work closely with social networks
Those. you covered three pillars of internet marketing: SEO, contextual advertising and SMM.
How else can you collect leads? This is where it gets more difficult. Although the remaining channels can be used, as a rule their effectiveness is lower than those listed above. But with the right approach, you can build a good flow of leads (oh, that slang from business training).
A similar question arose from one of our clients and it was proposed to organize an affiliate program as a new channel.
By affiliate program we mean a certain system when third-party people (for example, owners of thematic websites) attract clients to you. They attract requests from clients to you, and in return you share part of the profit with them.
Applications from specific webmasters are controlled through so-called referral links. In fact, it is very close to UTM tags. It’s just that the links themselves look like http://site.ru/?ref=12345, where 12345 is the partner ID.
Let's take a deeper look at affiliate programs.
Affiliate programs (affiliate programs) are conventionally of two types:
1) Affiliate program integrated with the site. Such affiliate programs are popular with large online stores. Examples of affiliate programs from well-known sites:
http://www.ozon.ru/context/partner/
http://www.4glaza.ru/partnership/
http://www.labirint.ru/partner/
Technically, to do this, you need to install an affiliate program script on the site. There are ready-made solutions on the market, but they all need to be “finished” by a programmer. Thus, you will need a familiar programmer to install. More details about the scripts themselves will be below.
2) Cooperation with CPA partners. A good description of CPA affiliates is here (http://mygoldpartners.ru/cpa-partnerki/).
In short, this is an exchange in which website owners post their offer, and webmasters choose where to participate. The CPA affiliate itself already includes personal panels for the webmaster and site owner, with statistics, etc.
B) The percentage of markups is very high, while the affiliate program itself is on the side of the webmaster (it is profitable for the affiliate to get as much of the client’s money as possible, since it earns on commissions). This often ends in scandals and lawsuits with large claims. In general, the topic is extremely controversial.
In my opinion, the only advantage of CPA affiliates is that they already have a large base of webmasters. But each prominent CPA affiliate has about 50-200 clients, so there is still competition. Moreover, these are the same clients in all CPA affiliates, the overlap of the client base is 80 percent. As a rule, these are large well-known brands in the online retail market.
Therefore, let's consider only the first option. Having your own affiliate program for a small company has many advantages over a CPA affiliate because you have complete control over the process. You are a king and a god. The only important disadvantage is that you will have to look for partners to attract applications yourself.
What do you need to start your own affiliate program?
1) Panel for partners
As I wrote above, there are ready-made solutions. They just need to be finished. As a result, partners receive a convenient panel from where they can see all the statistics on their traffic: how many transitions, how many leads, how many rejected. All this can be filtered by date. It’s convenient to withdraw your earned money through the panel. And you, as the site owner, control all clients through the admin panel. Those. everything is centralized and quite convenient.
Well, you need a cool design, webmasters are spoiled people.
Of the ready-made scripts, the most famous is Postaffiliatepro.ru. A real combine. You will have to spend a lot of time learning and customizing it for yourself. Those. It’s quite difficult to figure it out, your programmer will swear :) But if you figure it out, you can set up an affiliate program very flexibly, to almost any whim.
2) Promotional materials
Definitely needed advertising banners various formats. I also highly recommend making 1-2 beautiful landing pages where partners will send potential clients.
Please note, place landing pages on a separate domain, and not on the main site! This is important. Because there are many spammers among webmasters, and it is important that the site is not banned search engines, and the email domain was not included in the spam database. And let them ban landing pages, they still rank poorly in search results.
3) Attracting webmasters
We need to lure webmasters through the platforms where they communicate. Here's what's most effective:
- Placing an advertising topic on specialized forums. Type “forum for webmasters” into a search engine and go through the list. The largest one: http://searchengines.guru/forumdisplay.php?f=35
- Placing an advertising post on specialized public pages. Here is the finished selection:
The client is required to provide a main text of 1000-1200 characters and a short description of 400-500 characters. The short text is placed in thematic sections, therefore, the number of sections selected is the same number that needs to be sent brief descriptions. The uniqueness of the material provided must be at least 98%. If for some reason the client cannot provide the requested text, he has the right to order paid services Here. For every 1000 characters 100 rubles. In addition to all this, you must send a banner size 650*100 and a link to register in affiliate program.
Price list
1. When placing for a period of 3 months, a one-time payment is 750 rubles.
2. When placing for a period of 6 months, a 10% discount is provided. Cost – 1350 rubles.
3. When placed for a period of 12 months, the affiliate program is placed for 18 months! Cost – 3000 rubles.
4. Lifetime placement: 4,500 rubles – with the provision of use of the referral system; 6000 rubles – without referral system.
The affiliate program will be posted on all pages that meet the criteria (in at least three sections).
