Affiliate Marketing is Still in Its Infancy

Affiliate Marketing via the internet is really still in its infancy. It’s only about 20 years old. Thus, there’s lots of opportunity and room for growth. You may even know people who are looking for a little extra income that you can help via your affiliate marketing program.

Who do you know who is passionate about the types of products or services that you offer? Who do you know that might like to make a little extra income on the side by sharing their passion and/or expertise with others? Who is already a successful affiliate marketer in your field? Think about these things as you plan your affiliate marketing program. There is significant opportunity available in the affiliate marketing field.

One of the biggest affiliate marketing sites is Amazon.com. You can sell books, CDs, DVDs, etc and Amazon makes a commission for helping get the sale. Of course, Amazon is a giant in the affiliate marketing industry. But, they’re also a great example of how effective affiliate marketing can be and how much potential there is in the marketplace. You don’t have to become Amazon to create an additional revenue stream from affiliate marketing. However, you will need to know a bit about affiliate marketing and the basics of what it takes for an affiliate marketer to succeed.

Because the industry is still in its infancy, you may need to offer fundamental information to your potential affiliate marketers in order to get them up and running. For instance, if you’re recruiting family and friends as your first tier affiliates, you may need to let them know that there are some basics they will need in order to be successful in the affiliate marketing arena.

For example, much of the advice for beginning affiliate marketers suggests that they should find a great product or service that they are passionate about and promote that product or service initially. Why?

• Because they won’t have to deal with customers and customer complaints.
• They don’t need to worry about creating a product.
• The billing and delivery of an existing product is taken care of by the affiliate program.
• If there are refunds or other problems, that is handled by the company and not the affiliate.

This eases the burden on the affiliate initially and allows them to get their feet wet. You may also want to provide information regarding promoting a product or service.

Generally, there are three ways affiliates sell items online. You can use your own website, write articles, and establish expertise and/or create a blog. All of these require a little learning, but they are becoming easier to use as more of the providers of these services offer WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) software – meaning that your affiliates can basically type and follow directions to create any one or all of the three points of selling. It’s important to remind your affiliates that whatever they do to set up as a selling point should be well done. People don’t have time for less-than-appealing sites these days.

Take advantage of the initial stages of the affiliate marketing phenomenon by educating yourself so that you can educate your affiliates.

Think Ahead – Strategic Partnerships

When you start thinking strategic partnerships, think about what you don’t have that you need to move your business to the next level. For instance, if you’ve developed a unique product, but lack a mass distribution system, what companies would have a distribution system that could be utilized to get your product into the hands of the masses? You may need to give up a bit of your revenue per sale, but when you weigh that against the time and money it would take to build your own distribution system, you will most likely decide that it is a small price to pay.

Protect yourself and your ideas

Before you approach a larger company about a strategic partnership, make sure you’ve thought ahead and protected yourself and your product with the necessary patents, trademarks, and non-disclosure agreements. This is an important and necessary step for you to take. There is more than one tale of woe of an unsuspecting entrepreneur sharing an idea or product prototype only to see it on the market a few months later. Your attorney can help you draw up the necessary paperwork.

Research pays off

Make sure you research your potential strategic partner ahead of time. Find out all you can about the company. Study their offerings and determine if your product is a good addition or improvement to their current offerings. Ask people in the industry what they know about the company. A company with a reputation for treating strategic partners poorly in more than one instance is most likely a company to be avoided. On the flip side, a company with a track record for treating their partners fairly can be a great find. You want to partner with a company that has a great reputation, because you’re tying your reputation to theirs.

Plan for contingencies

Once you’ve decided to work together, think ahead to the “what ifs” of your agreement. What if things don’t work out as you planned? When you draw up your agreement, make sure that you have an “out” clause, just in case. Perhaps you’ll want to run a trial period to see how many units of your product your new partner can actually move, or how well they are able to fulfill orders. By putting a time-line or quantifying number in your contract, you’ll be better able to gauge whether the partnership is working how you had hoped or not. If not, you can move on in your search for a new strategic partner.

Long-term relations

When looking at a potential strategic partner, you should take into consideration your future product offerings. Look ahead to what you want to accomplish as a company. Before you form your strategic alliance, know where you want to go with your company. Think ahead to the possibilities. Will your potential partner be able to help distribute other products into the marketplace? While you don’t need to lay all your cards on the table when you’re forming a strategic alliance, look for the strongest possible strategic partner so that you can work towards to developing a long-term working relationship once you’ve made it through an initial project or two.