No (Or Hard to Find) Affiliate Tools

Many times we get so wrapped up in getting the product done and the website up that we forget about all of the details to help promote the website.

What we’re talking about is a website mistake many forget to do, or if they do this they don’t make good use of it. That mistake would be not having or promoting your affiliate center or even having an affiliate program.

An affiliate program is where you allow people to promote your products or services for a commission. So, they get a set amount or percentage every time they make a sale for you. Think of it as your sales force, and the good thing is they don’t get paid unless they make sales for you.

Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?

So this is definitely something you would want to set up and get running right away. Generally, this is something already setup in your shopping cart system. If not, there are several online applications you can use to run an affiliate program.

Once you have your program setup you want to be sure that you have an “Affiliate Center”. Ideally, you would want to carry over your branding from your website or even host the affiliate center on your own site.

Be sure to include all of the tools your affiliates will need to promote your products. This would include the most common size banners, email promotions, prewritten articles, Google ads, Twitter posts, blog posts and whatever other tools you can think of.

It’s good to remember that most affiliates are lazy.  They want to make money but they don’t want to work at it. By providing them with an affiliate tool center they can easily find what they need and quickly start earning you money.

Some good resources for banners would be 20DollarBanners.com or MiniBannersZen.com.  Banners are usually one of the biggest stumbling blocks for people and these two companies can quickly get them knocked out for you.

Another program you would want to help get your affiliate center up and running is my AffiliateToolGenerator.com.  This is an easy to install application that you host on your website. Affiliate Tool Generator allows your affiliates to plugin their affiliate ID and push a button. Once they’ve done that all of the tools are now updated with their affiliate links and it’s just cut and paste for them to start promoting.

So be sure to either get your affiliate (sales force) center going and start increasing sales.

If you like this post it is an excerpt from my book “50 Biggest Website Mistakes“.