Everyone has been told time and again how important it is to augment your income with affiliate products. Many “super affiliate” gurus maintain you don’t even need your own products to sell. Just sell other peoples products and rake in the commissions.
(How’s that workin’ out for ya?)
Not all affiliate marketing sucks. But most products suck to promote as an affiliate for one simple reason: You send a lifetime customer to someone else and you only get paid once. The product you send people directly to is what you normally get paid on and the subsequent backend sales go 100% to the product owner.
What just happened? Sure you made $20 or so. That’s great, right? Wrong! From that point on, in most affiliate programs, you are done getting credit for anything that person buys in the future. You spent time and resources to get that person to the affiliate product sales page (time and resources the product owner didn’t have to spend) and you got them a sale. They send you a check.
Then they go one to sell that person you sent to them a whole bunch of other things, including affiliate products they recommend that you probably would have recommended too. But they get the sales and keep all the money from that point on.
When Affiliate Marketing Doesn’t Suck
On very rare occasions you will find an “integrated” affiliate program. Some also call it a “continuity” program. One that pays you for the first sale and all subsequent product purchases that buyer makes from the product owner. This would include any high dollar backend products in the $1000-$2000+ range as well.
Examples
Howie Schwartz is starting a continuity affiliate program. He has a funny way of announcing it at Howie’s Apology.
Mark Hendricks has a great affiliate program which I love because, out of nowhere and without constantly having to promote his products to my lists, I get sale notifications for products of his I never directly promoted. I know I am getting paid for the people I sent him even if I sent them to him a year ago. And even if I sent those people to a completely different product in his lineup.
That’s what affiliate marketing should be and that’s where the truly big bucks are for affiliate marketers and product owners. It has been possible essentially since the beginning of affiliate programs to set up a program like this. So why are there still so few affiliate programs with continuity built in?
Problem #1: Some greedy product owners know “pay once” affiliate programs are the norm so they consciously leave out continuity. Then they can get the people you send on their list (for free) and only pay you once (for the current promotion they are running) and sell that person for the life of that customer (as long as they stay on the product owner’s list).
Most affiliate product owners don’t do this on purpose. But it is more complicated to set up a lifetime affiliate program and they just don’t know how to add new products and use software that keeps customer data tied to a certain affiliate for all future sales.
Plus, since everyone knows that it is the “norm” to run affiliate programs this way, everyone sets theirs up the same way.
If you’ve heard statistics like “only about 1%-5% of your affiliates will ever do significant sales or be continually active promoters,” now you know why. I belong to hundreds of affiliate programs dating back years. I don’t promote 99% of them because I don’t have time to and the product owners give me no reason to.
When I make a sale for Mark Hendricks out of the blue it is like Mark is sending me a nudge! He’s saying “Hey, thanks for sending me this person 5 months ago for product XXX. Just writing to tell you they just bought product YYY today and here’s your commission!”
Who’s product am I likely to be the most motivated to send out about next? Mark’s? Or one of the hundreds that couldn’t care less whether I do or not because they are collecting all their backend sales from the people I sent them without having to pay me?
Flip That, Reverse It
What affiliate program system would you rather own as the product creator? The one that keeps affiliates motivated (and reminded) to sell for you? Or the one that pays them only on the first sale while you collect 100% in sales you make to their people over and over again afterwards?
That’s a trick question. The greedy devil on your left shoulder will whisper things in your ear about the second option. The angel on your right shoulder will whisper “take option #1!” in your ear.
The reason you want to run an integrated affiliate program is because you don’t want an active sales force of only 1%-5%. You want as many of your affiliates to be active sellers as possible. The only way to have that is to have a better affiliate program which rewards affiliates for sending you customers over and over again.
There’s the motivation, in a nutshell, for product owners.
Problem #2: Product owners who have separate affiliate programs for each product they create. This is where a lot of us fall. Say you have a new product coming online and hate your previous affiliate software system. So you set up an entirely new system, requiring all your old affiliates to sign up with the new system in order to get credit for promoting the new product. Most don’t, of course. Because most are long gone and disinterested in going through the whole process again just for you to start a new affiliate program with another product later.
It’s not the best way to run an affiliate program. But that’s the way most of us do it. It’s bad for affiliates and, thereby, bad for product owners to do it this way.
We are working on a system to bring all of our products under one roof so that we can correct this problem. It is a real major pain to do it, but we have our reasons.
1. We want to treat our affiliates with respect. That means paying them commissions on people they sent us no matter what product they sold first or when.
2. We want an active affiliate sales force. Our current affiliate base is only about 5% active last we checked. That’s pathetic. And we find ourselves having to work much harder to bring in sales ourselves because of it. Which completely defeats the purpose of having an affiliate program in the first place.
3. Affiliates who make sales and then months later are sent a commission notice on a new product sale for a product they haven’t even promoted are then more likely to begin promoting the new product actively. Someone they sent months ago just bought something from a promotion we sent to our list. The affiliate sees first hand the new product is selling and they figure they can make more by logging into the affiliate program area and grabbing the link for that product to actively get some more sales.
Join Affiliate Programs With Continuity and Make More Money
They are hard to find, but if you are into affiliate marketing it would be in your best interest to seek out programs that pay on all products promoted to your referrals for the life of those customers.
Ask some of your favorite gurus or other product owners you’ve done well with in the past why they don’t have a continuity program. It is going to become more and more of an issue in the future as more product owners make the switch to the better alternative. Gently applying pressure to people that you promote to make the change will help them see that affiliates aren’t happy with the status quo anymore.
You are doing them a favor. And you will help bring about change in our industry which is badly needed.
We’re making the change this year because it’s the right thing to do for our business and for our affiliates who work so hard to bring us business.