How to increase sales through affiliate marketing

HOW TO INCREASE SALES THROUGH AFFILIATE MARKETING

How to increase sales through affiliate marketing, pay per lead affiliate programmes, pay per sale affiliate schemes, how to make money from affiliate networks

As far as I'm concerned, pay-per-lead is nearly always better than pay-per-sale, especially for anyone who is just starting out in the world of affiliate marketing.

PAY PER LEAD AFFILIATE PROGRAMMES

A pay-per-lead affiliate programme might pay anything from a few pence per lead up to nearer £100 per lead, depending on the product or service being offered.

PAY PER SALE AFFILIATE SCHEMES

A pay-per-sale affiliate scheme has the potential to earn you far more. For example, if someone buys a plasma TV through one of your affiliate links from a merchant who pays a 10% commission then you could easily earn £200 from one sale.

But the number of people who will be willing to spend £2000 on a TV online each day is likely to be much lower than the number of people who are willing to fill in an enquiry form to request a brochure, a callback or a quote.

For me, the beauty of a pay-per-lead affiliate scheme is that as an affiliate I can earn money without the person who visited my site having to get their wallet out and pay the merchant for anything. So my chances of earning something are much much higher even if the amounts involved may be a bit lower than if I convinced someone to go to an electrical goods website and buy a new TV.

HOW TO MAKE MONEY FROM AFFILIATE NETWORKS

Rule #6: The highest paying merchant is not always the best
If you are focusing on a sector where there is a wide choice of merchants (for example holidays and travel), you will probably find there are merchants offering very similar products but with differing commission levels.

The natural reaction in such a situation is to pick the merchant that is offering the highest commission. However, that is not always going to earn you the most money as an affiliate.

When evaluating a potential new merchant, you need to consider not just their commission rate but also what kind of conversion rate they may provide. When we talk about the conversion rate we are talking about how many of the people you send to the merchant's site are going to end up making a purchase and hence earning you a commission.

INCREASE SALES THROUGH AFFILIATE MARKETING

All sorts of things can make a difference to the conversion rate - but they are all related to the merchant's site and hence are factors over which you have no control. We're talking about things like: the appearance of the merchant's site, how easy it is to navigate, how good their product range is, how competitive their pricing is, what payment options they support, what their delivery charges are, how well they describe their products, etc etc.

Because of this, you will often be better off working with a merchant who pays 7% but has a well-designed site with keenly priced and fully described products than with a merchant who pays 10% but whose site is poorly laid out and who charges higher prices for the products and/or delivery.

AFFILIATE PROGRAMMES

Similarly, when it comes to affiliate programmes that pay for leads rather than sales, there can be big differences between merchants in terms of the payments they will offer for a lead. But when you look more closely you will probably find that a merchant who pays, for example, £10 for a personal loan enquiry has far stricter criteria for a lead than a merchant who only pays, say, £4 per lead.

In other words the £10 per lead merchant might reject leads where the applicant earns less than a certain amount or lives in rented accommodation, whereas the £4 per lead merchant will not. Depending on the kind of visitors your own site gets, you might find you make far more money working with the £4 per lead merchant than you would working with the fussier £10 per lead merchant....

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How to increase sales through affiliate marketing, pay per lead affiliate programmes, pay per sale affiliate schemes, how to make money from affiliate networks