Wednesday 12 December 2012

A thank you note to all my reader !!

It's almost an year when i started to pen down my research and thought on this subject.
and without your constant encouragement it would have never been achieved.
Happy anniversary and thank you very much !! I promise to keep posting wonderful facts from affiliate marketing world :) :)

But today before i conclude i want to talk about some challenges as well what we are facing with affiliate marketing.

AFFILIATE MARKETING- CHALLENGES
We need to look into not only the positive aspects but also some challenges faced by affiliate
marketing as listed below
  • Hiring and maintaining affiliates (Merchant Perspective)
  • Security breach (Cookie stuffing and link hacking)
  • Stiff competition between affiliates to establish a position in the market
  • Commission out of affiliate control as it is decided by Business/Product owner.
But anywhere we measure challenges against benefits to get the happy picture. and we'll do that in coming days. thanks.

Tuesday 18 September 2012

BENEFITS & BENEFICIARIES IN A NUTSHELL

As I have promised last time here comes BENEFITS & BENEFICIARIES IN A NUTSHELL. Now the question comes are we that means i and more importantly you are a part of this lucky breed in world of affiliate marketing. 

BENEFITS: 

  • Merchants & its products are able to reach out to a worldwide market. 
  • Medium of delivery is internet and is the cheapest mode (Cost Effective) of driving sales with good return of investment (ROI)
  • Merchant needs to pay affiliate only if they generate click, lead, impression or a sale unlike traditional advertising. 
  • Intermediary network helps in linking the affiliate & merchant so that promotion kicks off based on mutual interest and good understanding. 
  • Extra revenue source without compromising merchant’s routine job as affiliates with appropriate expertise take up the responsibility of product marketing.
  • Easy to get started as building promotion links like banners does not require much technical expertise. Business owners/merchants get real time demand feedback of their products enabling them to initiate rapid course correction if required.

BENEFICIARIES:

  • Affiliates drive the sales for merchants and earn commission on generating a successful click, lead, impression or a sale. This has created an excellent business opportunity which has been successfully leveraged by a thriving community of internet savvy entrepreneurs.
  • Targeted and relevant advertisements are served based on the user profile making it easier for the end user to make a purchase and also increase the possibility of a sale.
This gives a clear picture of what stands as the benefits and who are benefited out of this affiliate marketing. And Obviously this makes Affiliate Marketing standing Out as winner in the field of Internet marketing.

Tuesday 21 August 2012

AFFILIATE MARKETING - A Real World Example



The following section describes an example from real world of Affiliate marketing helping an online
vendor to increase sales through a successful marketing campaign. This vendor can be anyone selling any common or rare products ranging from rare flowers , scented candles or tasty chocolates as well.
The various aspects of a successful campaign are described from the perspectives of all the entities involved. The below schematic depicts the various workflow involved.
















Merchant Perspective:


  • Merchant wants to sell some items say rare flowers through his website at specific price points, making optimum use of his online advertising budget.
  • Merchant approaches an Affiliate marketing intermediary to get connected with an appropriate affiliate network conversely the various competing intermediaries could also approach the Merchant offering their services.
  • Once the appropriate affiliates are identified the remuneration model for the affiliate and the intermediary is negotiated and finalized. Using the Link/Ad creation interface, provided by intermediary, the merchant joins the network and creates the text, banner ad’s which will link to his site.

Affiliate Perspective:


  • Affiliate participates in the offer extended by the merchant and establishes the business relationship using the interface provided by intermediary.
  • Gets access of the Ad links created by the merchant, takes the link code and publish the ad link in their website.

End user/Consumer perspective:


  • End user/consumer views the ad placed in the affiliate website and on clicking it they are redirected to the merchant site (product1.com) via the intermediary server where it gets tracked. 
  • End user view the ad and proceeds with the purchase or provide their details in merchant site where by a sale/lead is generated.
  •  The above action gets tracked by the merchant server and they get to know that a sale/lead has occurred.

Merchant Reporting: 


  • Merchants report the sale to intermediary by means of transaction (reporting) methods which would contain the affiliate code, sale amount, and quantity of products purchased. 
  • Reported transactions (sales) are cross checked by the intermediary with the clicks they tracked.

Commissioning & Payment:


  • Based on transactions reported merchant generates 2 invoices (For Affiliate and Intermediary) in the interface provided by the intermediary and sends the payment to the intermediary. 
  • Intermediary cross check the invoices generated and ensure that appropriate commission is credited to affiliate based on the offer set by merchant.
  • Intermediary also gets the appropriate commission from the merchant as agreed in the merchant membership agreement.

