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by Joe Dysart
While some e-commerce players often bemoan the reality that customers can visit or depart a Web site with a single mouse-click, others in the uniform industry are embracing that ease of navigation to stoke sales. Specifically, they are paying Web site owners for every mouse-click that sends a potential customer their way a concept known as Web affiliate marketing.
“Affiliate programs can do wonders for a business, if run properly,” says Peter Kent, author of Poor Richard’s Internet Marketing and Promotions. Barry Silverstein, author of Business-to-Business Internet agrees; “The affiliate concept is so uncomplicated and easy for both parties that it is possible for everybody to be a winner. There is little risk on the part of either the affiliate program sponsor or the affiliate.”
Uniform industry players can benefit from affiliate programs in two ways: 1) They can offer commissions to referral Web sites that steer sales to their Web site, and 2) They can become a referral site themselves and steer sales to other Web sites.
Offering commissions to other web sites
Like so many e-commerce things, one of the pioneers of affiliate marketing is bookseller Amazon.com. Under Amazon.com’s model, Web sites can sign on with the site as “associates” and offer links to Amazon.com’s site from their own. Every time a Web site visitor clicks on the Amazon.com link and buys something from the bookseller, the Amazon associate gets a small commission.
Currently, Amazon.com’s affiliate program is one of the most commonly used affiliate models on the Web. Commissions typically range from one to 15 percent. And derivatives of the model sometimes offer a two-tier commission structure, paying higher-traffic Web sites higher commissions for referrals, according to Susan Sweeney, author of 101 Ways To Promote Your Web Site.
Amazon.com has done phenomenally well with its model, linking together more than a half million Web sites since the mid-’90s that either sport the Amazon.com banner or recommend specific Amazon.com products with a hotlink to the Amazon.com site.
Granted, not every one of Amazon.com’s more than half million referral sites are huge sales
generators. In fact, many of those sites do not generate any sales at all. But that’s of little concern to Amazon.com. Referral sites get paid only when sales are made.
Currently, most uniform industry businesses engaging in affiliate marketing follow the Amazon.com model. AllHeart.com, a medical supplier that offers uniforms as part of its product mix, offers a referral site $5 for every sale it steers AllHeart.com’s way. SchoolUniforms.com pays referral sites five percent on every sale referred.
Other industry sites offer similar commissions: U.S. Calvary (www.uscav.com) pays three
percent on every sale, and GAIA Ultimate Sports, which includes team sports uniforms in its product catalogue, pays five percent per sale. One of the most lucrative affiliate marketing programs is Worldwide Sports Supply (www.wwsport.com). It pays 15 percent of every sale steered its way by a referral site.
A second genre of affiliate programs puts a slightly different spin on affiliate marketing no sale is required. Instead, such affiliate programs “pay a Web site a fixed amount for every visitor that clicks through to the program creator’s home page, and engages in predefined actions,” says Sweeney.”The required action is quite often downloading a free demo, ordering a catalog, requesting a price quote, or the like,” she adds.
Meanwhile, a third major genre of affiliate programs rewards referring sites that agree to run a banner ad of the sponsoring company on their site. Every time a visitor clicks on the banner ad, the participating Web site gets a flat fee.
If you’re thinking of starting your own affiliate program in which your site will be the sponsor and you will pay other sites a commission to refer business to your Web site you may want to considering outsourcing the administration of your affiliate marketing program.
Outsourcing offers a number of advantages. For starters, referral sites that have been around the block a few times often feel safer dealing with a third party that acts as a go-between for the two parties.
Commission Junction (www.cj.com), for example, will host an affiliate marketing program for your store. This third party already has relationships with thousands of referral sites that are participating in other affiliate marketing programs that it administers on the Web sites that already trust the Commission Junction name.
Referral sites also like third-party administration services because these service providers also generally provide 24/7 access to their sales performance stats with your site, as well as a number of related reports.
Plus, the referral sites know that third parties generally closely monitor the payment practices of the affiliate marketing programs they are monitoring. If a site offering commissions on sales does not come through with payments to the referral sites or payments are slow, most third parties will drop that sponsoring site from their service.
Aside from Commission Junction, other third party service providers include AffiliateShop.com, AffiliateZone, and BeFree.com.
Should you decide to keep administration of your affiliate program in-house, be prepared for a significant increase to your workload. “The good news is that affiliate programs really do work,” Kent says. “The bad news is that they can be difficult to set up and a lot of work to run.” Uniform industry businesses determined to administer their programs with in-house software can check out software packages like AffiliateLink, by AffiliateZone.
Becoming a referral site for other businesses
Becoming a referral site for another business is relatively simple. All a uniform industry member needs to do is sign up online as a referral site, post a link to the business it would like to promote and wait for the commission checks to hopefully start rolling in.
For example, a uniform industry site might test the concept of becoming a referral site for Amazon.com by offering reviews and/or descriptions of specific uniform or apparel-related books that are sold by Amazon.com. Under the Amazon.com program, a uniform industry site would earn 15 percent on each “click-through” to a specific book that results in a sale on Amazon.com’s site.
Other booksellers and magazine sellers offer similar commissions. And currently, Refer-it.com, an online information clearinghouse on affiliate programs, tracks more than 100 book and magazine-related affiliate programs.
“The simple fact is that people buy books online,” says Daniel Gray, author of The Complete Guide to Associate and Affiliate Programs on the Net. “Consequently, the bookstore programs have been the first step into the world of affiliate marketing for many a Web site. If you’re ready to make your initial foray, sign up with one of the brand merchants.”
While it’s a tempting prospect to become a referral site to as many businesses as possible, analysts advise caution when joining the affiliate programs of other businesses. “Don’t assume that an affiliate program or its sponsor is legitimate just because you find it in a directory,” Silverstein says. “As with any other business venture, unknown entities need to be investigated. Find out how long the program principals have been in business, how many affiliates are involved, and ask for references.”
Plus, make sure the site you’re steering traffic to is related to the uniform industry in some way. “Typically, your affiliate program will be more successful if the sponsor’s products or services are complementary to your own,” notes Silverstein. “You should think about drawing a relationship between the sponsor’s offerings and your site.”
Gray concurs: “Choosing only the most relevant programs can take discipline. A merchant with a higher relevancy and a lower commission schedule is a better bet than a merchant with low relevancy and higher commissions.”
Good places to start evaluating the spectrum of affiliate programs available on the Web include the third-party services mentioned above, as well as Iboost (www.iboost.com) and GeoCities.
For more information on affiliate marketing, you can also check out ClickQuick (www.clickquick.com), which offers a detailed analysis of all forms of affiliate marketing programs currently available on the Web. It also offers an analysis of banner ad networks a related promotional tool.
Other information clearinghouses on affiliate marketing include Associate Programs
(www.associateprograms.co.uk), Associate-It (www.asssociate-it.com), I-Revenue (www.i-revenue.net), Cashpile (www.cashpile.com) and AssociateCash (www.associatecash.com).
Joe Dysart is an Internet business consultant based in Thousand Oaks, Calif.
Voice: (805) 379-3673
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.digitalubiquity.com
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