For example, a children's goods store will be placed on the following catalog pages:
1. Store affiliates;
2. Children's affiliate programs;
3. Pay-per-sale affiliate programs;
The affiliate program posted on a lifetime basis will be placed in at least five sections of the site.
How to pay
You can pay for the placement of your affiliate program using one of the wallets:
Webmoney R315035046958
Yandex 410012166156356
In the "note" or "message to recipient" section, enter the name of your affiliate program
Leave all requests via the form feedback or by mail.
The affiliate program is one of the most effective ways monetization of the resource and attracting targeted visitors to the site without advertising costs. Thanks to your own affiliate program, you can earn up to 10-20% of your total turnover. It all depends on how competently you use this marketing tool. If you organize and manage your affiliate program correctly, the results will not take long to arrive.
Who needs their own affiliate program and why?
How to make money on affiliate programs? First of all, such programs attract hundreds and thousands of new visitors to your resource. At the same time, while partners are trying to attract traffic to your resource and increase product sales, you do not pay anything. Payment is made only for results ( action, payment, click). By understanding how to work with affiliate programs, you can significantly increase the profitability of the resource. Everyone needs affiliate programs: bloggers, online stores, hosting, SEO services, etc.:
There is also such an option as cooperation with CPA networks. In short, these are networks whose owners post a lot of offers to join affiliate programs, and webmasters themselves choose where to participate. Often, a CPA affiliate already has personal panels for the webmaster and resource owner, statistics, etc.
However, this option may not be suitable for a mere mortal. As a rule, CPA affiliates work with large advertisers who are ready to guarantee significant payment budgets. At the same time, the percentage of markups is quite high ( since the work is based on the payment of commissions, it is profitable for the affiliate program to “unwind” as much of the client’s money as possible). In some cases, such cooperation ends in scandals and litigation.
For a small company, its own affiliate program is more acceptable compared to CPA, because it allows the site owner to fully control the process. However, you have to look for partners on your own.
How to organize your own affiliate program?
If you are faced with the question of how to create your own affiliate program from scratch, adhere to the following aspects:
- Good product. Having a product/product in your arsenal that provides real value to users, you can attract the best partners;
- Resource with high level sales The presence of a resource with high sales efficiency is the main condition that allows you to develop an affiliate program and get the desired result from it;
- Amount of commission for partners. First of all, you need to decide what payment scheme will be used - per click, action, sales. At the initial stage, try to offer the maximum commission percentage that you can afford. This will interest your partners and help promote the resource. Please note that it is better to set a high percentage of affiliate remuneration for digital and information products(books, programs, audio and video content) than for physical ones. It is possible to use a multi-level affiliate program, in which commissions are paid through a hierarchical network of partners of the first and subsequent levels;
- Effective tools. Your partners must receive from you all the necessary tools and promotional materials. Most affiliate programs offer only a few banners, which is clearly not enough for good work:
How to connect an affiliate?
First, let's go through the creation methods:
- You can write your own affiliate program yourself or hire the services of a programmer. The functionality of the affiliate program may include the ability to work through a Web interface and applications for iOS and Android; aggregating information about orders, questions, reviews, informing customers about the status of order execution via SMS or e-mail. As well as intelligent data analysis for further analysis of the affiliate program, multilingual interface, export of data to accounting, etc.;
- Implement an affiliate program using aggregators. Draw beautiful promotional materials and register with CPA partners as an advertiser;
- You can use services that will help you create your own affiliate program.
Here are several options on how to connect an affiliate program:
- LastoShopGold – most suitable for selling digital goods (information products, pin codes, e-books etc.). The script is installed on the site, and you have full control over its operation;
- EcommTools is a service that allows you to sell both digital and physical products. For electronic goods, sales are fully automated; for physical goods, there are several options for calculating delivery costs, integration with the logistics center, sending a tracking number, etc.;
- E-autopay is a service that will help you organize your own affiliate program and provide convenient acceptance and payment for orders. This resource is convenient for both the site administrator and partners. Suitable for selling digital and physical goods;
- justclick.ru - by registering in this service, you become the owner of a full-fledged online store for maintaining information business, a two-level affiliate program, a “smart” email newsletter service and access to a network of affiliates who are ready to advertise your product. The service allows you to create automatic sales for target groups and track the effectiveness of advertising, test and measure the conversion of sales and subscription pages, set up a series of additional sales, in a word, sell in “autopilot” mode.
Where and how can you get traffic for your own affiliate program?
After setting up the affiliate program is completed, it’s time to put it into production.
How to drive traffic to an affiliate program?
- From thematic informants;
- Newsletter by e-mail;
- Traffic from public pages on social networks;
- Traffic arbitrage through teaser networks;
- Through targeted advertising from social networks;
- Direct clients on the recommendation of a partner;
- Traffic from mobile applications.
