How to Improve an Affiliate Program

This article will give you some important action items to focus on when making your plan for how to improve an affiliate program. *May contain some affiliate links.

Analyze and improve your overall website, sales funnel, and web presence. Quality affiliates will analyze all this when deciding which affiliate program to join. Check your site speed with Gtmetrix to check site speed then make all possible improvements. Upgrade to Premium Hosting if you are using cheap shared hosting. You can also Contact Us for a $45 site audit with a detailed report of improvements that can be made.

Analyze your competitor’s affiliate program. Make sure your program is competitive with the commissions and tools offered. We also offer competition analysis and reports. Contact Us to discuss the details.

Create an SEO-optimized landing page for your site. Target keywords that your potential affiliates are likely to search for while looking for an affiliate program in your niche. SEMrush and Yoast SEO are great SEO tools for on/off site optimization, a wide variety of analysis, and reports.

Create a video overview and promo of your affiliate program. Add this to your company’s Youtube channel. SEO optimizes the tags and descriptions. Videos often rank faster than web pages.

Create a wide variety of affiliate banners for your affiliates to choose from. Different sizes, text, and colors. This allows affiliates to choose what best fits their needs.

Make out a list of the potential podcast, Youtube channels, twitch channels, blogs, and social media influencers that may be able to monetize their platform with your affiliate program. Put together a direct contact campaign with incentives and possible placement fees for promoting your affiliate program. Be prepared to make phone call follow-ups to help break through the spam filters many people have built into their minds. A phone call lets them know this is a real offer. Screencast intros are also a great way to make a personalized intro when first making contact and breaking through the text barrier.

Use SEMrush to do competition research on your competitor’s affiliate program. https://www.semrush.com/blog/find-backlinks/ Affiliate links are usually pretty easy to spot. https://ppcmode.com/resources/affiliate-links Find the likely affiliate links then see which website the affiliate links are placed on. Those sites will be likely affiliates that are promoting your competition. Find the contact information or contact forms for the site. Whois can help find the owner’s info if there are no contact methods on the site. https://www.whois.com/ Put together a direct contact campaign of emails, social media messages, and possibly follow-up phone calls. Offer incentives and sign-up bonuses to persuade these affiliates to join your program.

Email marketing pro tip: Don’t use your main domain for unsolicited email marketing. Buy a domain that is close to your main domain. Example: YourSiteAffilaites.com instead of YourSite.com. Forward the new domain to your main domain. Use the new domain for sending emails. This removes the chance of your main domain getting flagged as spam. Make each email personalized and FTC compliant. Use Gmass free email warm-up tool to warm up your new email account before starting any cold email campaign.

https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business

Create a PPC campaign targeting keywords that your potential affiliates are likely to search for when looking for a new affiliate program.

Create performance bonus campaigns that vary over time. This helps keep affiliates engaged. Notify your existing affiliates of these performance bonuses with regular email campaigns. Example: An extra $25 per sale if over 10 sales are made in one month.

Make sure that affiliates can easily contact the affiliate program manager with any issues.

Have the affiliate program manager make a nice voiceover intro video that is added somewhere within your affiliate program. Reassuring affiliates that you are there to support them.

Use SEMrush backlink checker tools to regularly monitor your site’s backlinks. Revoke any affiliates that are posting your site links in low-quality places.

Make sure to have at least a 45-day delay before paying affiliates. This helps reduce fraud and chargeback issues. These delays are very standard in the affiliate world and shouldn’t bother quality affiliates. Don’t try to offer fast payments as a way to recruit affiliates.

There is always more to do but this gives you the priorities to focus on when planning how to improve an affiliate program. Ecom Web Agency has set up over 200 affiliate programs and we can likely help set up yours. Contact Us for a Free Consultation