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Questions to Affiliates

by Buddha94
13 replies
I was just wondering if anyone here has done affiliating before and if anyone had good success with it.

I am just confused about one objective in being an affiliates. For example, do you make sure that he goes into that link and convert to a sale? Or you may lose a sale opportunity if he decides to buy another because, sometimes he might just type the address straight out like example.com instead of example.com/affiliate=Buddha94. I guess that would mean you would be losing a sale.

So my question is how do I make sure that he uses my referral link to buy instead of using a normal link. He might come back another day typing out the exact website?

Tell me your opinions or suggestion/advice! THANKS
#affiliates #questions
  • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
    Banned
    Originally Posted by Buddha94 View Post

    my question is how do I make sure that he uses my referral link to buy instead of using a normal link. He might come back another day typing out the exact website?
    The idea is that your potential customer will initially get to the sales page by clicking on whatever link you provide.

    And after that, when he returns to the sales page, your affiliate cookie (typically) will still be on his computer, so in theory you'll still be credited with the sale if he goes back later - for the duration of the cookie.

    A ClickBank cookie, for example, lasts 60 days (unless overwritten by another affiliate's cookie, because at ClickBank "the most recent cookie gets the sale"). An Amazon cookie lasts only 24 hours, but covers you for anything your customer buys at Amazon (not just the product you were promoting) during that period.

    Beware, though, of situations in which the sales page contains a vendor's opt-in. When it does, your customer can get in contact directly with the vendor, which is a good way to lose your affiliate commission.

    As you can see from all the threads like this one, few serious affiliates - wisely - are willing to promote ClickBank products of which the sales page contains a vendor's opt-in.

    Beware, also, of products which have another sales page elsewhere (check this out, using Google), because in those cases, your automated affiliate cookie won't be of any use to you, and you can still lose your commission.

    This thread explains why few serious affiliates choose to promote those products, either.

    I conceal all my own affiliate links by using a $1 .info domain as a redirect to them. This looks much more professional and keeps you in control if ever you want to change them, for any future reason. No hosting is required to do this: you can just redirect the domain-name to your affiliate link using the registrar's interface. The mistake to avoid, in this context, is using any of the "url shorteners" like bit.ly, for all the reasons explained here.
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    • Profile picture of the author Buddha94
      Wow, I really can't thank you more for such a detailed explanation. By that way, i am an affiliate at wwwplimus.com so I am wondering anyway how long the cookies will last. Just wondering. Thanks!
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      • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
        Banned
        I believe that Plimus cookies have no expiry-date, but don't take my word for it because I don't use Plimus, myself. It will be explained somewhere on their website, and you may need to check this.

        Note that some anti-spyware software which people run periodically (or continually) on their computers can interfere with cookie functions, and no cookie is ever really 100% reliable or everlasting.

        As the saying goes, that's just the way the cookie crumbles.
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      • Profile picture of the author Plimus
        Originally Posted by Buddha94 View Post

        Wow, I really can't thank you more for such a detailed explanation. By that way, i am an affiliate at wwwplimus.com so I am wondering anyway how long the cookies will last. Just wondering. Thanks!

        Hi, Leore from Plimus here.

        Plimus' cookie duration is 90 days.

        To add more info on how our tracking works, the Affiliate referral cookie which is associated with your unique Affiliate ID is added to the potential customer's computer/device when you use any of your promotional links (this doesn't always have to be the order page, but can also be the product info URL or trial download URL). The cookie is then active for 90 days and thus even if you promote the Product Info and Trial URLs, you will receive credit for each purchase within the 90 day time period.

        The cookie itself is named with the Contract ID, but it will track sales for all the products you are promoting in your Plimus account. This means that if you promote a certain product and the customer decides to purchase a different product on the Seller's website, you will be given credit regardless of the promotional link used (as long as you are approved to sell the other products).

        Also, as Alexa mentioned cookies are usually not 100% reliable. Due to that, Plimus also uses a Flash-based Affiliate cookie. This allows Plimus to track Affiliate sales when a customer uses different browsers for the initial inquiry (for the product info URL or trial download URL) and the eventual purchase.

        Hope this helps! For more information, take a look at the Plimus GoGuide (blue arrow at the top, right section of your control panel). The GoGuide has all the information you need to start selling.

        Regards,
        Leore
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        • Profile picture of the author Buddha94
          Originally Posted by Plimus View Post

          Hi, Leore from Plimus here.

          Plimus' cookie duration is 90 days.

          To add more info on how our tracking works, the Affiliate referral cookie which is associated with your unique Affiliate ID is added to the potential customer's computer/device when you use any of your promotional links (this doesn't always have to be the order page, but can also be the product info URL or trial download URL). The cookie is then active for 90 days and thus even if you promote the Product Info and Trial URLs, you will receive credit for each purchase within the 90 day time period.

          The cookie itself is named with the Contract ID, but it will track sales for all the products you are promoting in your Plimus account. This means that if you promote a certain product and the customer decides to purchase a different product on the Seller's website, you will be given credit regardless of the promotional link used (as long as you are approved to sell the other products).

