How To Encourage This Affiliate To Promote You

Mar 8, 2010 by Jason Dale    2 Comments    Posted under: Affiliate Marketing

One thing I really hate about affiliate marketing is negotiating deals. Firstly I don’t have time to go through the often laborious and painful courtship ritual of what you want versus what we want before coming out at some mutually beneficial (or not) commission level that gives a merchant carte blanche to annoy us every five minutes if all doesn’t go to plan. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, I hate having to do the courtship ritual.

Hybrids, tenancy agreements, CPAs, CPRs, mixed up with “can we have a link here and one there”, and “ooh perhaps that one” and “oh can we be in the newsletter”. No thanks! Now I know this is a bit of a business failing, which is perhaps why I like affiliate marketing. Pick up link, do work and get commission. If we want to push more we can, if we don’t we don’t have to!

I find with hybrids or tenancies you’re opening up yourself to not offering value for money (perhaps your SEO drops that month, or the take up for the merchant isn’t there), which whilst good for a short term money grab, perhaps doesn’t do long term partnerships the world of good. This could be a bad approach as some companies just want to throw money at tenancy as their budget allows it and they don’t care about blowing the loot. Perhaps in those cases it’s better to bite the bullet and take the cash!

However, the long shot is I can’t stand negotiating deals which means any company emailing us saying “how much is tenancy” or “this” or “that” is often met with a degree of “oh heck” (or words to that effect). Much better is someone who lays their cards on the table and makes us an offer.

For example, recently, one merchant offered us a challenge to reach a certain level by the end of the month. It was doable with a bit of effort and so the merchant got extra promotion, we got extra commission and a nice (fair) bonus to boot as the challenge was met. No negotiations, no messing about, no time wasting… fantastic!

Even better is being awarded a bonus at the end of the month for producing results and making an effort without even being asked! This happened to us recently and was a massive surprise and totally appreciated (in fact I’d say it was the first time it’s ever happened in over 10 years of AM). It may well be that it’s a back handed way of keeping us “on board”, but it works!

The result is that the merchant in question now gets extra promotion this month, regardless of whether there’s a bonus given at the end of March. We feel appreciated and once again there’s no need for time wasting deal negotiations.

Overall the point of this blog is that there’s more than one way to approach an affiliate and to incentivise them to do a bit more for you as a merchant. If you ask “what do you want” and don’t get anywhere, then why not try a “we can offer you” approach or perhaps even consider rewarding effort from the previous month.

There’s more than one way to skin a cat and there’s more than one way to encourage an affiliate to promote you… not all of us have time (or desire or skill set or confidence) to try and negotiate something that can quite easily be done and dusted in just one email.

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