You have spent months – maybe even years – developing and creating a new info product or software. Now you want to sell it online. Now you could try to do all of the marketing yourself or you could create an affiliate system and leverage your efforts by having hundreds and maybe even thousands of individuals promoting your product for you.
Of course when you partner up with affiliates you need to share in the profits – typically most info products and software products pay their affiliates 50% – or in some cases up to 75% of the sales price. A foolish business person might say – "I did all of the work creating the product, so I am only going to pay my affiliates 10%." That businessman has then almost completely eliminated any chance of affiliate involvement. Would you rather sell 1000 units at $100 each and pay out $50,000 in commissions or sell 100 units and $100 each and pay out $1000? Since your cost per unit for a digital product once it has been made is nearly zero – most business people who rather have the $50,000 in net as opposed to $9000 in net. There are a few exceptions, but for the most part 99% of the time – online affiliates will look to promote products that pay at least 50% commissions. This is especially true when using ClickBank or PayDotCom – the top two ready made info product affiliate systems.
Affiliates, in addition to examining the commission percentage, will want to see a profitable return on investment or ROI. If they purchase targeted traffic from payperclick servies such as Google Adwords – they will want to see a positive return on their investment. Say they purchase 100 click thru's to your website and it costs them $40 – they will want to see some sales that will pay them back more than the $40. Say they make 2 sales and earn $25 commission per sale – then they will have spent $40 and had a ROI of 25% or $10. However if the affiliate spends $40 on traffic and they onlyu make one sale with $25 commission – then they have lost money and most likely will stop promoting your product. Your salespage and product must convert when presented with targeted visitors.
The third item that affiliates will examine when deciding whether to market your product is what sort of marketing and promotion tools do you provide them with. Some affiliate will prefer emails, while others might prefer using Web2.0 media. You need to be able to provide them with multiple methods of reaching their prospects. Ideally you will want to develop a systemized, multi channeled marketing approach that encompasses a wide array of affiliate tools. The easier you make it to promote your website – the more likely they will do so.