Affiliate sales from scratch.

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Hello, friends! Agree that there are actions in our lives that should not be done for the simple reason that it will be better for ourselves. There are also things that are not recommended in affiliate marketing, because the mechanism for successful sales requires compliance with certain rules. I will talk about the main ones in this article. These are the original whales of a successful information business. First rule affiliate sales states that “you cannot sell everything to everyone.” Or in other words, you need to sell to those to whom your offer is important and necessary. Decide specifically on target audience

, create a portrait of her, paying special attention to the needs and expectations of your potential clients.

What is the mistake of many beginners? Yes, the fact is that they are always selling something, forgetting that the sales process should imply a mutually beneficial exchange. The second rule of affiliate sales

states that “you cannot build sales on the principle of “just to sell.” This is why it is important to build relationships with your potential buyers. In my affiliate marketing model, I personally use my blog and newsletter to do this. It is with their help that I show the potential benefits of my proposals and provide interesting and useful information. The third rule of affiliate sales

says: “Don’t promise more than you can deliver.” I already wrote above that sales are relationships that you build. Success comes to those who do not disappoint their clients. When you promise more than you can deliver, remember that you are not a magician. Remember that in this case, almost one hundred percent disappointment in you will certainly follow. Will they trust you after this? Should I come back to you again? The fourth rule of affiliate sales says: “You can’t sell a pig in a poke.” That’s why I try to pre-test the third-party affiliate products I offer as much as possible. I always try to do reviews, because reviews show that it is easier for the client and inside to make a decision. And the point here is not in distrust of the authors whom I promote, but in my personal image. Yes, this is not my product! Yes, I didn’t record these video lessons! But I’m offering it! Naturally, they will ask me questions, for example, about failures in the payment service, about and others, which, believe me, there are quite a few. And turning the blame on the author in this case will not only not solve the problem, but will also undermine his personal reputation.

The fifth rule of affiliate sales says: “Real sales are repeat sales.” They are the ones who bring real income. And if you follow the first four rules, then they will definitely come back to you. As a result, you will receive not just financial benefits, but also moral satisfaction from the fact that your information and your proposals are important to people.

Of course, the above rules are not all that must be followed to successfully promote affiliate programs. There are actually a lot of secrets. You can’t write everything at once. This will no longer be an article, but a whole book. But I always willingly share tricks with my students and colleagues in my courses, for example, in the same Affiliate Sales Matrix training system, which is now available with a huge discount for anyone who wants to learn how to make money on affiliate programs.

Anyway, before you sell something to others, try selling it to yourself. Spend a little time in the role of a “harmful and picky” buyer, convince yourself, prove the benefits to yourself first. By doing this, it will be much easier for you to write an article-review of a particular affiliate program, record a video review, and so on. Then everything will work out. And although I did not discover America in my article, I am still interested to know your opinion on this matter, or maybe you have other priorities in your work. Write in the comments. I think it will be interesting to all readers.

P.S. Remember one important thing, you should not sell or push something to customers just to sell. No, this is not the right approach. This is correct when you provide a solution to a client’s problem, that is, the recommended product is a solution to the problem. You must solve the client's problem and then they will thank you.

Best regards, Evgeniy Vergus.

“Although there are now tens of millions of blogs around the world—about 60 million people own personal websites on the WordPress platform alone—many bloggers still haven’t monetized their web resources. If you are one of these bloggers, then you are in a great position to start affiliate marketing: direct readers to a product or service in exchange for a commission on a completed sale (or other conversion action)." - Leyl Master Black ), senior director of communications for the American medical company One Medical

Between the seller and the buyer is the heart of online marketing. Partnership programs(Affiliate programs) take this concept to the next level.

For example, let's say you work for a shoe manufacturing company. Yours customer base I am aware that you are an expert in this area, so I am interested in your opinion about another type of high-quality genuine leather products - bags. It is possible that your clients have asked you how to choose good bag, and you again and again recommended to them the same criteria that should be used when choosing a purchase. As a shoe supplier, in this case You are acting as a marketer in relation to the bag company.

Wouldn't it be great if you could close deals like these profitably?

By using affiliate marketing, you can do this.

