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newbe introduction - hoping to learn what affiliate marketers want from an affiliate program

by jonny512379
3 replies
Hello All

Just a quick intro.
i am Jon, UK based...

I have been working on a hotel (or any other accommodation) booking website for near on 2 years. Nothing too new in all honesty, but i feel "done right" as there are only a hand full of others that also "do it right".

We plan to add an affiliate marketing section (so others can help prompt us).
Before i start to code this, i intend to read up on what people want, what would maybe cool to add, if i should use an in-house affiliate system or a 3rd party site to manage the program (or possibly both) + probably a few things i have not yet through about...
I see no reason why we cannot build what the marketers want, rather than building what we want and then trying to get people to use it...

If this is not the place for me, sorry... but other wise, hello and if anyone wants to make suggestions to me, this is great

Thanks
Jon
#affiliate #hoping #introduction #learn #marketers #newbe #program
  • Profile picture of the author aarthielumalai
    In-house affiliate systems would give you control over the affiliate program, which is every CEO's dream. But, you'll need to work a lot more in recruiting affiliates and establishing yourself as a trusted affiliate program. Affiliates get scammed a lot in this field, and they'd be wary to promote for you until they're sure you pay (every single time, not just once or twice).

    As for what affiliates want. A decent cut in commissions. They'd likely be spending time and money to promote your site, so they'll be expecting a decent ROI.

    A well-converting sales page/home page. Again, this comes under ROI. If their landing pages convert well, but their conversions drop at your sales page, they'll not continue promoting your website.

    If you're going with an in-house program, I'd suggest decent analytics and tracking options, as well as a good affiliate support setup. Many in-house programs lack both, which would make you stand out.

    Good luck!
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    • Profile picture of the author jonny512379
      Originally Posted by aarthielumalai View Post

      In-house affiliate systems would give you control over the affiliate program, which is every CEO's dream. But, you'll need to work a lot more in recruiting affiliates and establishing yourself as a trusted affiliate program. Affiliates get scammed a lot in this field, and they'd be wary to promote for you until they're sure you pay (every single time, not just once or twice).

      As for what affiliates want. A decent cut in commissions. They'd likely be spending time and money to promote your site, so they'll be expecting a decent ROI.

      A well-converting sales page/home page. Again, this comes under ROI. If their landing pages convert well, but their conversions drop at your sales page, they'll not continue promoting your website.

      If you're going with an in-house program, I'd suggest decent analytics and tracking options, as well as a good affiliate support setup. Many in-house programs lack both, which would make you stand out.

      Good luck!
      Thank you very much for your info and reply!

      I also feel in-house would give us better control but as you say, we also need affiliates to sign up and the 3rd party site already have lots of traffic and members. This is why i was wondering if we could have both.
      3rd party sites also have great experience of what affiliates want and what works (they don't need to ask in forums like i am doing right now), so this may also be an advantage to us, even if it comes at a cost.

      If we have in-house, i have part planned the analytics and tracking options, and see no reason why i can not have these stats in real-time. we will store sessions and cookies of the affiliate ID (the cookies will be 30 days (unless i am told it should be different!)), so we can of course attach this to bookings, user signups and also store some form of basic pages viewed by affiliateID, etc.
      If a user joins our site and then places further bookings, we can also track this to the affiliateID and pay the affiliate for future booking too.
      Coding wise: We already have an "auto loader" within the code of our site that also loads configs, etc. As this is on all pages of the site, we plan to add the affiliate code (new object instance) to this autoloader, so no mater what page gets landed on, the affiliate ID is checked for and is then available to all other code on the site (i.e the booking code)

      From your comments there are 2 possible issues we may have when we first start the site.

      1. We are an IT company, and love the tech. We plan to be "competitive by coding our way around needing lots of staff", so we do not really want to have 24 hour support phone calls, but we would be very happy to offer email tech support to the affiliates.
      Maybe an advantage here could be, all the email support will be responded by a coder that can make changes to our code and also help affiliates with their code.

      2. the commission rate.
      I am thinning 50% of whatever we charge. BUT as we are a new/small fish in a very large pond, the commission we charge would only be around 10% of the total booking (less than similar sites!). We may also have to negotiate even lower rates with large hotel chains, just to get their business (maybe charge then 0% commission for the first 12 months). I am sure this would upset affiliates!
      We are however happy to be open about all our charges.
      We could also add to the affiliate code/API what commission is being charged, so affiliates know the best paying properties to promote.

      As point 1: we are trying to not need many staff by coding things like monitoring for Direct Debit payments and possibly making affiliate payments with little to no human intervention required, so to keep our overheads low. (we are trying to automate much of the accounts/admin).
      I would have no issue with always paying affiliates on time, as it would be "killing the golden goose" if we don't pay them that help us.
      We would probably need some protection in case our customers do not pay us the commission they owe too, but i assume this may be standard in "affiliate agreements" (if our customers don't pay us, we will of course "cut them off", so hopefully this situation will not arise often!).
      Building a reputation is not a worry to me, but i understand this will take time for others to see this too.

      Again thank you for your reply, i plan to keep reading posts in this forum; And if anyone wants to make comments to me, please feel free.

      Thanks
      Jon
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  • Profile picture of the author mdallen
    There are lots of software options if you choose to go with the in house option. The big thing would be recruiting which will be all about establishing trust. If people do not know and trust you then they won't trust that you pay. I would suggest as soon as the numbers get big enough that you advertise how much you have paid out to date on your recruiting page. If the offer is good, some people will want to try either way. It is not impossible to do in house, but it will be harder. Should you choose to go with a third party, your recruiting would be minimal and you could properly focus on "doing it right" as you have been doing.
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