How to Create a Lifetime Commissions Affiliate Program
====================================================== How to
create a lifetime commissions affiliate program
Christopher Pearce, http://LifetimeCommissions.com
======================================================
Affiliate programs are a great way of marketing online. You pay
only for the results you get - if someone referred to your site
makes a purchase.
But if you want to make a really strong affiliate program, with
adoring-sales-machines for affiliates, it must be VERY
attractive to affiliates.
The best way to do that is to offer lifetime commissions. That
means you pay commissions on EVERY purchase a referred customer
makes, not just on the first purchase.
If you pay commissions for every purchase that your referred
customers make, you offer your affiliates the chance to earn a
lot more money than they otherwise would.
That will strongly motivate your smarter affiliates to work
harder and be creative, and that is EXACTLY what you want them
to do.
There are lots of things that make an affiliate program great,
but one of the most important is reliable tracking.
============================== The magic ingredient: Tracking
==============================
If an affiliate sends you a customer, the affiliate must earn a
commission when that customer makes a purchase.
You would not have that customer if the affiliate had not
referred them, so the affiliate deserves to be rewarded.
To achieve this you must track all referrals reliably, both
online and off.
You should use cookies to store the referring affiliate's ID
number. You should set them with no expiry date, but they will
inevitably be lost well within a few months, if not weeks, after
they are set.
Browsers have a limit to the number of cookies they can store. A
lot of web sites now use cookies. This means that your cookies
will often be overwritten by those from other web sites.
You must make sure that your cookies work with Internet Explorer
6, which will discard cookies not compliant with P3P standards.
Details:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/
dnpriv/html/ie6privacyfeature.asp
Tracking by IP address is not an accurate method of long-term
tracking, however it is an effective way to track visitors
during their FIRST visit to your site.
It is a good idea to use IP tracking to catch any people who
have cookies disabled.
Every time your affiliates send someone to their affiliate URL,
your server should send them to either a dynamically generated
or pre-generated page with their affiliate ID embedded in it.
The affiliate's ID should also be stored in the URL, so that if
the customer bookmarks and returns, the affiliate is still
credited with the sale.
In your database of customer profiles, you should store the ID
of the affiliate who referred each customer. Whenever a customer
"profile" makes a purchase (online or off) you should credit the
appropriate affiliate(s) for the sale.
Storing the affiliate's ID in the customer's profile is the
best, most reliable way to track in the long term, both offline
and on.
Some systems also allow you to track offline by supplying the
user with a fake phone extension. This extension is actually the
referring affiliate's ID. You can also ask people faxing you to
quote an order number - which includes the affiliate's ID.
To catch any who "slip though the cracks", your order processing
software should scan your order history for any orders going to
the same name, e-mail address or phone number of a customer, and
pay the referring affiliate their due commission.
======================================== Where to get affiliate
tracking software ========================================
You have two options: build or buy.
-------------------------------------------------- Buying
affiliate software
--------------------------------------------------
Buying affiliate tracking software is the way to go. It is so
much cheaper than developing it yourself, and quality is
guaranteed.
There is only one merchant offering a system that can handle
true lifetime commissions: My Affiliate Program, with it's
LifeTime Commissions module add-on.
This is the only system custom-built for lifetime commissions,
and it's fresh off the production line (December 2001).
There is one other good near-lifetime system - Ultimate
Affiliate.
It is not specifically designed for lifetime commissions, but it
can handle residual commissions with ease.
------------------------------------ My Affiliate Program
------------------------------------
This is a great affiliate tracking software suite, recently made
even better by the addition of the LifeTime Commissions module.
It is run by Kowabunga Technologies, and was honored with the
"Editor's Choice" Award by Dr. Ralph Wilson of Wilson Internet,
who called it "the 'Cadillac' of its category."
Wilson Web: http://wilsonweb.com
It is hosted on Kowabunga's secure servers, though a version
hosted on your own domain is possible. Over 500 Merchants use
MYAP.
It tracks primarily by a cookie for the first purchase. CGI/ASP
tracking is also available, and it can even track sales made
over the phone.
Affiliate management is also simple, with automated sign-up and
a clear interface.
You can even reward your top earning affiliates with bonuses
that can be easily and securely awarded.
The LifeTime Commissions module itself works by generating a
"LifeTime identifier" when your customers make a purchase.