Here's what it looks like schematically:

Company A → refers the client to company B → transaction occurs
Company A receives commissions from the transaction into Company B's account

Quick Facts About Affiliate Marketing

The earliest days of affiliate marketing date back to the 1990s, when Amazon launched its Associates Program (which still exists today).

Affiliate marketing has developed by leaps and bounds since its inception. One industry study notes that worldwide, affiliate marketing is worth an estimated $6.5 billion across a variety of sectors, including retail trade, personal finance, gaming industry, gambling, travel, telecommunications, education, publishing and various forms of lead generation.

Affiliate programs can be focused on the B2C and B2B sectors of the economy (Business-to-consumer, “business for consumer”; Business-to-business, “Business for business”).

Most affiliate programs operate on a revenue sharing basis, or sales fees(Pay Per Sale). Small part programs are built according to the scheme fees per action(CPA, Cost Per Action). Payment per impression (CPM) and per click on links (CPC) methods are used much less frequently. Typically, the commission amount is set in advance as part of the standard program.

Participants in an affiliate marketing program are generally referred to as the “affiliate” (aka “publisher”, “webmaster”) and “advertiser/merchant”. The advertiser/seller delivers a unique trade offer(USP), the partner promotes this offer. A publisher can also act as an advertiser—these roles are not mutually exclusive.

Affiliate programs are attractive to advertisers because participation in them does not entail any losses. Affiliate marketing fully embodies the principle of “pay for performance.” In other words, advertisers only pay for additional sales.

But what businesses cannot do is rely entirely on affiliate programs to replace their traditional source of income. Advertisers must actively build own mechanism sales and build your marketing arsenal, since partners, as a rule, represent a third party in marketing interactions and are independent legal entities.

Advertisers have disabilities control of partners. What to do if the program does not contribute to sales growth? There's nothing you can do: partners may always be open to new offers from the advertiser, but ultimately these two structures are independent of each other.

Merchants can run their own affiliate programs or distribute offers through one or more existing networks. An affiliate network, in essence, is a kind of “dating service” for sellers on the one hand and partners on the other. Monetization of affiliate networks occurs due to the fact that they take part of the commission.

Does affiliate marketing work in B2B?

Using affiliate marketing in B2B interactions can be a significant challenge, but success is quite achievable in this area. For partners key factor The key to success in sales promotion is web traffic - generally, generating significant traffic will be required to get any significant returns.

If you as an affiliate attract high traffic, this can be useful for promoting B2B offers and generally receiving more high income with fewer deals closed (more “high value” transactions typically occur in this industry).

B2B advertisers can find success by working with partners who blog about corporate business. At the same time, sellers are able to successfully promote additional products and services of interest to their customer base.

Let's check the accuracy of these statements using the example of the practice of marketer Heidi Cohen. She blogs about marketing, so she promotes offers that her audience might be interested in—links to download free guides and white papers, and opportunities to sign up for conferences.

Is affiliate marketing right for you as an advertiser?

2. Who could be your potential partner?

3. What income do you expect to receive from your offer and partners?

Answers to questions 1-3 will help predict potential income. Is the market large enough to continue efforts to enter it? If not, then you should invest yours limited time and resources into more profitable marketing projects.

Next important step— negotiate with potential publishers and business partners. Have they participated in affiliate programs before? What was the revenue like in terms of campaign performance? What share of revenue do advertising networks take for themselves? What are typical conversion rates? What would encourage partners to promote your products and services?

Real statistics and insights from affiliates will help you better understand the role of affiliate marketing in helping your business meet market needs.

Answering all the questions above will help you determine if affiliate marketing is right for you. If you answer “Yes”, then you will need to make the following decisions:

Will you join an existing affiliate network or create your own?

The answer to this question will follow from simple analysis cost-benefit ratio:

1. Is there an affiliate network that matches your company's products and services?

2. What is the track record of this affiliate marketing company? Are you confident that it can achieve the promised results?

3. How long will it actually take you to create an affiliate network from scratch? Is there someone in your company who could oversee the implementation of this initiative by establishing relationships with partners, resolving disputes, eliminating technical problems and ensuring timely payments? Will the expected returns justify the time invested?

If there is no affiliate network that suits your needs, and you believe that you can achieve a positive ROI, then you should definitely start launching your network. However, keep in mind that you will have to devote resources to build it, manage it and make it profitable.