Once you have figured out how to create an affiliate program, start working with your client base. By using email inform your clients about the launch of your own affiliate program and your desire to see them as partners. Information about your affiliate program can also be distributed in various affiliate directories. At the same time, it is important to emphasize its advantages ( high commissions, etc..).
The most difficult thing will be to attract professional partners. There may be only 1% of them, but even in this quantity they can increase the sales of your product or services significantly. Professional partners have their own e-mail newsletters with thousands of subscribers, resources with high traffic, and advertising specialists with customer databases.
Finding such partners is not difficult; just enter the topic of your product and key queries related to it into a search engine and contact the resource owners who appear on the first page of search results. You can also use hidden affiliate links. But to do this, you will need to create special domains for key partners and a placeholder page that will be shown if the client types the direct address. In this case, it will be difficult to bypass the affiliate link:
How can you connect an affiliate program to your website and why is it necessary?
Partner Panel
You can create an affiliate program yourself or use ready-made solutions, adding a little finishing touches to them. As a result, you will have a convenient panel in which traffic statistics will be visible (number of conversions and number of rejected leads). Moreover, the information can be filtered by date. In addition, it will be convenient to withdraw your earned money through the panel. At the same time, the site owner will have the opportunity to control clients through the admin panel, which is quite convenient.
Before you make an affiliate program, take care of its design. You can turn to a real treasure trove of ready-made scripts - Postaffiliatepro.ru. Of course you will have to spend time setting it up. If it’s difficult to understand, contact the services of a programmer. Professionals will set up an affiliate program to suit your every whim.
Promotional materials
The affiliate program requires the presence of banners of different formats. At a minimum, this should be a couple of beautiful landing pages where partners can redirect potential clients. It is better to place landing pages on a separate domain so that your site is not banned by search engines. Banning landing pages is not scary, because they already rank poorly in search results.
Attracting clients
Place advertisements on specialized forums and public pages, purchase targeted advertising on social networks based on subscribers of specialized public pages. You can make an offer directly to the owners of websites with similar topics to take part in the affiliate program. If you don’t have enough free time, it’s better to find a person who will communicate with partners, update promotional materials, withdraw funds, etc.
What are the benefits of having your own affiliate program?
- Firstly, the affiliate program will provide you with multiple targeted traffic. And the more targeted visitors, the higher the sales;
- Secondly, sales will increase your profits;
- Thirdly, the time for promoting the project will be reduced. Partners will help you promote the project;
- Fourthly, you will only pay for the results. Commissions are paid upon completion of the action;
- Fifthly, the costs of promoting the project are significantly reduced. Your products/services are advertised by partners:
Getting a big partner is difficult, but possible. To interest him, you need to provide a number of convincing evidence of the quality of the product, provide samples for testing, and familiarize yourself with conversion and sales statistics. It’s also not easy to interest mid-income partners. As a rule, such specialists make a test purchase of goods to make sure that your service works at a high level.
Don't try to manage your partner; leave your management skills to solve other problems. You are only responsible for managing the affiliate program. Provide advertising materials, texts of letters for mailings, banners, articles, carry out promotions for partners and constantly monitor the results.
Analyze how much income each partner brings and reward the best with discounts or offer individual terms of cooperation:
How to get an affiliate program on twitch and why might it be necessary?
To become a member of Twitch.TV, you must have an average number of simultaneous views of more than 500, broadcast at least 3 times a week and conduct content that meets the requirements of the service. Before you get an affiliate program on twitch, your application will be processed manually, and if you fall a little short of the stated requirements, but at the same time have special content, maybe an exception will be made for you.
With time and experience, any affiliate marketer or webmaster thinks about how the traffic monetization platform he uses functions. Then, oddly enough, there is a desire to develop similar functionality of your own.
There are 2 reasons for this:
- Spiritual(the desire to create something of your own for self-realization);
- Material(increased profits).
As for the “internal problems”, you yourself understand, but in terms of income growth there is room for improvement. If an arbitrator earns a lot of money, then the affiliate program is even more profitable. For example, from a lead of 1000 rubles, an affiliate spends 50-70% on purchases, risking a profit of 300-500 rubles. The affiliate does not lose anything, receives 200-300 rubles in commission and this can be absolutely any amount.
In addition to the income from each lead, the creator of the affiliate program receives:
- information about traffic monetization relationships (communicating with webmasters);
- new and increased payments (communicating with advertisers).
Most motivated people immediately lose their excitement when they receive price lists from freelancers and other mandatory components of affiliate marketing.
The cost of creating your own affiliate program from scratch, which includes the basic elements: webmaster/advertiser/administrator interface and start from $3500 (average specialists), from $10000 (professionals). You also need to spend money:
- For bloggers, affiliate catalogs and other PR ~ $2000+
- , SSL, ~ $200
- Staff (2-3 people at the start) ~ $1500
- Time from start to full start ~ 3-6 months
In total, it’s just about the money ~ $7200 and up to 6 months of development, provided that you already have management knowledge, technical specifications and advertisers.