This field can be anything you want, like the customer's surname
plus the last 5 digits of their credit card, their name and
phone number, or any other combination you can think of.
When a sale is made this field is compared with a table that
contains a list of these fields and the affiliate that referred
them. If it finds a match, it awards the due commission.
If it doesn't find a match, it then looks for an affiliate ID in
the cookie and makes a new entry to the lifetime identifier
database.
A simple, yet highly effective system. Database tracking is the
most reliable way to track in the long term.
I highly recommend MYAP with the LifeTime Commissions module for
lifetime tracking.
My Affiliate Program Software: http://www.myaffiliateprogram.com
------------------------------------ Ultimate Affiliate
------------------------------------
Ultimate Affiliate is a good PERL software suite for UNIX
servers. Ultimate Affiliate tracks by cookie, IP address, and
can produce dynamic or static web pages that have the ID of the
referring affiliate embedded in all internal URLs. All your
affiliates' details are stored in a MySQL database.
With a knowledge of PERL and HTML you can customize virtually
any page created by the software.
This software can easily handle recurring commissions, and has
graphical stats for both you and your affiliates. It can handle
up to twelve tiers of commissions.
I recommend you do not pay out on more than two tiers. More than
two tiers is multi-level marketing, which generally has a bad
image on the Internet because it attracts spammers. MLM products
also tend to be over- priced to pay for the many tiers of
commissions
Ultimate Affiliate: http://www.groundbreak.com
================================================ Give your
affiliates the right tools for the job
================================================
One thing that really makes some programs stand head-
and-shoulders above the rest is real-time tracking that shows
affiliates the conversion rates for their various links.
That means affiliates can see which of their various links are
performing and get an idea why, and what links aren't and how
they could be improved.
Affiliates should be able to see the number of click- throughs
to each of their different links, the number of sales that each
link has made, and the conversion rate for each link should be
calculated for them.
This enables them to figure out how to improve their links, and
thus make more money for themselves, and for you.
They should also be able to set the landing page for these
links, so that they can link to specific products.
Affiliates who link to and promote specific products are a lot
more successful than those who simply promote your site in
general.
The shorter and less your links look like referral URLs the
better. Some people recognize affiliate URLs, and are suspicious
of them.
Consider the following (imaginary) URLs:
http://www.pottery-store.com?more-info
http://www.pottery-store.com/cgi-bin/affiliate-referral.cgi?affil
iate12341
The first one (where "more-info" is the affiliate's username) is
much more likely to lure a click-through.
A big advantage of short referral URLs is they are easier to put
into newsletters, which are a highly effective way to advertise
online.
============================= Help your affiliates help you
=============================
Ninety percent of affiliates won't make a lot of money for you.
They need encouragement, motivation, and help.
Consider giving performance bonuses to the top earners. Run a
monthly newsletter and praise your top affiliates in it.
Tell your other affiliates how the top earners did it, and about
the performance bonus you gave them. Give your affiliates ideas
on how to promote your products best.
Your top earners will appreciate the ego massage, and your other
affiliates will find out what's possible if they put their mind
to it.
For more details see:
How to make your affiliates enthusiastically loyal
http://www.associateprograms.com/search/affiliate-loyalty.shtml
Remember, when you help your affiliates get sales, you help
yourself get sales.
============== The end result ==============
Starting a lifetime affiliate program is not easy, but the
rewards are worth it.
To make your affiliate program successful, you need to make it
attractive to affiliates, and the best way to do that is offer
good rewards.
If you pay lifetime commissions you offer affiliates the
opportunity to earn more money than they normally would. They
will work harder for the better commissions and in the end, it
will pay off with a better, more effective affiliate program,
that is more profitable for you.
- Christopher Pearce http://www.LifetimeCommissions.com -
===================== Links in this article:
=====================
Problems with Internet Explorer 6 and cookies:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/
dnpriv/html/ie6privacyfeature.asp
Wilson Web: http://wilsonweb.com
My Affiliate Program tracking software:
http://www.myaffiliateprogram.com
GroundBreak (Ultimate Affiliate) tracking software:
http://www.groundbreak.com
eLance.com, somewhere to start looking for programmers:
http://www.elance.com/
How to make your affiliates enthusiastically loyal
http://www.associateprograms.com/search/affiliate-loyalty.shtml