Is affiliate marketing right for you as an affiliate?

If your company is looking to promote affiliate deals, then you should ask yourself the following key questions:

1. Is this a real income opportunity?

2. Does promoting affiliate offers meet user experience goals?

If the benefits outweigh the costs, then the first thing you should do is run a small test on a random and representative sample of your traffic. Are your visitors converting? Do affiliate deals help achieve conversion goals or do they detract from conversion?

If you see measurable income from affiliate deals, you can gradually scale your test by increasing the percentage of web traffic driven into affiliate marketing programs.

You have a wide range of options for placing an affiliate deal on your site. Suitable for this side panel blog (for example, Heidi Cohen did this) or the bottom of the main content block (the “3 Boys and a Dog” blog). If you work in a B2B company, you could allocate a part of the corporate website for affiliate offers. Test different placements of affiliate offers without limiting their location to a single area of the site.

Be Generous

Treat your affiliates like your most valuable partners and they will line up to do business with you.

Around 2007, entrepreneur Mike Geary, a certified nutritionist and owner of the fitness website The Truth about Abs, joined the Clickbank affiliate program. He noticed that most sellers in this network pay their partners between 35% and 50% of total revenue. Because Mike sold a digital product (weight loss programs, e-books, etc.), he had the flexibility to be more flexible with his payouts—he had little overhead.

It sounds crazy, but he started paying eye-poppingly generous commissions. And here's what happened: hundreds of affiliates noticed the size of Giri's payouts and redirected their traffic to his site. Of the more than 10,000 products sold on Clickbank, Mike's product topped the sales list, which brought even more attention to his company.

According to Mike, his income is about $1 million per month.

Case Study: CrazyForBargains

Here's a great case study from the marketing blog Practical Ecommerce and CrazyForBargains, a family-owned business that sells high-quality sleepwear (pajamas, etc.) online. This company is not new to the market - Melissa Murphy started her online business in 2002.

In 2004, Murphy launched an affiliate marketing program on the ShareASale platform to develop a diversified source of income. At the time, Melissa received most of her Internet traffic through search engines.

As of 2012, the company still relied on search engines, but also had additional channels receipt of funds.

Murphy has grown her affiliate channel to the point where it accounts for 11% of her total revenue. She hopes to increase this figure to 20%. What she likes most about affiliate marketing is that it is based on actual performance: instead of paying to post ads and hope they work, she pays a 12% commission only when a sale is made. The program tracks closings using a 365-day cookie, which means affiliates also earn commissions on repeat purchases within one year of initially referring traffic to the CrazyForBargains site.

At first, Murphy used her own affiliate program. She found that the process was time-consuming, requiring constant monitoring of the program and always being mindful of the need to pay partners. Then Melissa switched to affiliate network, where she could immediately access tracking, reporting, and payment features (plus, she had instant access to partners who were willing to help sell her products).

In 2009, she also outsourced an administrator to manage the affiliate program—Melissa pays him between $2,500 and $5,000 per month. The difference in salary is determined by whether the manager incentivizes the site's performance and whether there is a need for additional services, such as design and development.

Maintain personal contacts

Interpersonal relationships play a critical role in the success of the Murphy program. She often consults directly with top sales partners, keeping her line of communication always “on alert.” Melissa also manages product assortment and optimizes the sales system to improve conversion rates to improve profitability and long-term business value to the benefit of herself and her partners.

CrazyForBargains takes these key steps to keep its affiliate community active:

Participation in forums
Purchasing contextual advertising
Attending marketing conferences
Actively attracting new partners

Remember that there is a living person on the other side of the monitor. Build strong business-to-business relationships. Ride your phone and use it to find your best partners. Develop a joint strategy.

Case Study: Groupon

Until 2009, Groupon as a business was considered a spectacular failure. But at the end of 2010, the company's traffic seemed to explode. At that time, there were even rumors circulating on the Internet that Google would buy Groupon for $5 billion.

Groupon eventually pulled off the largest initial public offering (IPO) for a web company since Google.

What caused this growth? Two words: affiliate marketing.

One of the most important parts Groupon's strategy was to remove intermediaries - affiliate networks, which took a huge part of the income received. Instead, Groupon focused on creating direct relationships with partners.

