Affiliates - We need your insight

Help us to help you

[DirvanMolando]

Hi everyone,

We have a website, a nice one actually we sell home appliances and would like to sell more of course. We use 3rd party service for our affiliate program but the affiliates there are hardly selling none.

Since there are many affiliates here I would be happy to learn how do you want us to convince you that our products are really good. Our commission is 10% for the affiliate but for a campaign it's usually 12%.

What would be sounds convincing enough for you to sell our products?
Please provide some insight, it will help us to understand what we are doing wrong.

Thank you very much for your time.

[idolw]

welcome to WebmasterWorld,

do you mean hardly anyone joined your program or you have plenty of affiliates but they sell nothing?

[DirvanMolando]

Thank you very much, I'm happy to be here :)
I mean that we do have about 200 affiliates registered but they just not quit operative?
Don't get me wrong, I don't blame them what so ever.
The first to be examined is us, to see what are we doing wrong and I'm sure we do.

[bobothecat]

The first to be examined is us, to see what are we doing wrong and I'm sure we do.

If your affiliates aren't making money... it would make sense to look internally. Perhaps you're not offering the steak knife with the fork.

[Marcia]

How are your sales other than through affiliates? Does the site convert well through other means of traffic?

[DirvanMolando]

Hi,
Yes is it does. We are running for the 4th year now.
Before using affiliates we tried to use a company for PPC services we got the traffic but not the conversion.

[mfishy]

200 is nothing unless they were somehow recruited from specific places or were hand picked, etc...I have seen programs with 1500+ affiliates doing nothing.

Are you getting impressions/clicks from these affiliates or just nothing?

Either way, my suggestion is to ACTIVELY recruit affiliates. Unless you have major exposure or something really special to offer or are using cj and have climbed to the top of the epc charts, you have to be proactive. Most affiliates suck. You need to get the good ones.

Before you ask where, please take some time to think about the obvious places like search engines, etc..Also, if you are really serious you could probably hire someone to run the program and recruit affiliates, even if for only a while

good luck.

[King_Fisher]

It might be your products. Home appliances fall into a very
competitive category. By adding on your affiliate comm. you might have the prices too high therefore poor conversions into sales. If you have competing web competitors go on line
and make sure you are prices are in line. Being an affiliate publisher myself I would probably not go for an
home appliance advertiser. There are too many other products that would be easier to do.

[mfishy]

I have actually had success with home appliances. Nearly all of had come through ranking on specific brand products -so instead of "toasters"..."Company 123 Toasters". Conversions seem high.

Before everyone start ribbing me, I haven't truly fallen this far, lol, I was testing for a close friend :)

I am nt the expert in this areas, or ecommerce in general, but IME, price really matters, particularly in areas where the client is likely to be female. Yeah, seems women tend to be better bargain hunters/shoppers than men. I assume your site is not a household name so if you aren't competetive on price, it will hurt.

All said, the first step is to make sure all is in order on your end. After you are pretty confident, then you simply NEED to proactively recruit affiliates that have a presence in your area. Maybe give them a small bonus for their first several sales as an incentive to give you a shot?

[Greenboy]

As an aside, an estimated 80% of consumer spending in the U.S. is controlled by females. Ignoring this demographic in your online promotions for almost any product or service is ROI-icide.

? I just made that term up, but you get the picture.