Affiliate Marketing | Affiliate Marketing For Beginners | What Is Affiliate Marketing? | Simplilearn

welcome everyone this is rob sanders from simply learn and today we're going to talk about affiliate marketing so let's jump right into it and take a look inside an office environment right now we have chuck here chuck's doing a little bit of pacing john walks in the office hey man what's with all the pacing everything all right chuck responded hey i'm just worried that i might have exhausted every way we can advertise our product i mean i've done seo i've done paid search i've done email i've done social man nothing's working i gotta come up with something new asap well john responds hey don't worry i think i've got your solution for you man hang tight relax take a load off here's my solution affiliate marketing first off before you ask the question what's affiliate marketing let's talk about why we need affiliate marketing so let's dig into affiliate marketing so john's just taking over now and he's gonna let chuck know everything there is to know about affiliate marketing so the first question john answers for chuck what is affiliate marketing so affiliate marketing is a form of digital marketing that involves a merchant it involves a merchant paying commissions to a website or other entities so if i'm selling a product basically somebody else sells that product for me i'm gonna pay that person a commission for selling my product it's that simple that's what affiliate marketing is okay so basically what these margins are doing or other entities they're advertising your product so they're advertising your product with a referral so they're passing on their own customers to you so that they can buy your product and again the exchange is you give that website or other entity a commission that's more or less what affiliate marketing is so john's gonna have us take a look at each of these components of affiliate marketing in detail take it away john so john says first we have the merchant aka the brand the seller the creator the founder the owner the inspiration the innovator hey this is the person who came up with this brilliant idea this brilliant idea has to get out there we're the merchant we're trying to get this brilliant idea out to the masses so this is the component of affiliate marketing that creates the product the merchant could be anyone okay so it could be startups to large multinational companies international companies non-profits for-profits individuals independent contractors freelancers a group of people who have a passion for something okay it could be anybody there's no limit the affiliate aka the publisher so the affiliate is basically that third-party website or entity which promotes the merchant's products and tries to convince potential customers of the merchant's products value so this affiliate is going to represent the merchant on their behalf and try and get their clients to basically purchase that particular merchant's product so the affiliate could be incentivized based on you know registrations email sign up sales and subscriptions so it doesn't always come down to you know sales you know if i'm just trying to get you know build my email list then hey i can incentivize that affiliate to push email signups if i'm got this big you know offline you know promotion that i'm doing at this particular mall and i want to get people there well i can get an affiliate and incentivize that affiliate to drive and help me drive registrations for this event so it doesn't always have to be sales per se so in effect you the merchant and the affiliate work out some type of commission deal based on what you're incentivizing so the relationship between the affiliate and the merchant is made possible with the help of an affiliate network so that's the third component here we need somebody to bring the two together that merchant who has this brilliant idea and the affiliate who has potential customers that could potentially drive registrations sales signups etc to the merchant so the affiliate network is the one who brings the two together so the affiliate network in effect acts as the middleman the person in between the merchants and affiliates it allows merchants to find and collaborate with not just any affiliate but the affiliate best suited for their particular brand and product because you want to find somebody who is going to be passionate who's relevant who has your prospective customers in mind because they're the ones that are going to help those protective customers purchase your product so that's what the affiliate network does it helps bring the merchants and affiliates together so that the affiliate can help advertise and sell on behalf of the merchant so with the affiliate network merchants can use tools for tracking and reporting and processing payments for affiliates so really that affiliate network is the glue that holds it all together they're not just one to introduce a merchant an affiliate they