Groupon then began synchronizing activities with influential owners of Internet sites. Keep in mind that due to development social media, you don't have to be a webmaster or online publisher to participate in affiliate marketing: you can facilitate the completion of an affiliate deal through your social network.

Groupon marketers knew what it took to make their partners' lives as easy as possible, so they did it ahead of time. advertising banners for affiliate marketing program participants. Every day, partners automatically received new deal offers - all of them were linked to one member ID. It was this strategy that fueled Groupon's growth.

Groupon lined up partnerships from scratch. Listed below is what you should know as you begin building your affiliate marketing program.

Lessons from Groupon

1. Attract Bloggers: Reach out to blog owners that are relevant to your product and business in general, and see if they are interested in becoming your affiliate. Don't just target famous bloggers. Find influential online creators who support your brand and have a strong connection with your target audience.

2. Establish contact with people who enjoy authority in in social networks: Track down established "mid-to-small caliber" media enthusiasts who might be interested in joining your program.

3. Partner with online publishers: Ask key online publishers and online media outlets if they would be interested in conducting reviews of your products and services. Keep in mind that most major sites will not want to highlight your affiliate program or deals. You'll likely have better luck with smaller media assets.

Ready to get started?

Here are the steps you need to take to start your own affiliate program:

1. Assess your current audience

The key to starting an affiliate marketing program lies in finding the right affiliates. Start by researching your blog readers, email subscribers, and social media followers. Some of these people are your current customers, have been customers in the past, or will become customers in the future.

2. Determine how to promote your affiliate program

If you want your program to be successful, you will need to distribute it beyond your existing subscriber base. Partners won't find you at random.

You should actively recruit affiliates by tracking down bloggers and website owners who might be advertising your product or service. Also, look for publishers/webmasters in your subscription database.
Another option is to join affiliate networks and recruit affiliates there.
There's no reason why you can't create your own affiliate network by participating as a third party to earn small commissions from both parties involved in the transaction.

3. Focus on acquiring traffic

Acquiring traffic is critical to the success of your affiliate program. Help your partners attract more traffic, and most importantly, diversify their sources so you don't rely on your business's only marketing channel. Use paid sources traffic and build relationships with bloggers.

4. Announce your program

Take the time to make sure your target community knows about your affiliate program. Place an announcement about the launch of the program in thematic web directories OfferVault, PointClickTrack or 5 Star Affiliate Programs and on the relevant forums.

5. Measure your results

If you want to achieve something, you need to measure your performance regularly. Use yours to figure out which solutions work and which don't.

Key Findings

Unlike most marketing channels, with an affiliate program you only pay for the deal you close. In other words, you only spend money when you earn it. This strategy is important for small businesses that typically have a modest advertising budget.
Becoming an affiliate marketer is very easy for anyone: even if you don't have a website, you can rely entirely on your social media channels.
If you create difficulties for partners, no one will want to work with you. Make the partnership process as painless as possible.
Consider your partners as reliable business associates and consultants. Work with them to achieve the common goal of increasing sales of your product.

High conversions to you!

Via: quicksprout.com Image source: jamesjackson9952

Historically, affiliate sales began to be promoted by agents. A realtor manages an alternative transaction where the proceeds from the sale of one client property are used to purchase a new building. The agent was always interested in additional motivation from the developer. The developer underestimated agency sales.

As a result of the market crisis, purchasing power has noticeably decreased. There were fewer and fewer buyers with real money. The duration of exposure of objects has increased several times, which means that the period for making a purchase decision has increased. Sales began to sag and drag on. Developers were forced to reconsider their views on the role of a realtor in the sale of properties.

The exhibition period of objects has doubled

Today, most buyers are yesterday's sellers. Effective demand directly depends on when and for how much the future buyer will sell his apartment. The sale of secondary real estate is not within the control of the developer. This is the realtor's domain.

I have contact

The situation began to change in last years. Developers, one after another, began to develop partnership programs. Some simply determined the percentage of the realtor’s remuneration for the buyer, others build systematic work with training, regulations, certification and a progressive scale of motivation.

Agent training from AXIS. Source: axis.ru

Why does a developer need affiliate sales?

Agents- This independent channel sales
Agent covers many issues related to the buyer’s preparation for concluding an agreement: documents, mortgage, calculations.
Agent- brand advocate.