          Also, as Alexa mentioned cookies are usually not 100% reliable. Due to that, Plimus also uses a Flash-based Affiliate cookie. This allows Plimus to track Affiliate sales when a customer uses different browsers for the initial inquiry (for the product info URL or trial download URL) and the eventual purchase.

          Hope this helps! For more information, take a look at the Plimus GoGuide (blue arrow at the top, right section of your control panel). The GoGuide has all the information you need to start selling.

          Regards,
          Leore
          Wow, its actually Plimus ! You are the right guy at the right place at the right time! Thanks a lot for the information!
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          • Profile picture of the author Buddha94
            One more question, to affiliates. I was just wondering about the best promotion technique that would be suitable as an affiliate.

            Do you:
            1) Write a long review and your opinion on that product?
            2) Place a promotional banner or self made banner there with a brief list of benefits of that product like "Click here if you want to make 5000$ in a day!" or something similar to that and just leave it to the people to be convince to visit that site.

            I am doing number 2 now as a way of affiliate promotion. I feel that people might as well go into the site if they are convince and the site does all the explanation to the interested buyer.
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            • Profile picture of the author myob
              Originally Posted by Buddha94 View Post

              One more question, to affiliates. I was just wondering about the best promotion technique that would be suitable as an affiliate.

              Do you:
              1) Write a long review and your opinion on that product?
              2) Place a promotional banner or self made banner there with a brief list of benefits of that product like "Click here if you want to make 5000$ in a day!" or something similar to that and just leave it to the people to be convince to visit that site.

              I am doing number 2 now as a way of affiliate promotion. I feel that people might as well go into the site if they are convince and the site does all the explanation to the interested buyer.
              I haven't done number 1 or number 2 for years. Basically my marketing is to highly "recommend" a product out of a selected group of similar items. Giving customers less to needlessly ruminate over provides faster response to placing an order. As long as you have done the product research and know the competition, this method of "recommending" products can produce conversions topping 90%.
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    • Profile picture of the author myob
      Taking what Alexa has advised just a step further, I would offer an incentivized bonus to your prospects. They receive the bonus only after a successful transaction using your affiliate link. What I do is have them optin to one of my lists and the bonus link is delivered by email. You then have a "buyer" who is likely to buy additional affiliate products from you. And no one else will ever have the chance to eat any more of your cookies.
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    • Profile picture of the author Nick Lawless
      I conceal all my own affiliate links by using a $1 .info domain as a redirect to them. This looks much more professional and keeps you in control if ever you want to change them, for any future reason. No hosting is required to do this: you can just redirect the domain-name to your affiliate link using the registrar's interface. The mistake to avoid, in this context, is using any of the "url shorteners" like bit.ly, for all the reasons explained here. [/QUOTE]

      Hi Alexa! Your posts are great!

      Could you explain how you do the $1 .info domain redirect thing?

      Thanks
      Nick
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      • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
        Banned
        Originally Posted by Nick Lawless View Post

        Could you explain how you do the $1 .info domain redirect thing?
        Hi Nick,

        It's slightly different at each registrar, because their user interfaces vary, but all you have to do, having bought the domain-name, is set it to redirect to the url containing your hoplink/affiliate-link.

        So it will be something like yourcheapdomain.info, and without needing hosting for it, you can redirect it to yourlink.product.clickbank.net, so that anyone clicking on it wherever you post the link will see only "yourcheapdomain.info" in their browser, but the page they land on will be your hoplink of the vendor's sales page, and it will still show your affiliate-ID at the bottom of the order page when they buy the product.

        All the registrars have instructions/help-pages/live-support who will explain in a sentence or two how to redirect a domain. I promise, if a technophobic incompetent like me can do it, anyone can do it. (I actually use Namecheap now, not GoDaddy, which is why I'm not offering GoDaddy details! ).

        It does cost $1 per product you're promoting (that's if you buy them at GoDaddy) but that $1 (for the first year) buys a lot of security and avoids a lot of potential problems.
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  • Profile picture of the author Greenjackdavey
    You really should be thinking about adding people to your list. Then you can send them follow up emails. You are right to be worried, people seldom buy on their first visit to a salespage. Find a way of getting their email addresses before you send them on. Then you can drop them emails afterwards with links to reviews on your website, with other affiliate links.
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  • Profile picture of the author Zack Lim
    Don't forget to collect the visitors' details so that you will be able to follow up with them through email if they do not purchase the product.

    It will be worth the investment of money to get your own website and professional autoresponder account.

    When you start following up with the list by providing more quality content and helping them, the list will know that you are genuine in helping them and they will be more responsive to your offer.

    If you have your own hosting account, you can also make use of html redirect to cloak the affiliate link.

    Hope this is useful

    Zack
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  • Profile picture of the author murtuza
    If the affiliate program has cookie and most of them have these days where they place a cookie at the visitors computer for around 30 days to a year.

    So when your visitor visits your affiliate site directly within the time span of the cookie you will get credited for the sale. But in the mean time if the visitor deletes his browser cookie then you will not get credited for the sale if he directly visits that site.

    Also if the visitor visits someone else's affiliate link in the mean time then also you will not get credited for the sale. Hope this helps...
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