Affiliation - Pro's and Cons

[Admiral Collections]

Hi

Could anyone advise me on this? Ii fact if someone could run through the whole process with me that would be great. I want to know basically, if it really works. I have been trying to market my business to Accountants because at the end of the day, they see more aged debts than the rest of us. I was wondering if this is an option I could pitch to them as most of them have websites now. Ideas and help welcome!

Hope you all had a good weekend by the way.

Nic :wink:

[Admiral Collections]

No-one knows anything about this at all?


Nic :wink:

[MinuWeb]

I am sure alot of people do, they might just need longer than 1 hour to reply on a monday morning :D

[Admiral Collections]

Touche VS, touche!

Nic

[MinuWeb]

I was going to reply, but am still suffering from saturday night, so will have to wait a while before I can post anything that will anything like sensible.....

[DuaneJackson]

You dont need a website to be an affiliate.

The typical way it works is this:

You sign up to be an affiliate and then get some sort of code or URL that is unique to you - ie: www.websiteaddress.com?affid=12345 or www.websiteaddress.com?code=yourcode

Then, whenever someone visits that URL it records the fact that you somehow sent them there. If they buy anything then you get a percentage of the money earnt.

It works great if you are in a position to get people to use the service you atre affiliated with. It's little effort for you to gert people to the site/service and everyone is a winner.

It's basically the cyber equivalent of me recommending a plumber and saying "tell them duane sent you" and the plumber then buys me a drink to say thanks for the business.

[DuaneJackson]

Sorry, forogt to explain why you don't need a weebsite for some affilate schemes.

Our KashFlow affilate scheme gives you a uinique "promotional code" that gives the buyer a discount. So you can verbally give the potential customer the code, or put it on a flyer or a letter.

[Admiral Collections]

So if I wanted to set up an affiliate system for my company, how do I go about doing this? I know it wold be easy to monitor via telephone calls and all that jazz but I'm clueless regarding the visits to the website, how do you set that up? Can you do it yourself or do you have to speak to your website people?

Nic :wink:

[DuaneJackson]

I'm not sure that for your type of business an online affilate scheme would be suitable. IT's ideal for business like Marks RosesByDesign.

There are off-the-shelf type affiliate programs that can be installed on your site, but you'd need a techie to set them up.

It might be best just to manage it offline and let people know that you'll give them a percentage of any money you earn from business they put your way.

[directmarketingadvice]

Nic

As Duane's plumber example suggests, there's no reason why you should think solely in terms of online affiliations.

I gave a couple of examples of "real world" affiliations in Darren C's thread in the marketing section.

http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=7528

If you were my client, and we were discussing your marketing, one of the questions I would ask you would be if you had approached accountants to set up deals where they recommend you to their clients in return for a finder's fee.

After all, they're going to know about their clients unrecovered debts.

Steve

[Admiral Collections]

Yes Steve, I have rang local accountants etc regarding referrals. I think I put in a thread somewhere that they see the aged debts etc that's why I have targeted them.

Thanks for you help all!

Nic :wink:

[Magsite]

Hi

I've got an affiliate account with the merchant affiliate future - www.affiliatefuture.biz

Click on 'Merchants Sign Up' on the left side of the page. It then has a demo on how they can promote your services as a merchant

Cheers
Lisa

[Admiral Collections]

Wow

Ta Lisa thanks a lot.

By the way anyone seen Jayne today?

Nic :wink:

[bitsnstuff]

Hi Nic,

I am a merchant on Affiliate Future too, so should if you need a hand.

Kate :lol:

[Admiral Collections]

Thanks Kate, will keep in touch


Nic :wink: