help with affiliate program

Hi everyone,

I'd like to have your opinion on our affiliate program. I've been trying to recruit as many affiliates under me as I can. However, I haven't been getting much sign ups and it's quite bothering already.

We sell anti-aging supplements and some skin care products. We offer our affiliates 23% lifetime commission and a sign-up bonus of $50. We also provide them with the marketing aids they need.

I'm not sure if the problem is with the program's offer or with me.

Any suggestions? Thanks a lot.

The offer sounds reasonable, but some research into the offers available from competitors in the niche would tell if it is truly attractive.

How are you publicizing your program? Just having an affiliates page on your site will probably not net much in the way of results. Joining an affiliate network may be a good choice.

How is your site doing? An experienced affiliate marketer would probably look your site over and if it did not look like it would sell products would pass on your program.

I am a bit concerned about the sign-up bonus. I would make that payable only after x number of sales or make a tiered commission program depending on sales volume. I think that if the program were well publicized you would get many sign-ups that would only be after the sign-up bonus and then do little to promote your products.

The sign-up bonus is payable after an affiliate made $75.

Do you have any suggestions on how we can publicize it more? Right now, we are into email, forums, directories.

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The sign-up bonus is payable after an affiliate made $75.

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Good choice!

I found your site and checked it out. I don't see any problem with your site or your program. I also looked on Commission Junction for natural health supplements. They returned 21 offers under that search term. Overall your program is better or at least among the best.

I have never really thought much about marketing an affiliate program. Aside from joining one of the major affiliate networks this may be an instance where a press release would be of value. I have also heard that you may be able to make an arrangement with some list owners to make a mailing to their list. Others may have direct experience in this area to offer.

Your problem is your commission and probably not enough products for an affiliate to know there's money to be made on several products or memberships..
No affiliate who wants to make money from your program will promote ONE product for a pewny 23 %.

Try 50% or more...no joke.
Big boys in this business have thousands of affiliates because they give them even 75% or 90% commissions.

Andre

I agree with econtinue above,

Also what about your potential affiliates being able to build their own team, so that its a two tier system. When I'm looking at an affiliate program the first thing I check out is the cookies, 30 days, nah, 60 days, maybe, 90 days, were getting there.. Lifetime! where do I sign up!

Mr P

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Your problem is your commission and probably not enough products for an affiliate to know there's money to be made on several products or memberships..
No affiliate who wants to make money from your program will promote ONE product for a pewny 23 %.

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I looked at the site maxalife.com and can not really agree with this. The site is a PR3 site with several related products. According to SEOQuake it has been around since 2004. The company has offices in New Zealand (home base), the US, EU, Middle East, and at least one other. It displayed a US phone number for me as a visitor from the US and does check geo-location, so I suspect that the number displayed is for the region from which the visitor arrives.

I then looked in CJ searching under one of the targeted keywords. Twenty-five percent is the highest base commission paid and that with a 120 day cookie, but the EPC winner (around $175) pays only 8% as a base commission. Remember that these are hard products (with manufacturing/processing and packaging costs), as opposed to digital, in a competitive niche, so the margin would probably not allow the level of commissions that digital products can offer, particularly in view of the lifetime payment promise.

The thought of a two tiered affiliate program had also occurred to me as mentioned by Mr P. This would encourage affiliates to promote the program to their lists if they maintain that sort of a list.

Over all I see the program and the site as competitive. That leaves promotion of the program as the problem to be solved.

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Originally Posted by wink0r

Over all I see the program and the site as competitive. That leaves promotion of the program as the problem to be solved.

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I hope that will be enough.

I checked the site aswell...stats, age, etc.. And I think because it's such a competative market with LOTS of people promoting similar products (meaning there's a huge choice) I would increase commissions.
What program do most affiliates go for ? The one with a reputation and the most commission...especially in a competative market like this.

Purely how I would approach this... There's so many affiliate programs in this market, but I would go for an affiliate program that already has a name and is known to be reliable concerning commission payouts regularly.
This website might have PR3 and lots of products and even sales, but it's new in affiliate matters. To attract affiliates a higher commission is the first thing I would offer.

Though I get your point wink0r...

Andre

Join Affiliate networks such as Commission Junction. You can't do this your own and it's an very competitive market. Another thing about Affiliate networks is you will be contacted by Affiliates and they will be willing to make custom deals with you. You might need to give them a better rate than from network but they will give you more value.

really appreciate all your insights. they're really helpful. actually, we're getting more sign ups the past few weeks. i've been trying to learn more of internet marketing as i believe it'll help. i do appreciate your opinions on our program. it's right that this niche is highly competitive as we also sell some skin care products. believe it or not, we have raised our commission by 6% from our top competitor. it think the program is negotiable or can be customized depending on the demands of the affiliate (especially if he's a good one). our cookies last for a lifetime btw. thank you so much again!