So here comes the big Question ??????????????? what are the "BENEFITS" & Who is the "BENEFICIARIES" ???
Answers will be here only anytime soon and don't be surprised to see you can also be one of the main beneficiaries :) :)
Keep looking this space for the next article about  BENEFITS & BENEFICIARIES IN A NUTSHELL in the beautiful world of AFFILIATE MARKETING..... 
Happy reading & Regards :)

P.S:- If you have doubts wandering in mind about your content read an article which is Changing the way we think about content.

Wednesday 25 January 2012

SALES/TRANSACTION TRACKING METHODS...

As a continuation of Affiliate Marketing Process we are talking here about SALES/TRANSACTION TRACKING METHODS

Merchant once tied up with the intermediary comes to an agreement on reporting/tracking (transaction) methods to be followed to track the sales/lead/clicks. Intermediary servers also keep track of these activities to ensure proper commission is given to affiliate.

To ensure the proper remuneration to affiliate and intermediary, merchants makes use of transaction reporting techniques for each sale/lead/clicks generated. Based on the sales/leads they receive, transactions are reported to the intermediary server.

Intermediary receives the transactions reported to them by the merchant, compares it with the clicks/lead tracked by them internally and makes sure affiliates gets proper remuneration from the merchant for their marketing effort.

Affiliate marketing process falls on many Payout models..

PAYOUTS MODELS 


Affiliate Payout Models 
There are several remuneration models utilized by the Merchant to compensate the Affiliate. The model and commissions which will govern a particular campaign is negotiated and agreed upfront before a campaign is initiated. The remuneration models are described below
  • Cost per click (CPC): Affiliate is paid by the merchant each time an end user/consumer clicks on the advertisement. 
  • Pay per sale: Affiliate earns the commission every time a purchase is made on the merchant’s website by a visitor, referred to them by the affiliate.
           i. % of Sale (flat) - Fixed/Flat rate at which an affiliate would be paid irrespective of the number of sales made.                
           ii. % of Sale (tiered) - This works with the concept “More number of sales, more the commission”. E.g. When sales exceed $X then affiliate commission is Y%.
  • Pay-Per-Lead: Affiliate earns a commission for every visitor that was redirected by the affiliate to the merchant’s website and performed some action, like filling out a registration form or opening an account and so on. This model commonly used in cell phone, banking, credit card or mortgage sectors.
  • Cost per Impression: Affiliate gets paid a specified sum for every thousand impressions including the Page Views or Displays of the advertisement. 
CPI calculation = CPM (Cost per 1000 impressions)/1000 E.g. If CPM=$5 this means CPI is $0.005.

Intermediary Payout Models


Intermediary can get remunerated in any of the below ways

1) Based on the mutual agreement with the merchant when the latter agreed to accept the intermediary services to get linked with potential affiliates & joined them.
2) Based on the sales/leads/clicks generated by the affiliates.
3) For the services they render to affiliate and merchant to manage their business activities.

CAMPAIGN EFFICIENCY MEASUREMENT 

Click through Rate (CTR): Way of measuring the success of online advertising campaign.

Click Through: Process in which the merchant website gets opened by a click performed the consumer with intent to see the product. CTR- Number of Clicks/Number of Impressions


Please add your comment if you want to get it improvise or you want any further info !!
Keep looking this space for the next article about  A Real World Example in AFFILIATE MARKETING.. Happy reading & Regards :)

Friday 16 December 2011

AFFILIATE MARKETING PROCESS

Affiliate marketing process kicks off once the merchants and affiliates gets linked with a mutual agreement with the help of intermediary. A dedicated web interface designed by the Intermediary for Affiliate and Merchant acts as the link between the three parties. These interfaces provide vital information to the linked parties for deciding and reaching an agreement. Based on the product’s promotion offers in the merchant’s site, affiliate can contact the merchant to place the link of their ad in affiliate’s site or vice-versa.

A typical category of affiliates requires special mention as they get auto approved the moment they apply to the merchants as they fall under an exceptional class named “Special Affiliates” who have created an extraordinary reputation in the online marketing world by their advanced marketing strategies. 

AD’s & OFFERS 
A systematic process runs behind the creation of ads & offers and affiliate getting access of the AD links created by the merchants.

Merchants with the assistance of interface provided by intermediary create different types of promotional Ad links like text, banners, Individual products, mobile banner, mobile text, etc links which are required to drive its product into the target market.

Merchant defines certain criteria based on which the affiliate receives commission for each click/lead/sale it generates. Offer is the crucial business concept using which the affiliate comes to an agreement with the merchant with regards to the commission/compensation that they would earn based on the clicks/sales/impressions/leads generated for the merchant product/business.