Having built relationships with agents, the developer discovers another great strategy - assortment management. In fact, the developer can transfer part of the overstocked stock for sale.

Why does an agent need affiliate sales?

Guaranteed reward for the buyer.
Marketing and partner support from the developer.
Transparent rules for interaction with the sales department.
A simplified procedure for reserving an apartment for the period of resale sale.

What's wrong with agency sales?

The developer has a sales plan, which significantly affects the economics of the entire project. Every reservation of an apartment for a long period is always a risk. The developer wants to be sure that if he takes an apartment off the market for a month or two, it will eventually be sold within the agreed period.

A realtor needs a reserve in order to build a chain of transactions: sell the client’s property and buy a certain apartment at a fixed price. The agent's client will not enter into a deal to sell his apartment until he is sure that in return he will be able to purchase the desired apartment in a new building.

In such conditions, regulated communication between the agent and the developer’s sales department begins to play an important role.

Profitbase for partnership between developer and agent

We at Profitbase have developed a platform that greatly simplifies the interaction between developers and agents.

How it works?

1. The developer creates a house checkerboard in Profitbase and connects it with his CRM (available for amoCRM and Bitrix24).

2. Provides the agency with access to the checkerboard of its object. In this case, the developer can provide data for the entire building or only part of the apartments.

3. In a checkerboard, the agent sees everything necessary information about the apartment, including its current status.

4. To reserve an apartment, the agent sends a checkerboard application.

5. The application goes to the sales department, directly into the developer’s CRM.

6. The head of the sales department (or other responsible employee of the developer) can request from the agent Additional information, copies of documents, other data. To do this, just write a comment on the deal in CRM. The agent will see the message in the Profitbase interface, will be able to attach a file and send a response.

7. The agent always sees at what stage the transaction with his client is. Statuses are automatically downloaded from the developer’s CRM.

The developer can connect several agencies and configure individual access rights to the checkerboard. Agencies, in turn, can work in one interface with several developers.

It pays to trust

A mutually beneficial partnership is built on trust. Trust is based on transparency. We really hope that our product will make the relationship between the developer and the agency more transparent and effective.

Hello, friends! Free promotion affiliate links will allow you to make affiliate sales from scratch. Your earnings via the Internet on affiliate programs will be free of cost and will require the investment of only your personal time.

Promoting affiliate links and making money on affiliate programs - affiliate sales

Earning money without investment on affiliate programs is one of the main types of earning money via the Internet, not only for beginners, but also for people who have been making money in affiliate marketing for a long time. Much has been written on this topic.

This article is addressed to beginners who want to learn how to make money online through affiliate programs.

For a beginner, there are two options for starting in affiliate marketing – paid and free. On the one hand, beginners do not have money for advertising, on the other hand, you need to be able to spend money on advertising, otherwise it will be wasted. There is a category of beginners who doubt making money online through affiliate programs, so they would like to try it for free.

This article will talk about free ways to make money online through affiliate programs. We must be aware that making money on affiliate programs using free methods has its drawbacks. First of all, this a large number of time spent on promoting affiliate links, and also requires a very careful approach to their promotion.

Affiliate sales, or more precisely, income from promoting affiliate links, is not always stable. However, this approach has the right to life, and many people choose this path.

Affiliate sales (promotion of affiliate links) on free of charge not so simple. More precisely, everything is simple, but you need to know certain rules. If you work in the dark, you will definitely not succeed. So, briefly about free promotion affiliate links.

A good option is to leave comments on other thematic sites. To do this, you need to have a good understanding of the topic of the product being promoted. Choose a high-quality affiliate product in a topic that you understand.

It is necessary to select in advance the blogs on which you will leave your comments. Blogs must have high traffic - hundreds of readers. On a blog with little traffic, few people will pay attention to your comments. Choose better blogs than websites - they are updated more often.

It is necessary to pay attention to the number of comments, the more there are, the better, but not less than 10. The comment must be one of the first, then it will be effective. In order to find out about the release of a new article on the blog, it is better to subscribe to the blog newsletter. In the comment you can leave a hidden affiliate link to the promoted product.

There are many different thematic forums on the network, so they can serve in promoting affiliate links. This is a good way to attract potential buyers, so it is necessary to communicate on forums.