offer it all so as a merchant you want to be able to manage your affiliates so you're not going to have one affiliate you're going to have multiple affiliates so you want to be able to use the appropriate tools available to you in the affiliate network to see and track how sales are going and when sales happen okay or commissions happen you want to be able to use that affiliate network to compensate that affiliate appropriately and then finally the customer customer aka the consumer is the most important component of all of this take it away john so the consumer is the final and most important component without customers to buy products the merchant would not have any revenue and the affiliate would not get any commission so we need customers so john what is the process of affiliate marketing well john says let's have a look at the process so it's affiliate marketing time so we're going to use a tool or platform like commission junction commission junction is a popular you know platform that affiliate network platform that brings merchants and affiliates together so the merchants can use those affiliates to advertise their product so let's take a look at uh commission junction as a good digital marketing tool for affiliate marketing so we're going to use commission junction as an example here remember an affiliate marketing it's an ecosystem between publishers and merchants so remember merchants are selling products publishers are selling those merchant products on their site and so commission junction is the middleman so to speak okay so commission junction just known as cj now is the middle person they're introducing the publisher and the merchant and so let's go ahead and log in here so when you log in like any other digital marketing tool any other platform you're gonna have your own settings and whatnot so really the whole idea behind any affiliate marketing tool is really there to manage your publishers who do you want as a publisher who do you want selling your product you obviously want somebody who's relevant somebody who's going to be able to sell a product somebody who has a targeted audience that's similar to yours okay so we go into cj. com we're gonna log in and here you can see a publisher's link so we're gonna click on the publishers link and remember when you sign up publishers you have to have program terms and so if we click on publishers program terms we're going to be able to see all the different program terms available so here we could see the different program turns we have set up for certain publishers so we just click on that we'll be able to see that's the default program term so remember you could set up your own program term for any publisher so as a best practice if you have publishers who are actually performing well who are selling your products maybe you want to offer them a little bit more on the commission side maybe you want to sweeten the deal maybe you know these guys these publishers get better program terms versus say other publishers who don't and so here we can see the program terms basically you could see what the terms are the action and the different policies here so everything you need to do to manage that publisher in terms of payment is done under the program terms now if the program terms are met the publisher actually sells your products cj is the broker they're the ones who are going to initiate the payment based on the program terms so be careful on the program terms you want to be able to set them appropriately cj has templates cj has some default program terms that you can use and offer up to different publishers so based on the program terms that's how your publishers are going to get paid and so here you can have as many different program terms as you want there's no limit here you want to be able to align and reward program terms again based on performance and so here we can see what publishers are under what program terms so again if your publisher is performing well sweeten the deal offer them a better program terms and so you can align publishers with different program terms and so that's the whole the idea behind program terms is you want to be able to align publishers with that so when you sign up a publisher they're going to get a line with a program term meaning what are they going to get paid for selling your product now if we want to manage by status instead of by program terms we could see all the different organizations we have in our network these are our publishers we're the affiliate we're the ones selling the product we want to know who's selling who's not selling and so we can look at all our publishers by program terms or by status okay so basically you can see here the term status whether it's active or not earnings basically what they've sold over the last basically seven days or three months so you could look at basically how your publishers are performing just by clicking on manage by status here in cg. com so when you're looking at reports in cj.

