The "Other Side" of the Affiliate Program

Does anyone have any business success stories?

[rehabguy]

Have any of you guys/girls worked with or know of a small company that has ran a succussful affiliate program and grew their businesses substantially?

I'm looking for some encouragement and/or motivation to launch my own affiliate program for my online store

Any first-hand examples or "I heard that" stories are appreciated!

[ChrisSanderson]

Hi

Sure I have a couple which I can go into if you like, however my greatest belief is that an afiliate program can not exist in a vacuum. All marketing leverages upon all the active the parts, the more touch points you create for customers to see your site and brand the better each channel can do (not will...there are no guarantees)

I believe that doing just affiliate marketing by itself, while it may work if you have a very niche product will still need various degrees of other marketing to make it all work.

At the same time the site itself will make a huge difference to the success, amateur site will lead to amateur results, so make sure your site is looking good before spending money on marketing.

Cheers

Chris

[derekwong28]

Hi Chris

I wonder if you can give more detail about what type of small shops can succeed in affiliate marketing? As I understand from the eCommerce section of WWW, very few merchants get significant conversions from affiliate martketing i.e. >1-2% of sales

The typical setup I am talking about would be:

1. Small setup which will unlikely be accepted in CJ.
2. Sells generic products, not own brand or niche
3. Average Sale of $20-50
4. Commission of 10-20%
5. Conversion rate of between 1-2%

Derek

[shri]

<offtopic>
Hey Chris,

Good to see you here.
</offtopic>

[ChrisSanderson]

Hi Shri, freed up some time at last to add another board to join in on :)

We ran a body jewelry affiliate program (still do) and got in quite early when Body Jewelry was still ramping up on the Internet. We got to a point of about 70% of all sales coming from affiliates and the rest from organic SEO and PPC.

Aff Program was run on Shareasale.com

We were offering a 15% commission. The products were not hugely niche as body jewelry is a big market, but it was more niche than silver.

However as the market got more and more crowded with body jewelry sites the program slowed down considerably.

Google now has more results for Body jewelry than silver jewelry!

Right now I wouldn't launch a body jewelry program due to the amount of competition unless I had something hugely unique to offer.

If I was going to open a store right now I'd be looking for something like chopsticks, growing demand, cheap, lots of varieties, good chance for up selling to supporting products (holders, cook books etc), world wide market, cheap to ship.

Cheers

Chris

[rehabguy]

I appreciate the responses here - I just wanted to let you know that I'm monitoring this thread!

[eljefe3]

Yes I know of a company that was doing 8 digits in sales per year from almost nothing.