The method is somewhat reminiscent of working with comments. There, they are usually not allowed to provide a direct link; the link is built into the so-called signature. The forums have their own peculiarities of work. With the correct composition of texts and signatures, the method can work very effectively.

Potential buyers (this is written in detail in the blog article). And it would be a sin not to take advantage of this opportunity.

There are people who don’t go anywhere on the Internet except one social network and external links that appear there.

Selling products directly on social media is difficult. But you can drag visitors for free and make him a subscriber, and then turn him into a buyer. Moreover, interesting statistics: what doesn’t sell well on Facebook sells well on VK and vice versa. Here you can work on recruiting friends with similar interests, but then they will read you and click on affiliate links.

On social networks, you can also communicate in thematic communities and unobtrusively promote your free links there. Communities should be thematic and visited. Of course, it’s not that simple, but you need to start working and gradually gain work experience.

Separately, I would like to say about promoting your affiliate links on the social network Twitter. To do this, you need to register on Twitter and publish news daily on your microblog on the same topic. Publish an affiliate link 1-2 times a week; the link should be short.

Options for how to do it short link there are many, one of them can be found in the article. This is a very effective way. By the way, I use Twitter to promote my blog articles - it helps a lot (you can see an article on this topic on the blog).

It’s difficult to tell everything in one article. Therefore, I would like to recommend reading the wonderful e-book" ". The book is part of the “Library of a Successful Partner” collection of books.

The book is step by step instructions for beginners and answers the question - how to make money via the Internet on affiliate programs from scratch, spending only your time.

Everyone knows that it’s difficult to make money without a blog, but the book has the answer to this question. Recommendations are given on how to make your blog absolutely free. Whether to create such a blog or not is up to everyone, but there is such a possibility.

The book shows ways to use other people's resources and authorities to promote affiliate links, and this is a very effective way. You need to be able to come to an agreement only with the owner of the resource.

The book also gives others effective ways promoting affiliate links. If you are interested in this material, you can read or download the book “” for free using the link provided.

Free promotion methods have their advantages:

if you don’t manage to earn money, then the costs will be zero, only your time will be wasted;
in the process of work, invaluable experience will be acquired, which will always be useful; there will be an opportunity to use the gained experience with paid methods promotion.

Each person chooses the method of promoting affiliate links that gives him maximum return, makes big affiliate sales. So E. Vergus uses free methods of promoting affiliate links (mostly). Dmitry Pecherkin prefers paid methods.

The first months of work I used free ways promoting affiliate links, now I use combined ones (some paid, some free). This is everyone's business.

If you want to start making money via the Internet on affiliate programs using paid methods, then read the book anyway, there’s a lot in there useful information. By the way, we recently recorded an interview with renowned specialist in area . Evgeniy revealed some tricks successful earnings, watch and read this interview.

I wish you good luck and good earnings!

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Affiliate sales - separate, based on sales through a partner's business. Read below to learn about who a partner is, how to choose one for joint benefit, and how to develop affiliate sales in a specific company.

Anyone can be a partner. This word is used to refer to suppliers, buyers, competitors. From the point of view of a partner sales channel, the definition of a partner could be:

“A partner is a company that has its own business and participates in our sales process.”

Let's agree that when we talk about affiliate sales, we do not mean the agent sales channel. The main difference between partners and agents: “A partner has his own business and has his own product, while an agent’s main activity is to sell your or similar goods". Of course, there may be combinations, but if a partner has more than 50% of sales of your product, then he is an agent.

I once led a project to launch affiliate sales at MTS. At that time, MTS acquired a fixed line company and needed to be launched within the combined company. Why am I talking about this in an article about partners? Because legally it was one company, but in fact they were two different structures with different products, different corporate cultures and sales business processes. What could be more similar in product than mobile and fixed line, moreover, there is an administrative lever for rapprochement. This is the best combination for partnership interaction. It turned out that everything was completely wrong. This project actually failed... As hard as it is to admit, sales of different products by different departments are not on stream years after the launch of the project.

Affiliate sales laws:

1. The only reason to form long-term affiliate programs is the ability of the affiliate product line to help sell your own products.