com or really any other affiliate program you might see the acronym epc this stands for earnings per click actually it's a little misleading it's actually earnings per 100 clicks so basically cj calculates you know how much your publisher is actually making per click you know just like paid search we're paying google x amount per click it's the same thing here we can't or these publishers can't make any money if they don't generate clicks so that's why you have an epc model or metric so to speak so you can measure earnings per click cj does it over seven day period and over a three month period so you could sort based on seven day or three months to see who's earning the most per click in terms of publishers now you can select under publishers groups now you can group your publishers okay so if you have say a group of publishers in a specific region like the united states or india or if you're just focused on the united states and say you have publishers in different states like texas california missouri arkansas well you can group those publishers into different groups and you can look at your different group names here so here we could see canada and so we have our publishers grouped into a group called canada why because they're based in canada makes sense so you want to be able to organize your publishers because the whole idea behind affiliate marketing cj is you want to be able to get the best publishers available for your network and so as you get more publishers for your network you'll be able to basically start grouping them where it makes sense now the example i gave you is by geography you could do by geography or you could do by publisher status meaning my best performing publishers go into a group if they're in a group then they get aligned with a certain program term so you could group your publishers any way you want by status meaning they're selling more these are our best performing publishers or by region or you know by promotion i mean how you group your publishers is totally up to you however take advantage of the option to create publisher groups because the whole idea again i'm going to repeat it is you want to get publishers you want to start building your base of publishers because the more publishers you have the more chance you are to sell your product remember if nobody clicks on your product then nobody's going to buy your product so if you have publishers who are promoting your product for you then you have a good opportunity to sell it so the more publishers you have on board the better the opportunity so now once you have publishers you can start grouping these publishers accordingly to whatever makes sense as a business decision just know the options available in cj to group publishers now when you're in cj and you're starting out okay you want to start recruiting your publishers so you click on recruit and based on your settings based on what you're selling cj is going to try and put you in front of some good publishers and so here we could see if we click on recruit we're going to get a list of publishers and this search results list of publishers that we can recruit into our network are all listed here and you can actually see what's interesting you can see the name of the publisher and you can see the url and then you can actually see if they're a good performer or not so you could actually see their history as a publisher just by looking at their network earnings and then also looking at their seven day earnings per click or three month earnings per click and so if a publisher has a very high earnings per click epc then they're probably a good publisher somebody you're probably gonna be interested in so if i see a publisher with you know three month earnings per click of 105 then that means hey if that's my publisher i'm paying 105 or 106 dollars over seven days you know they're generating some clicks for me and they're generating sales you can't deliver commission if they don't sell and so to me i want to be able to look at the seven three month earnings per click for these publishers and so i can just click on any one of these publishers here and get some more insight about that publisher right here in cj so here i can see the particular url the company some other urls that they have associated with them in cj i can see the category that they're in again i can see the seven three month epc here you can see the description okay you can see some other promotional methods that they'd use when promoting products and you get some program performance from this particular publisher just by pulling down the pull down menu here i'm going to look at this year and see what the performance is and why i'm waiting for that to load i could see hey they're also in other countries as well so i can get a good snapshot of a particular publisher by recruiting publishers seeing what their performance is over a period of time and potentially you know recruiting that publisher would be part of my network because if they're part of my network then hey if they're selling products if i'm selling products and i want my product on their site and they're doing a good job of selling other products then i want them to be you know part of my ecosystem part of my network now remember cj's doing the introducing here they're introducing you to recruits so you want to be able to again take a look at the site does do any of the sites that a particular publisher has interest you you know again we can just click on it go to the specific site take a good look hey virgin atlantic okay do we want them selling our product maybe maybe not um so you want to take a look at the website make sure it's not spammy make sure it aligns with your business goals it makes your aligns with your product your target audience remember a lot of things you want to make sure the website aligns with because they're representing your brand okay very important here very important and so that's what you want to be able to do and you could do all that just by looking at the publisher detail in cj and then again take a look at earnings per click if they're selling products for other merchants and they're doing a good job maybe you want them selling your product as well okay so you can also you know sort