Question for experienced affiliates

[MemberWing]

Hello all,
I am about to launch affiliate program for my membership site software - MemberWing and looking for the best way to attract affiliates.
The product is priced between $80 - $200 and apparently most sales i am getting already is for high end version.
I am considering giving up to 30% of cumulative commissions to affiliates.
My task is to attract as many active affiliates as possible.
I plan to use self hosted affiliate program powered by Post Affiliate Pro 4.

Hereby my questions:

1. Does multi-tier system better than single tier? How much 2 tier is better than 1? Is 3 tier better than 2?
2. Percentages ratio between tiers for product-based business.
   25+5 ?
   20+10 ?
   20+5+5 ?

Please share your experiences and advices from both - merchant side and affiliate side. I want to make it win-win for all ...

Gleb

[CurtisN]

Hi Gleb,

You should join Joint Venture (JV) Lists, Announcements, Blogs, And Community Forums. and post your JV request after you've made yourself part of the community (i.e. contributed). You should obviously also post in the JV section here and at Product Launch Calendar for maximum exposure.

As for commissions, I would ditch the tiers because that's complicated and I don't think Paypal allows multiple tiers. You may not be using Paypal, but lots of people are. You should offer at least 50% in commissions for affiliates to be interested. There are products on clickbank offering up to 75%.

Last thing from me: you should have an excellent affiliate page with all the tools necessary for promotions, like emails, graphics, etc.

Good luck,
Curtis

[Alp Bozkurt]

%50 is way too much for recurring payments.

If you have your own aff system then you can test what works better to recruit affilates. You may offer one time payment of one full months price to the affiliate, locked after 3rd month... Or %25 recurring payments etc... Most systems I see pays %20-to-%30.

[Alp Bozkurt]

Ooops! LOL I thought that it was a membership site. Now I see that it's one time payment to buy the software. Then you should offer something between %50-75.

You may be wondering why some software vendors offer %20-30 to affiliates. They have heavy inhouse promotion + they underestimate the power of affiliate army + they dont want to attract spammers.

[MemberWing]

Thanks everyone for your replies.

Gleb

[warner444]

A one tier plan may be ok but after that it starts to look like MLM. Does the free version pay an affiliate if the person upgrades?

A lot of marketers offer 50+% even much higher because the affiliate program gets customers that can be upsold additional products.

I think bloggers would be good possible affiliates.

Can you PM affiliate info, I did not see it on your page.

There are two points about having an affiliate signup link on your product page. Some people do that because they probably get more affiliates. Some people say don't do that because affiliates who sell a lot do not like to see that.

5% of your affiliates will do 95% of the sales.