Hello, We had setup a affiliate program for my company XARC Mastering back in April this year (see http://www.shareasale.com/shareasale.cfm?merchantID=6666). To date over 100 affiliates have signed up but not one sale has happened so far. Here are some facts / thoughts and I would really like to hear what the experts say on this topic: - $17 USD for each affiliate if someone whom they send fills out the contact-form at http://www.xarcmastering.com/contact/ - 3 months Cookie - "word of mouth" referring is also possible, a manual transaction can be made - Option to raise amount per lead individually if an affiliate keeps on sending "high quality" clients. - Program is active and is being promoted to our own clients since April 2005, also a press release was done and a sticky post in our company Forum. - Affiliates so far are over 100, but most are mall types of sites or "spammish" sites, so spoken. Just a few are generating good amounts of traffic, but this traffic is non-converting - Though our website in general (and all other forms of advertising) convert (contact-form being filled out) with at least 0,8% since nearly 2 years now. - The program description is nice in my opionion, the welcome emails are as well, and we send out a newsletter from time to time too. - Graphical banners and Text-Links are available for use, each type of links is covered I think. My questions is, what do you all think were the "problem" my reside or what we possibly have overlooked so far that not one single lead has been generated (though the tracking does work as we have tested several times when making leads through affiliating with our own program)? Currently if I would be an affiliate to our own program (I am always trying to get into this role), I am not sure what would be wrong with such a program. Do you think that the amount per lead is to low or do you have any other suggestions about what should be done to get it really "rolling"? I am a bit out of ides unfortunately but think this should really have some good potential once it starts working. Any help and critique would be highly appreciated! Thanks and have a nice Sunday!
Okay this may not be what you're looking for, but I'm going to toss it out there - just in the effort of friendly observation/advise. It may not be so much a question of the quality of the traffic, as it is a question of the quality of the offering/pitch they are directed to. While a good affiliate does everything they can do to drive relevant, interested traffic into their links, its ultimately up to your landing page to 'seal the deal'. There are a couple of great 'marketing minded' members on this forum that could give you some specific help you spice up the message, and help drive conversions up. I think thats part of the bottle-neck right there.
Thanks for the quick feedback, I much appreciate it. The marketing part is very well planned and also a new website which is more optimized in that term and has been done with some copywriters is on the way soon. Though, as I said, all other traffic (might it be from AdWords, other music sites that have links to us, Overture, from the "real search results" at Google and Yahoo) DO convert at none-less than 0,8%, while the affiliate program traffic is converting at exactly 0. We have our own tracking in place, so these numbers are really accurate. Though the affiliates we are currently having and getting really nearly all run mall type of sites which are hardly any related to our service, hence deliver pretty un-targeted traffic (since we also track what other areas of the site are accessed (like the rates calculator which for example is used by 12% off the visitors from all other traffic and only at about 0,5% from the affiliate program traffic)). On top of that, as we can see from their account status, 98% of those have never received a payment from ShareAsale yet (account status "Limited"), so those seem to be newbies or not really "real caring" affiliates. The question therefore is, how to get different affiliates with respect to the questions I had asked above. Overall all other strategies of marketing are doing and converting pretty well and business is steep-up all year long, just the affiliate traffic is not doing anything at the moment, but I think the program really can do better than 0. Thank you.
Do your affiliates really understand what they are promoting..? and are any of them really promoting it or are most of these clicks -panic button clicks = visitors clicking the only interesting link on the page as they panic realizing they've found their way into a spam neighborhood. I think targeting better affiliate starts with helping your affiliates be more successful. The commission certainly plays a role: Seems like you have a significant payout ($17), better than those 'I need 1 MILLION leads to earn anything' affiliate programs, but maybe competitors are offering more commision meaning that potential affiliates are promoting your competitors instead of you. Market Recognition: Are affiliates comfortable enough with you to promote you to their site visitors? The spam sites will plaster anyone with a flashy GIF - good affiliates (affiliates likely to have qualified traffic, likely to convert to sales) are a little more picky about whom they subject their visitors to. Choose your affiliates: Choose affiliates that are more likely to succeed - ie site traffic more relevant to your products - and choose an affiliate management program that draws in the better, more experienced affiliates. (like CJ.com ) but I think that when you get your newly designed landing page up there you should see an increase in performance from all of your traffic, paid, natural search, and affiliate.
Shareasale sucks for payp er lead programs, I don't know your budget, but why don't you talk with the guys from Azoogleads? They are the best pay-per-lead network out there and I am sure they could help you out.
Your contact form is way too big, do you really need all that besides the name and email address and maybe phone number? You could always get the rest later after you've made the initial contact.