Considering the average salary in the Russian Federation is $500 and the risks of losing everything, for most interested parties the answer becomes obvious - to continue to arbitrate without sticking your nose into global affairs.
But it's not all bad. Eat great solution in the form of a cloud-based affiliate marketing platform Affise.
This project has been running for a long time and is constantly being improved. It allows you to optimize the process by bringing together webmasters and advertisers. Simply put, this is an opportunity for anyone to create their own affiliate program. As I said earlier, it is very difficult to create an affiliate program from scratch; this requires special knowledge, agreements and a substantial amount of money. With Affise, to launch your own software you need:
- $0 for technical aspects of operation (platform testing);
- 1 person for administration (you can handle it yourself);
- Some amount for advertising;
- Advertisers (offers);
- ~ 1 week to open the site.
It is worth noting that much less knowledge is required to start than when creating a project from scratch, because everything is already ready, you just need to configure it. And instructions, a personal manager and online consultants will help with this (promptly). Immediately after creating an application on the Affise.com project website, a sales manager will contact you, to whom you will tell the idea and after which you will be asked to test the platform (you will receive a personal manager and a free trial period).
After all the settings (under the guidance of consultants and the knowledge base), you will be ready to add the first offers (advertising offers with payment for actions). To do this, find interested advertisers in thematic forums in advance. If this is not possible, then it doesn’t matter! There is CPAPI functionality that allows you to download hundreds of ready-made offers from other affiliate programs into your network.
There are a great many sites for cooperation, so at first you can engage in ordinary reselling (direct traffic to other people’s offers, taking a commission for yourself). By the way, let me show you the administrator’s personal account on the Affise platform.
Immediately after logging in you will be taken to home page with custom widgets. By default, statistics for today and a graph for 30 days are displayed. Also from the interface you can go to any partner’s account, view tickets and TOP webmasters.
The dashboard is configured using a convenient widget constructor:
All data is immediately grouped and visually displayed.
As for other sections, they are divided into:
Statistics. It is possible to view data based on all sorts of filters (offer, country, city, device, advertiser, time, IP, OS, KPI, etc.). There is also a function for generating a report using a special link.
Offers. Monitoring, adding and editing offers. In the settings you specify: description, GEO, tracking, types of traffic, rates ( / /) with a fixed. or % payment, etc.
Smartlinks. Creation of “smart links” for automatic distribution of traffic by GEO, device and other known parameters to offers.
Automation. Anti-fraud protection will soon appear in this section, but for now CR optimization is available.
Partners. This is a directory of all partners in your network. Through it you can assign a personal manager, block a partner, go to his account, view statistics, etc.
Tickets. Module for communication with partners using a ticket system (the partner creates a request in his personal account, after which you write a response and close the message thread).
Billing. Here you can create requests to withdraw funds from partners and to pay advertisers for services. Payment requests are generated for the selected period in available currencies based on the one specified by the partner payment system. Depending on the conditions, you can change the application status.
Users. The section is used to add and edit accounts of administrators and managers for working with the affiliate program.
News. Using the news publishing service, you will inform affiliates about any changes and innovations in the project. Usage visual editor It’s not at all difficult: type up the text and add a bright picture. It is important to post regularly, thereby showing the activity of your network.
Settings. Basic modification options appearance website, interface, content and everything else that is necessary for the correct functioning of the affiliate program.
Here in the settings you will find opportunities to integrate various useful third-party services for billing, anti-fraud protection, data monitoring, marketing, etc.
I would especially like to draw attention to online support right in the administrator's office. By clicking on the chat button, a window immediately opens where you can get a prompt answer to your question 24/7.
As for tariffs, there are 3 of them:
- PROFESSIONAL- $299/month.
- ENTERPRISE- $499/month.
- VIP- price on request.
Be sure to analyze the advantages of each package, because this affects the available functionality and the number of conversions per month (10,000 on the Professional tariff and 40,000 on the Enterprise tariff, above this number you will have to pay extra for each).
Advantages of the Affise cloud platform:
- Start with almost $0 and without much knowledge.
- Clear interface (there is a Russian language, which is very important!).
- Excellent online support.
- Affordable prices for tariffs.
- High stability of tracking servers.
- Frequent updates (the project does not stand still, it is constantly being improved).
- Rich technical functionality. decisions.
Here are a few affiliate programs that use Affise:
The company's offices are located in Lithuania, Belarus, India, Israel, Cyprus and China. Each one has an address and telephone number, so if someone wants to contact a company from these countries, there will be no problems.
Let me remind you that you can create your own affiliate program completely free of charge during the test period, just leave a request on the company’s website and contact the manager. And I wish you good luck in your work and earnings, see you!