Offers can be public or private

    Public: All affiliates joined with a merchant can take part in a public offer in promoting their product with equal interest.
    Private: Private offer is targeted on a certain group of affiliates based on the interest of the merchant and those affiliates only will take part in promotion of merchant’s products.

Merchant defines the public or private offer with one or more of the payout models described below, and The AD links are created and linked with these offers and provided to a specific affiliate capable of marketing it or to all affiliates with whom the merchant is partnered with. The choice of which affiliates to use lies at the sole discretion of the merchant.

Affiliate gets access of the link code of the AD links once they get partnered with the merchant and their offers. These links are placed in affiliate sites where it is expected to capture the attention of end users/ consumers and induce a click resulting in a sale of the product.

Data-feed(promotion technique) is a digital inventory of products to be sold online which includes information such as, a deep link to location on site, a link to an image of the product, a description, the price, reference ID and category. This information is used by merchant’s affiliates to highlight merchant’s products individually. SALES/TRANSACTION TRACKING MET

Keep Looking this space for the AFFILIATE MARKETING PROCESS Continued...
Next is SALES/TRANSACTION TRACKING METHODS !!!

Wednesday 14 December 2011

AFFILIATE MARKETING DEMYSTIFIED

By now we are sure that the reader is familiar with the target user perspective of Affiliate Marketing where in the user clicks ads on some website resulting in a possible sale. The following section aims at highlighting the various background processes and entities involved in the successful delivery of an Affiliate marketing campaign. Below is a depiction of a typical Affiliate Marketing working model






ENTITIES INVOLVED The chief protagonist is the “Intermediary” whose responsibility is to orchestrate all interactions between the “Affiliate” and the “Merchant”. The roles of the “Merchant”, “Affiliate” and the “Intermediary” are elaborated below.


A. Merchant:
Merchants are product owners in any business domain looking to popularize or sell their products worldwide utilizing Internet marketing as a strategy.

B. Affiliate:
Affiliate is an individual or a group with the capability to influence and induce a larger group of internet users to buy merchants products. Affiliates are categorized under various categories like Food & Drinks, Fashion & Beauty, Automotives, Computer & Technology, Career and employment, Retail, Financial services, Insurance, Real estate, Software etc depending on the type of products they intend to take up from merchant for sale promotion.

C. Intermediary:
Role of intermediary is to help merchants promote their products by getting them linked to potential affiliates in the market or vice versa. Intermediary receives monetary benefits from the merchant for efficiently managing the affiliate-merchant network & payments. Intermediary thereby helps to run affiliate marketing in a controlled environment ensuring equitable remuneration to affiliates based on the results achieved. The intermediary (technology firm) delivers the technical model in the form of web interface/product to merchants and affiliates and earns a portion of commission based on the transactions taking place between affiliate and merchant. The intermediary provides the complete technical Infrastructure including Ad & Click servers, transaction tracking servers for tracking of clicks, sales/transactions, impressions and leads. The intermediary assumes complete responsibility for maintaining a fruitful association (ensure deserving remuneration to affiliates) between affiliate and merchant.

Tuesday 13 December 2011

AFFILIATE MARKETING-An Eagle’s View

“In e-commerce industry affiliate marketing can be simply defined as a web based marketing technique by which a group (affiliates) or an individual (affiliate) gets remunerated by the product/business owners (merchants) for promoting their products or consumables.”



Internet users come across various AD links placed on commercial websites which are designed to capture their attention and elicit a click eventually leading to a possible sale/end user acquiring the product. From an end user perspective this process seems very simple, however such a seemingly innocuous activity is a result of complex background processes involving a number of independent players and complex mechanisms of crediting a sale and calculating the remunerations for all participants in the value chain.
Affiliate marketing is used by product owners in various domains like Food & Drinks, Fashion & Beauty, Automotives, Computer & Technology, Career and employment, Retail etc to target internet users by leveraging marketing strategies of affiliates specialized in these real world domains. Affiliate/s endeavor is to direct consumers/end users to the product owner’s (merchant) website to augment product popularity and thereby promoting product sales. This is done by placing ad links of Products/Merchant Company on their websites which eventually route the consumers/end users to these product sites.
Rewards in the form of commission are awarded to affiliate/s based on the business leads/sales or popularity (clicks) it brings to the products/Merchant company. One of salient features of Affiliate marketing is that it is based on a pay for performance model and involves no upfront cost to the merchant. As Affiliate marketing becomes more ubiquitous, technological innovations in support of affiliate – merchant networks are gathering pace.