No wonder you're not getting any leads! I can tell you exactly the reason and it's this: your form page is NOT SECURE. Customers tend to expect a certain degree of security when filling out online forms. If it isn't there, they don't complete the form and abandon the site. You need to have your customer interaction pages encrypted and show that they are encrypted with a nice, happy, little padlock symbol. I don't know what your landing page is like but I'd think about adding some white to the background rather than gray and additionally, keeping the text on the light side with bullet-points rather than heavily detailed, text-heavy pages. They suck and no-one reads them anyway. You have about 2 seconds to grab a customer when they land on your site. "Don't Make Me Think!" is a book by Steve Krug and pretty much sums up web usability.
Thanks for all your feedback, that is much appreciated. All the things you had mentioned are planned for implenentation for the new website (e.g. secure and smaller contact-form, very different and more focused "step-by-step" content, etc). Though the thing is that our own tracking also tracks if a visitor even had called the contact page (not filled out the form). Some stats: "Normal Traffic" (Google, Overture, all other taffic) does: 12% Visit the Rates Page 10% Then use the Rates Calculator 2% Open the Contact Page 0,8% Fill out the contact-form ShareASale traffic so far: 1% Visit the Rates Page 0,2% Then use the Rates Calculator 0% Open the Contact Page 0% Fill out the contact-form While I appreciate your input about the website and how it could be improved, it is simply noticeable that all traffic except the one from our ShareAsale is doing good. So I think it definetely comes down to the quality of the traffic from ShareAsale here, not the website it self since you see all other traffic (and while this can be improved as well) is doing "real" good. So what is the way to find real good affiliates is the question, I think. Is ShareASale really that bad for our type of company? Beside that, none of our competition currently has an affiliate program, so there is noone paying more at the moment because there simply doesn´t exist one. Any help is still much appreciated.
Any help or tips maybe in regards to my post? What to do to spread the word about the program to reach good affiliates and is ShareASale really that bad?
IMHO SAS is great! I think the problem is very basic. You have a VERY niche offering. An affiliate would need to have just the right type of musician traffic and even then how many would just happen to need mastering service that would not already have it? Plus this seems like the type of service that someone would want to CALL and ask questions about before placing an order. Are you doing affiliate phone tracking? Plus you are in Germany, some people may prfer a company that is more local to them. So the question I would ask you is what are your normal online conversions? How many visitors from other types of advertising order online without a phone call? If you only close 1 out of 1,000 normally and affiliates have not sent 500 clicks yet then you see your problem may not be the affiliates or the network. Could be your conversions or the fact that this service it really not very suitable for an affiliate program. Even though 17 per lead is a nice payout, if an affiliate seldom gets anyone insterested in re-mastering then that's the issue. Most lead based programs are more geared toward the average consumer, so even if they only pay 5-10 per lead the amount of consumer interest and volume of leads is what makes it pay off. Hope this helps and best of luck!
Thanks for this nice answer and I also think this might the conclusion (to Niche for most affiliates). Actually the company is going really well since it´s start, I can´t complain ;-) You might also have noticed that we are kind of a market-leader (check http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q="xarc+mastering") when it comes to Online Mastering. People love the idea and new client stream is actually pretty good (having gained over 700 clients now in just 2 years) and 50% of them are returning clients (thoug this should increase in the future since the creation of new music usually takes a while). I established the affiliate program to further increase this, but it seems Google and all other advertising forms on musicians sites seem to be the better call (all traffic, except share-a-sale, converts (new client with a order) at around 0,8% at the moment). So really, I will just leave it running and see what comes around from SAS in the future. Since they don´t have monthly costs it doesn´t hurt anyway and I can only gain. Thanks again for all your input, much appreciated.
Guten tag Lorenz, Some other suggestions: 1) Instead of paying per lead maybe pay per sale is more easily understood by the affiliates in your niche market. 2) Word of mouth is also a great way to increase sales. I suggest some sort of "refer a friend" program to your existing customers. e.g. get 10% off your next mastering. Regards, Peter
Guten Tag Peter, thanks for the tips, word of mouth is already doing very great since the clients are really satisfied (have a read at http://www.xarcmastering.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=3). Approx. 20% of new clients come from word of mouth referring. I honestly also wanted to make the affiliate program to pay per sale, but since the sale-process is really complicated and can be done through Western Union and Wire Transfer (often used) as well it is hard to track this. Apart from that my service is not a "instant purchase" one, but the average time from contact to purchase is at ~1 Month and the purchase is also not done through the website since each project is custom. So the only way woud be to enter transactions manually after the sale has happened and I am not sure if affiliates would like / trust that. What do you guys think if I would do it this way (only manual transaction but % of a sale)? Thanks and have a great weekend.