by country you can also do network earnings and you can really filter here so we want you know choose high network earners in a particular country a particular state you know we could definitely filter in on a particular type of publisher okay so you want to be able to hone in on somebody to align with your geography or you know definitely you want to align with somebody who's a high network owner now when you get all your publishers set up you're going to need to provide them with some good promotional materials some good banners um you know it could be text links some messaging okay so you're the one who's going to provide the publishers with you know the information they need now as a best practice remember you can get on the phone with these publishers have monthly calls or quarterly calls see what they need you know reach out to them via email or reach out to them via the cj platform figure out hey you know how's your banners working for you do you need new banners so you want to be able to constantly you know push new content out and so if i click on links here and manage i'll be able to see everything that i have available for my publishers to use okay and then you can actually look at banners that have actually produced for you in terms of epc or you know if it's a specific promotion okay you could set that up here so you're gonna be able to see it here you can see all the banners you can see some text links in here so all the you know advertising that you want these publishers to have is gonna be situated under links and so you can see what the active ones are you can look at archived you can look at again text links content links or banners and as a best practice if i click on a banner as a best practice ideally what you want to do is use utm tracking okay so you want to have some type of tracking in place however cj does a lot of the tracking for you so they're going to be able to tell you how many times a banner has been clicked and how many times a banner's been seen okay they'll also tell you more importantly not only was that banner click but did it generate a sale and so here i can see that i have three publishers using this particular banner i can see over this period of time 412 impressions meaning 412 people viewed the banner and i received one click on it so you can get some in-depth detail about your different marketing materials and how they're performing okay you can also see what publishers are using them okay so the key here is you want to be able to communicate with your publishers give them the promotional material and that they need to promote your product now you could set up specifically you could set up a unique banner for a publisher or you could set up a banner for a group of publishers that's where the group comes in so you have some options here and then as a best practice what i would try and do as you can see here is come up with different banner sizes so you can see here we got a by 90. okay you got a 160 by 600 you got a 300 by 250. okay so you want to have different banner sizes and you also want to mix in some text um ads as well okay you want to be able to give your publishers some options in terms of what to use on their websites so that's the whole idea because a publisher may not have space on the home page they may only have enough space for you know a text ad or a 300 by 250.

so you want to be able to mix it up and then also mix up the messaging as well so you can have the same 300 250 banner but you can have different messaging just like you see here 300 by 250 got this messaging here and we got a different set of messaging with the same banner size so the more options you present for yourself the more of an opportunity you have for the publisher to use that messaging that banner that text ad on their website and then that gives you a better opportunity to get the click get the conversion that you seek out so that is links so you want to be able to continue to push out different banners and text ads now cj also has a great feature in here if you're selling a lot of products you have a large inventory of products you could actually upload a product feed to cj so you can see in this example we don't but if you did let's just say you have a hundred products that you want to sell you can go ahead and upload that fee to cj and then the publisher will be able to use that entirety in its of the feed or pick and choose different products to use and sell so let's jump over to reports and cj you have reports of this is really the bulk of where you want to be spending your time because you want to be able to you know not only recruit those publishers but after you recruit them you want to be able to see the performance how are things moving or our publishers moving product are they generating clicks are they selling your products so go no further than reports right here at the top navigation we're going to click on performance reports and so we want to be able to see over a period of time you know are we selling our product and here you can see over the last 30 days you could see how much commission was paid out remember cj gets a fee they're the broker okay so that's part of the program terms okay so it's based on program terms who's selling okay what program term are they associated with cj gets their commission okay so you can see the total commission and then the sale amount okay so we can see how many sales were generated how many items were sold how many clicks were generated how many impressions so i can get a good sense here day by day over who's selling who's not selling and it's all broken down at the very end to earnings per click so that's my performance report so we want to be able to see over a period of time you know are we selling now i can go into detail if i click on transaction here from the pull down menu i can look at a specific order i can choose a specific publisher or website and i can get details about that specific order publisher website etc just be look by choosing transaction so i can get really granular about the data i see for a specific transaction that's just by clicking reports transaction now you can also click on promo codes and if you're running any promo codes for your publishers you'll be able to see