8 Do’s and Dont’s of Affiliate Marketing for Small Businesses

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• affiliate marketer, affiliate marketing, affiliate marketing tips, affiliate marketing tricks, how to earn from affiliate marketing

Most likely, you not once have heard about opportunities are provided by so-called affiliated marketing. It is widely known as a rather quick and easy way to make money by means of the Internet just sitting at home or office (when it is said about affiliated marketing as the additional activity of business owners). However, is this perspective really as bright and iridescent as it is presented? Has it only undeniable benefits or hides a lot of pitfalls, especially for small business? Let’s find out the answers.

Affiliate Marketing. The concept and the central players

So, what is the affiliate marketing? It can be characterized as the segment of online commerce when one company entrust the other one to sell its products or services on a commission basis.

This trading scheme involves three central players: merchant, affiliate, and customer.

When everybody knows who the customer is, one can easily get confused with interpreting notions of merchant and affiliate.

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Affiliate is a company or person that just promotes the products and services produced by the other companies. It got a commission rewards for promotion from income generated by the sales it managed to provide.

Where is the place of small business?

When speaking about producer we used to mean the powerful manufacturer with solid facilities. Indeed, in reality, it also can be the owner of a small business like the designer producing the line of clothes, bags or something else. Thus, a small business can be a merchant.

At the same time, a small business can play the role of affiliate, especially those functioning in IT sphere. Having needed facilities for online promotions often is the first precondition for involving in affiliate marketing as an additional activity.

Thereby, a small business can be both merchant and affiliate. Speaking about peculiarities of both activities requires incorporating a plenty of information. Because of this, here we will focus on small business as merchants.

5 Points worth doing

1.    Use opportunities of affiliated marketing without any hesitation.
   Affiliate marketing is booming now. Its growth by $6.8 billionis expected during the next 5 years. Where is the secret of such lightning popularity? All is quite clear: entrusting the promotion to the high-qualified specialists or companies with needed facilities and target audience is always more effective than making tremendous efforts on self-promotion. Affiliate marketing allows you focus on improving and developing your products or services rather than disperse your business activity.
2.    Choose affiliates thoroughly. Research.Not every affiliate can provide desirable results even when it will make all necessary steps. It can be explained by the spheres of their activity. You should investigate the market and chose relevant affiliate which works in the needed for you segment and with your target auditory. To identify such one you should analyze affiliates which are close to your niche and select the best one.
3.     Control the work of affiliates.Note that entrusting the task of selling your products to another company does not deprive you the responsibility for results. You should control the process of promotion as well as any campaign has to be aligned with the brand conception.  To avoid misinterpretations or inaccuracies participate in creating textual and visual elements which affiliates incorporate in promoting your products.
4.    Monitor the customers’ feedbacks.
   Affiliates are your representatives, and the style of their interaction with customer forms the image of your company. The customers’ feedback is the best way to analyze the effectiveness of affiliate actions and correct them on time if needed.
5.    Look for more places for affiliate marketing.
   It means you should look broad on the marketing tools and involve not only highly specialized affiliates which are close to your niche but also those who are far from your primary activity but can be useful for you. For example, if you produce clothes it does not mean you should not cooperate with affiliates providing writers services. Furthermore, you even should do this as well as targeted promo texts about advantages of your product are among impactful promo tools.

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Forget about doing the following 3 things:

1.    Considering that the more affiliates you have, the more sales you will get.

Remember the wisdom saying that quantity not always means quality. It is the case. Focus on the best affiliates, consider their performance, image, audience and trade segment. They should correspond with your policy.

2.   Assuming that big affiliates networks are better than the small one.

Going by the verified and generally accepted way seems to be logical and safe, but it is not a right step. Smaller networks or individual affiliates often have greater alternatives, and they are easier to reach an agreement on controversial moments.

3.    Acting intuitively.

Many business owners consider affiliate marketing easy to operate. Reality is a rather different. To avoid the vain mistakes and wasting your time you should explore the possibilities and challenges before starting. Only having basic knowledge you can start using this marketing tool.

It goes without saying that appealing to affiliate marketing is unavoidable nowadays. Even a great risk of harming merchant’s image which is the central danger could not make producers refuse from the multiple opportunities it provides. At least, it is the merchants who set the rules in this play. Thus, the more choosy you will be the fewer risks you face in affiliate marketing.

Petra Mainer is the novice solopreneur. She studies Information Management, and writes about everything worth reading in the digital sphere. Follow her on Twitter or visit her blog on EssayServiceWriter.