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#1 03-08-2004 14:37:26

shibumik
Member
Registered: 10-19-2003
Posts: 216
Website

New Generation Affiliate Program



I am going to go the long way around this one to explain what we have learned about affiliates and what we did to modify our affiliate program.

We believe that the affiliate capability of any company reflects a largely untapped potential that can dramatically increase sales. Exposure is greatly increased as risk and advertising dollars are distributed among many companies instead of a few. For every CD we sell, when amortized across our budgets. Why not give that money to someone who actively promotes your product and company?

The problem with most affiliate programs is that they are extremely unforgiving both to company as well and the affiliate themselves. Most want to offer a percentage of the cart, pay-per-click though or whatever. In a real business sense, this is a limiting factor to most affiliate programs and the reason more are not utilized today.

Our company is a multimedia company and does very well using CCP51. Naturally, our site is only a small part of our greater business. We are about a $40M a year company. On the other hand, our site has become strategically more important as we have grown and will be into the future. CCP is at the center of that premise and we are intent on finding more ways to make it facilitate both customer experience and the demands of our business.

The CCP51 affiliate program is bare bones with much potential. I am writing this per Nick’s request to see if our modifications would be something worthy of incorporating into CCP in the future.



Getting someone to your website can be a challenge at any level and something each of us spends much time with every day. It is not just about getting existing customers to return, but also attracting new customers who have never heard of you. The site experience and benefits to the customer are what makes them return. We fully utilize our mailing list for data collection although we do send HTML pages out and do mail merges in Word to accomplish this with great success. Our user interface also plays a role with returning customers.

To obtain new customers, we advertise in search engines and elsewhere like everyone else. On the other hand, getting to customers who do not know who you are requires a more proactive approach. This is why we offer gift certificates and now an affiliate program. We did some analysis on markets and discovered that for every person who knows who you are, there are over 5500 that do not know who you are but would be interested in your product. Although a crude generalization, we’ll go with that number for now.

Letting These People Know Who and Where You Are.

Unfortunately, enough unscrupulous companies have created affiliate programs that do not perform. Many are full of accounting magic and percentages that are too much to keep up with. Hence, in many cases affiliate programs receive a bad name or many are reluctant to participate. Yet, the Barnes and Noble affiliate program provides upwards of 4% of their revenue and almost 28% of their new market penetration! From a business point of view, affiliate programs that offer x-percentages are not necessarily good for your company because most products have various profit margins. Click through options can quickly cost you and have a limited benefit in most cases – especially with short margins. Like them or not, when used properly, affiliates can make a tangible result in your sales and become a central element of your future growth – if they are done right.

We decided to modify our affiliate program so that affiliates are paid a fixed amount per product. For example, for every CD that sells through our site, the affiliate receives $2.25. A particular DVD might yield $3-$7 dollars depending on the title, our production costs and marketing effort. Because of this, we decided to base the affiliate payment on a per-product basis.

We also have different types of affiliates. For instance, we work with the massage industry in one sector and museums in another. Some of our products directly benefit museums who receive more on a particular DVD than a massage therapist who receives less.

We added 5 commission levels to each product (could potentially become unlimited if data-driven) so we could expressly set a commission per affiliate level on a per-product basis. When an affiliate comes on, we set their commission level based on their sector. When a customer comes to us through an affiliate, the affiliate level is looked up and credited respectively with the amount set by their commission level.

This, however, thickens the plot of the marketing ability of the CCP affiliate program. Because we have sectors, we have banners! We already offer each affiliate type 7 different banners from which they can pick and choose. Since we have differing affiliates, we need to create banners that reflect the particular affiliate type. Our system will recognize the affiliate level when they sign in and display the appropriate set of banners for their level with the affiliate interface of CCP51. This will also be extended in the form of dynamic content provided to each affiliate type.

In the end, we can control both affiliate payments to known amounts as well as manage multiple affiliates and provide them dynamic content. Because of our approach, we are now attracting more affiliates, or “” in our case, than we would have done otherwise. Since it also a pay-per-product performance thing, we can also afford to do it while maintaining fixed costs.



Thanks,
Kevin



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#2 04-16-2004 09:53:10

CityWebSystems.com
Member
From: Utah
Registered: 03-12-2004
Posts: 95
Website

Re: New Generation Affiliate Program

WOW! I just found this post when looking for info about the possibility of giving data feeds to affiliates. I would respond to the question with a resounding YES! This would be a fantastic addition to CCP! Thank you for providing this information and insight.

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#3 04-16-2004 19:52:18

godwin
Member
Registered: 10-10-2003
Posts: 21

Re: New Generation Affiliate Program

I love this post. Product-based-commission affiliate program is extremely good especially for online stores with many different products.  I definitely would love to have this features added to CCP6 Version.

I am currently considering promoting my online store through affliate program. The current CCP51 affliliate program has serious problems:

(1) It calculates the commission without subtracting the shipping charges.

(2) It also needs to subtract the product cost before calculating the commission.
Commissions should be calculated .

I would like the above two problems solved in CCP6 version.

Thanks

Godwin Enyi


Godwin Enyi
Ibex Marketing Co.
genyi@sellingproduct.com

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#4 04-17-2004 05:34:04

Brains
Member
Registered: 08-22-2003
Posts: 200

Re: New Generation Affiliate Program

The current affiliate program also works a little strangely when it comes to sub affiliates....there are an unlimited number e.g.

Affiliate 1 signs up and is paid 10% per order

Affiliate 2 signs up under affiliate 1 and gets 10% per order

Affiliate 3 signs up under affiliate 2.....you get the idea

So we have:

Affiliate1
^
Affiliate2
^
Affiliate3
^
etc

My argument has always been that affiliate 3 will be thinking that he gets 10% of the sale when he doesn't. 10% of the sale is shared between the 3 affilates according to their percentage value.

I was planning to use affiliates and sub affiliates but cant due to this restriction.

It is possible that I could end up with a string of sub affiliates and the poor sod at the end of the line gets paid peanuts.

I am looking forward to a better way to pay afffilates fairly while still making profit!

BRAINS 


International Award Winning Professional Web Design
MySQL Database Design, PHP
UK Hosting on Dedicated Servers
As featured in the Financial Times, ISP World and others.

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#5 04-26-2004 09:06:32

Todd
Member
From: Kitty Hawk, NC
Registered: 04-01-2003
Posts: 553
Website

Re: New Generation Affiliate Program

godwin,04/16/2004 07:52:18 PM wrote:

The current CCP51 affliliate program has serious problems:

(1) It calculates the commission without subtracting the shipping charges.

(2) It also needs to subtract the product cost before calculating the commission.
Commissions should be calculated .

I have not used the affiliate features in CCP yet but I do agree with these issues you bring out.  Hopefully this can be addressed in the coming version.


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