how many conversions those promo codes delivered and the set total sale amount over the last 30 days so building a network is all about recruiting the right publishers giving them the materials they need measuring the performance of the publishers and then communicating it's just so key so cj has a nice message center built in so you can actually you know look at the messages you're getting from your publishers and turn around and communicate with them so communicate seamlessly and efficiently right in cj here so i just clicked on mail and we can see the messages we have so you can also click on email campaigns and if you have any email campaigns that you want to run you can look at them right here in cj so cj offers up some email campaigns then we can see how many people we targeted you know how many people opened it and how many people joined in this case joined our network so here we have you know a breakdown of each of the email campaigns that we've run over a period of time and their status and how many people were targeting and opens deliveries etc so if you want to run an email campaign write in cj it's available to you as part of the platform so if we move over from mail to placements we have an opportunity to place some promotional material on a publisher's website and so here we could see a breakdown of different publishers who basically will offer up some promotional material that we can leverage okay so here you got this particular promotional placement it's a one-month placement and review page with your ad so we can actually you know take advantage of what publishers are offering up on their own website so the whole idea here is if it's in a prime position on their website then we can take advantage of that so then what we want to be able to do is if we like what they're offering up you can see hey this particular publisher saying hey i have a creative the placement is a home page banner or full page review provide an email with a copy of the ad that you'd like to be displayed and we're going to email this person here so if we want to take advantage of a specific promotional placement on a publisher's website then we can do that just by clicking on placements and we'll be able to see who's offering up what notice there's a fee involved so it just gives you an opportunity to reward a publisher that's performing well for you and if they turn around and offer you a better placement for a little bit more money it might be worth it so the whole idea is to take advantage of placements because if your product is in place properly then nobody's going to see it if nobody sees it then you know they're not going to click on it and then you're not going to get sales so that's the whole idea here is take advantage of what publishers are offering up in terms of promotional opportunities so cj also has a pay-per-call click uh model as well pay model so basically your pay per performance is based on calls so basically the whole point here is a cj points out you want to promote more high ticket and consultative products and services you want to expand your reach and you want to get more qualified sales then you can offer up a pay per call and the beauty here is cj tracks the calls so you will be able to see the actual phone number and calls so instead of offering up say you know banner with a click you can offer up you know promotional number and have cj tracked the calls from the publisher and that just opens up another opportunity for you to give your publishers an option to have people call if they call then great you know it's another way for somebody to get in touch and purchase the product so the pay-per-call method is available under cj as well so if we want to get more insights about how our program is performing we just click on the insights cj's gonna take us to this overview this dashboard if you will with some really good data based on a time frame okay so we're comparing july through of july of 19 through july of 2018 we're able to see revenue and commissions paid out and how many clicks average order value so there's kind of an overview dashboard if you will about how our overall program is performing there are other similar tools and resources to include you know max bounty trade doubler amazon associates there's plenty of networks out there you want to find a network where you're going to have affiliates that are going to be passionate and going to be relevant and have the prospective audience that you need to sell your product so do your due diligence on the number of different platforms out there so what's the process of affiliate marketing so the process is really setting up rules guidelines specifications around branding commissions etc for the affiliates so that's really step two step one is you gotta find that network step two you gotta then establish the process within that network within that affiliate network and so the merchant provides specifications such as hey here's what type of creative i want to use you know it could be a banner it could be just a text ad it could be a video and we want to be able to specify the messaging in that ad we want to specify the specific parameters around the image what size image are we going to use okay we want to specify the landing page or the link we're going to send people to and then most important within that affiliate network the merchant is going to set the commission and so you can have multiple incentives so remember you can incentivize based on email signups or registrations okay not just sales so you could set the commission at say 5 for email signups and 15 for sales so you could specify what kind of creative and text you want the affiliate to use so this is really important because if you're pushing a product like a camera or some type of electronic gadget you can also specify what promotion you want that affiliate to use you could specify the call to action again you can specify the image specifications the price point the language in the ad so as the merchant you're in total control over what creative and text you want the affiliate to use so john is going to stay further john the commission that each affiliate we receive is also mentioned so let's look at the scenario where an affiliate receives 15 