2. Affiliate channel sales requires no less attention than direct sales.

3. The main source of effectiveness of affiliate sales is not the motivation of managers, but.

4. Best level interaction between partners is the exchange of “warmed up” leads (lead - contact for a potential sale) automatically.

5. Partners should be approximately equal in size and sales volumes.

There is an idea that having a bunch of partners is easy. Offered a partnership, exchanged links on the site or scattered each other’s business cards at retail outlets and lost sales. If this is an information business where there are boxed products and partner interaction is automatic, then this is quite possible. But finding a partner offline is really not easy. A partnership may require nothing more than the title "partner" from the company. But, as practice shows, such partnerships do not help sell.

Let's look at each of the laws of affiliate sales:

1) The only reason for forming long-term affiliate sales programs is the ability of the affiliate product line to help sell their own products.

For example, you sell windows, a partner comes to you and wants your managers to start selling his doors, and he will start offering your windows. Will such a partnership be effective? In principle, the audience is similar, people are doing repairs. But to sell a door you need to know at least something about them.

What if you just send the person outside the door to your partner?
You can send it, but it’s not a fact that it will arrive,
and if he gets it, it’s not a fact that he’ll buy it,
and if he buys it, it’s not a fact that we will be paid a reward,
and if they pay the company a remuneration, it’s not a fact that something will go to the manager,
and even if something falls short, it is not a fact that it will be a significant amount for him.

Of course, if we are talking about two owners of neighboring pavilions on the market, then such a partnership can work. But most often, good hired sales managers are focused on results expressed in their pockets and, not surprisingly, long-term prospects for the development of the company, and even more so the development of their partner, do not motivate them at all.

Let's consider another option. We sell windows, and the installer of these windows offers us a partnership. Does this partnership have a chance of success? Certainly! A person came to buy windows and asked, do you do installation? We say no and he goes elsewhere. We benefit from partnering with the installer, we are expanding our service, and we can also get our percentage from the installation. It’s a small thing, but it’s nice, but the main thing is that we didn’t lose a client. Of course, this is very exaggerated, but there are a lot of such symbioses in business. For example, our company constantly installs them for clients in any case. Why can't we find a partner who will give us special conditions By technical support? And we, being confident that it effectively serves CRM, will implement it in companies. And remuneration is not so important, sales managers understand this too.

2) The affiliate sales channel requires no less attention than direct sales.

If you seriously count on affiliate sales, then you need to devote a lot of time to working with partners. The partner has his own business, his own daily problems, difficulties, tasks. No matter how your product helps sell own goods, he will always be in second place. And this is normal, but if you do not remind your partner about yourself, do not talk about your product and do not bring him clients, he will very soon forget about you. Look for informational reasons for constant contact with your partner, keep in touch with how you are working with his product, bring him clients and after a while he will return the effort invested in it.

3) The main source of effectiveness of affiliate sales is not the motivation of managers, but the business sales process.

Motivating a manager to sell someone else's product is a dangerous thing. If you give good motivation, then the manager may stop selling our product; if you give little motivation, then he will not deal with it at all. Therefore, it is optimal to set up business processes for sales through partners in such a way that the sale of partner goods is built into this business process. But keep in mind that if you want your partner to sell, you need to integrate the sales process into his company, and this is very difficult work.

4) The best level of interaction between partners is the exchange of “warmed up” leads automatically.

It is impossible to study a partner’s product as well as your own, so it is better to give your partner the contact of a person interested in purchasing. The manager needs to be taught how to “warm up” potential client affiliate product. These should be several phrases, several examples or properties, to spark interest, with which a manager who knows his product will further work. Automation greatly increases the chance of a lead or client reaching a partner. The fewer actions a manager needs to take to transfer a lead, the more likely it is that the transfer will take place and the affiliate sales system will work.

5) Partners should be approximately equal in size and sales volumes.

It is very difficult to establish interactions when partners are sooooo different levels. And the flow of clients differs significantly. One partner sent 10 leads, the other 100. However, the first one could not process them all, because he has only one manager who barely has time to process his clients. Size also affects the company’s agility and business processes. It is difficult to tailor the business processes of a small company to a large one, or vice versa, so companies of the same level have the greatest likelihood of successful partnership.

To sum up the development of affiliate sales, we can conclude that working with partners requires fine tuning and close attention. The development of an affiliate sales program may be included in our work on.