Why You Should Consider Starting An Affiliate Program
There are a million different money making schemes online, but by far and away the best method for making money online (or offline) is creating a product and selling it.
It’s not the quickest way. The quickest way is to offer an online service, and if you’re completely new to making money online, you should do that. Here’s why.
However, releasing a product is a better way. It costs less time; you can sell products when you’re asleep, you can make more money. If you’re creating a digital product, then the costs are also very low most of the time.
But it’s still work. Plenty of people create great products but then don’t get the sales they want. For those people, perhaps starting an affiliate program is a great idea.
Why Is Starting An Affiliate Program A Good Idea?
I’ve written about affiliate programs before, but always from the point of view of the affiliate. After all, I make a reasonable sum of money from promoting other people’s products across my various sites.
Starting an affiliate program isn’t just a good thing for an affiliate marketer though. It’s a good thing to do for a merchant or product creator as well. For my latest challenge, I’m going to be offering affiliate commissions. In this article, I’ll give those on the fence about starting an affiliate program five reasons why they should.
More Sales
This is the obvious reason, but not the only one. Affiliate programs mean you’ll make more sales.
One salesman, no matter how brilliant, can outsell an unlimited amount of salesmen. If you’re busy creating products, then you can’t commit fully to selling your products either. That’s where starting an affiliate program comes in.
Essentially, you give an affiliate a share of your profit. You provide the product, they help you make the sale.
Put simply, this can be a mutually beneficial relationship.
Now, I’d recommend not just allowing every random person on the internet the opportunity to become a part of your sales team (and that’s how – in my opinion – you should think of your affiliates.) I recommend thoroughly vetting would-be affiliates or even keeping an invite-only policy for your affiliates.
That’s just my opinion though.
A New Audience
I’ve seen this performed to great effect. How many times have you internet money-makers come across a product solely because of an affiliate program? I certainly have.
When starting an affiliate program, you increase your audience size because you’re opening up to two markets:
- People who are interested in using your product.
- People who are interested in selling your product.
Those two groups aren’t the same. Sure, there’ll be overlap but there’ll be people at the opposite end of the spectrum; they’ll either use your product with no interest in selling it, or sell it with no interest of using it. Then there’ll be people who swap from one to the other.
Opening up your product to different markets is good in any case. It all makes you money in the end.
Free Marketing
When an affiliate agrees to sell your product, you’re not just getting sales coming in: you’re also reducing your marketing costs – or outsourcing them.
One of the hardest things about being a product creator is building an initial buzz about your product; if nobody knows about you, they can’t buy and they can’t hear about you via word-of-mouth.
When starting an affiliate program, you’re bypassing that stage. People are talking about you because they’re trying to send people to your product through their affiliate links. You’re getting links to your website and you’ll find that news of your product spreads.
Also, what with affiliates having a vested interest in people buying your product, you’ll find that you get a lot of positive buzz around your product. Hopefully that’s all above board. Every little helps.
All of the Above is “Automated”
All of the things above come around to one thing: Your time gets freed up. Well, it’s either that or you have more time to put into your business. Juggling product creation, marketing, selling the product and everything else you have to do add up.
Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s crucial that you learn all of those things. It’s important to go through that period of “jack of all trades” if you want your business to succeed. That said, past a certain point, you’re going to struggle to fit everything in. Past that point, your income will start to suffer if you rely on doing everything yourself and only yourself.
As far as setting up an affiliate program goes, it’s similar to automating or outsourcing any other part of your business: if you do it right, you drastically reduce the amount of time it takes.
Instead of sales, marketing and managing both, you can get sales and marketing for the price of 1) setting up your affiliate program and 2) making sure you keep your affiliates happy. (This is usually as simple as 1) setting up your affiliate program properly to avoid headaches and 2) paying people on time.)
Better Business Relationships
Chances are, if you want to make money online and you’re reasonably selective over whom you let in to your affiliate program, you’re probably going to connect with people with shared interests.
If you want to throw your e-book up on Clickbank and let thousands of spammers pimp your product, then you can do. However, you can also use your affiliate program to attract high quality affiliates who are going to help build your brand and make it more successful.
Clearly, you can take that thought as far as your desire leads you.
Final Thoughts
The above are my reasons for starting an affiliate program. They’re pretty broad, because every business is different – and so is every affiliate program.
If you’ve got any other reasons, feel free to drop them in the comments below.
Otherwise, I’ll update everyone on my own challenges and victories as “guy who runs an affiliate program” should there be a desire to read about it.