commission for each product purchased through a referral code so 15 commission so the customer clicks on a referral link from the affiliates website the customer buys the product for let's just say twenty seven dollars and ninety seven cents well fifteen percent of that is four dollars twenty cents so the affiliate will get a commission of four dollars and twenty cents so as the merchant you have to be able to set that commission appropriately you don't want to give 100 commission away you don't want to get 50 you want to set a commission that's going to incentivize the affiliate so that it's a win-win situation you're getting a sale philly is getting the commission the customer's happy with the product and everybody comes away with an ecosystem that works for all parties so what is the process of affiliate marketing well affiliates apply to advertise on your behalf okay so that's the third step here so first step choose that network second step set up all the guidelines third step really affiliates are going to apply and say look merchant i want to sell your product on my website so john take it away john well affiliates can contact you through the affiliate network that's the whole point of the network or through a page you have set up on your website specifically for affiliates so really there's two ways for affiliates to reach out to you through the network or directly through your website either way we're trying to get affiliates who are going to be passionate about selling our product for the commission we're offering so if you look here at the bottom you may see a link that says hey you know if you're interested in our affiliate program click on the affiliate program link and from there you're going to be able to see all the details about how to become an affiliate so that's an example of what you could do on your website if you have an affiliate network so the last step in all this is to select the affiliates that are best suited for your brand so when you set up that network you set up all the guidelines you're offering a great commission it's a win-win scenario then you're gonna have all these affiliates apply to sell your product you're the one in control you're the merchant you're representing the brand you need to pick and choose the affiliate that's best suited for your brand this is probably the most important step you want to get your product out there on the website that is best suited to position your product to your prospective audience so john take it away well you could select an affiliate from the ones that have applied for your affiliate program this can be based on a number of factors one how much traffic the affiliate website gets you know we want to choose an affiliate that gets a lot of traffic you don't want to choose an affiliate that gets very minimal traffic what's the point you want to get your product out there in front of people the second criteria is how successful is his or her previous affiliate campaigns were they successful in selling other merchants products do they have a good track record were they good affiliates and then third criteria is the most important is that affiliate okay with the commission offered now you can always go back and renegotiate a higher commission for those that have been or proven to be successful in the past at selling products or you can renegotiate the commission for affiliates who are proven to sell your product so for example if you have a hundred affiliates selling your product and you have 10 of those who have proven to be really good affiliates for you then you can go ahead and give them a raise so to speak so instead of 15 commission you can bump it up to 20 so you can create a whole new commission agreement for quote-unquote best affiliates and likewise on the flip side well you know an affiliate is not selling your product then you probably don't want him or her hanging around you probably want to try and see if you can incentivize them and if you can't incentivize them then the affiliate network is there to broker not only the agreement but you know separate the agreement as well so you could certainly get rid of affiliates who don't perform but you can incentivize affiliates who do perform but really it comes down to first do they have a good track record do they get traffic and are they okay with the commission you're sending forth so consumers click on the adder link which sends the users to the merchant's website so they're going to the merchant's website from the affiliate website the see it call to action will direct you to a page where you can buy for example in this case software so we're buying software here and you can see here from the software we could choose what we want the full version we're going to go for the full version we're going to go through the checkout here we're gonna click on buy now after we've entered in all of our details so it's almost seamless from the affiliates website to the merchant's website or landing page all the way through the checkout process and remember the affiliate network is the one tracking all this behavior so as the person goes from the affiliates website to the merchants to the merchant's shopping cart the affiliate network is tracking the entire behavior so after the customer makes a purchase on that merchant's website the affiliate network records the details of his or her transaction this is important because the affiliate network records it they're the ones that are going to calculate how much commission gets paid out to the affiliate so again if it's that 27. 97 product 15 commission then the affiliate network's gonna make sure that that affiliate gets his or her commission of four dollars and twenty cents okay so the transaction is validated and credited to the affiliate okay so this is all recorded in the affiliate network that you choose whether that be commission junction cj or something else okay the affiliate is then paid his or her commission once they're paid it's almost seamless nothing is stopped nothing is halted nothing's paused that affiliate's is gonna keep on promoting that merchant's product the more that affiliates incentivize with commissions i guarantee the more that affiliates gonna wanna push the merchant's product because they know they're getting sales by that particular merchant's product by that merchant so it's a win-win situation the merchant's getting his or her product sold as a result of these affiliates websites the affiliate is getting commission via the affiliate network thanks to the merchants products so it's a win combination and it's a successful combination so affiliate marketing to me is equivalent to an ecosystem that creates a win-win environment you the merchants getting your product out there hey the affiliate's getting an opportunity to make some money so john what do you have to say well the whole process repeats itself it doesn't stop so you as the merchant you got to keep finding affiliates and on the affiliate side hey you're going to offer up that product to keep getting incentivized with commissions so it's a constant constant process that just continues to recycle itself so that everybody continues to win so some of the advantages of being able to select an affiliate that's relevant to your brand are one you could choose an affiliate best suited to represent your brand and products okay that's important you want to choose and a relevant affiliate two you only need to pay commission if a conversion takes place okay that's the great thing about it no conversion no sale no commission now again you can offer up other incentives like registrations and emails so that way you're getting something and the affiliate's getting something in return maybe a lower commission but they're still getting something in return and the affiliates audience are more likely to be interested in your product if it's relevant affiliates relevant to your product then chances are the audience gonna be interested in your product on the affiliates website so the system works on a semi automatic basis the more commissions the affiliate gets the more they push your product the more sales you get you get sales affiliate gets commissions everybody wins process just keeps going so john what are the tips for success in affiliate marketing well john says hey look now that you know how affiliate marketing works here are some tips on how you can get a better at affiliate marketing one provide competitive rates to attractive successful affiliates so remember we talked about this a couple minutes ago hey affiliates ad or performing at a higher level offer them a higher commission hey gamify your compensations into tiers to reward best performing affiliates okay so break them off into different tiers best middle lower performing okay maintain a good relationship with your affiliates with regular communication so the communication doesn't just stop and end once you accept the affiliate communication continues reach out to the affiliate have monthly calls weekly calls in some cases it could be daily calls or it could be emails or text messaging you know offer up different promotions or more importantly get some feedback from the affiliate get their ideas about your product they're the ones who are selling your products they probably have some ideas on how you can better improve it or maybe they receive feedback from their audience they can pass along so it's important to maintain a good relationship with your affiliates to keep the relationship strong and then set up ground rules regarding the liberties affiliates can take with your brand remember you're setting up the brand guidelines at the beginning you want to make sure affiliates abide by those brand guidelines but give them a little bit of flexibility here now you're the one setting the guidelines but let them have some lead way in for example how much they can post your product where they can post your product they know their website better than you you know your brand better than them together you can compromise to come up with a winning formula be flexible with your budget provided it generate sales and profits so in other words you don't want to give away too much on the commission side you want to keep it within a specific uh range so that way you're still gaining an advantage on each sale meaning you're gaining profits they provide promotional ideas and talking points and new affiliates to nurture them in other words hey pass along some best practices pass along what the best performing affiliates have done to the new affiliates if it works for one it may work for another it may not but hey sharing is caring sharing is informative sharing is knowledge sharing is important so share some ideas with new affiliates to get them going as quickly as possible and then enhance your promotions with product information that affiliates can create a buzz around so you know listen you can have recurring calls with affiliates and you can get some ideas from these affiliates about promotions but really what it does is it comes down to you to create a good promotion that you will incentivize the affiliates to really push for it you know it could be a buy one get one free a nice percentage off it really depends but you gotta you you're the one you're the merchant you're the brand owner you need to push uh the affiliates and help the affiliates to give them ammunition to help sell your product chuck is just at this point ecstatic john has given chuck a lot of information he's given them some networks to choose from he's giving him the steps he needs to set up the affiliate network anything from setting up the guidelines to choosing the right affiliates to communicating with the affiliates best tips and practices and methodologies chuck is really thankful to john for all the explanation chuck's gonna go right away and look for that affiliate network so he can get moving with choosing the right affiliates to help sell his products so chuck is thankful for john jones thanks for chuck and everybody lives happily ever after in the professional world of affiliate marketing so that's the story of john and chuck that's the story of affiliate marketing hey if you have any ideas of your own any best practices feel free to put them underneath this video love to hear from you especially about affiliate marketing there's just so much to go with when it comes to affiliate marketing we love to hear from you otherwise thanks for attending for more information please visit simplylearn.