Tips on How Start an Ecommerce Affiliate Program to Increase Sales

As a retailer who sells online, chances are you have a diverse audience. That’s why you tweak your advertising copy and content to cater to lots of people across different segments.

However it's impossible to reach the majority of your audience, most likely because they don't encounter your ads, have never need to your website, or are not actively looking for products that you offer, so they wouldn't even see your paid per click ads. That fact that your paths haven't crossed means you're missing out on an opportunity to introduce your products to a new prospect to make a sale.

One way to get your products or website in front of these folks is with an ecommerce affiliate program. This is when you partner with influencers in your niche who use email, blog content, and social media to tell their audience about your products. Many ecommerce merchants never even look into affiliate solutions, not even realizing that affiliate programs cost a lot less then advertising, so it's actually a better and more affordable way to increase your sales.

To help you make the most of an affiliate referral strategy, we’ve put together a guide that explains:

How ecommerce affiliate programs work

What you need to know to build your own program

How to manage your program to increase sales

So lets get started!

What is an ecommerce affiliate program?

An ecommerce affiliate program is simply an agreement between you and an individual or business. In affiliate marketing they are called publishers — such as influencers, bloggers, and other small businesses. People that promote other businesses products are also called affiliate marketers. In either case they share your products with their audience. When their followers, or prospects buy your products, complete a lead form, or click a link, the publisher or affiliate gets a commission:

For example, a fitness store sells treadmill online. Since their mission centers around promoting health and fitness, they can partner with publishers or affiliate marketers that blog about health, fitness or working out. In this case even personal fitness trainers would make a good affiliate marketer. This audience might not be looking for treadmill, but because they trust this affiate they follow and appreciate their recommendations, they’re more likely to check out the fitness equipment website and buy something.

When these leads click on the fitness equipment stores affiliate link and buy, the publishers gets a certain commission on sales. Usually a percentage of the sale amount. This ecommerce affiliate program gives the fitness equipment store exposure to people who otherwise might not have found their products.

A benefit with the MobiFirst Ecommerce Builder is that the affiliate system allows you to have a different payout percentage for each individual product in your ecommerce store. With alternative affiliate systems you normally can only set one commission rate for your entire catalog of products.

To drive traffic to your store, each of your affiliate gets an affiliate link to embed in their content. Plus with our MobiFirst solutions you will also have a QR Code for each individual product in your store. This allows you the option let a friend or associate scan your QR code on your phone and make a purchase immediately. Great for when your in a face to face situation.

In either case every time someone clicks on the link or scans your QR Code, a cookie on your website remembers them. You set how long the cookie life lasts — this is how long the prospect has to return to your site to buy, so the affiliate gets credit. We normally set our cookie to lasts for 30 days.

What you pay your publishers varies depending on:

• Your commission structure
• How many affiliate you work with
• The number of followers publishers send your way

The MobiFirst Affiliate System can allow you to change the payout percentage for different affiliates. This allows you to offer high performing affiliates a increase percentage for each sale.

Your affiliates get a custom link and QR Code that they can promote on their own site, on social media. When follows click on the link or scan the QR Code, they land on the affiliate page where all the products they promote are listed. If they buy any of the products on the site the affiliate earns a commission. It doesn't have to be the one product they clicked on, commission is earned on any product in the ecommerce catalog whether they clicked on it or not.

As you can see, ecommerce affiliate programs are a powerful way to get exposure and make more sales.

Now, let’s look at how to get started.

How to launch an ecommerce affiliate program

An affiliate program strategy is a solid way to increase sales. Your commission payouts will vary from month-to-month depending on how many affiliate you have, how much traffic they generate for you along with the resulting sales. Before starting an affiliate program it's recommended to consider your product availability and you'll need to reserve some time to manage the program. These things should be considered before launching your affiliate program.

Here are just a few questions to ask yourself before launching your ecommerce affiliate program:

• Can you manage the program on your own or do you need a dedicated affiliate manager?
• Do you have an idea of who your bloggers and influencers are that you can reach out to?
• Are you willing to help affiliates promote your products?
• Do you have a commission strategy in place?
• What are your affiliate or audience needs?

Track how good a job you’re doing to attract affiliates that convert their leads to sales. Stand out to publishers as having a quality and profitable affiliate program.

Attract affiliates

Find affiliate to partner with. Create a page on your website where publishers apply to your affiliate program, and at the least promote your affiliate program on social media to attract publishers.

• For publishers that apply for your affiliate program, decide if they’ll be a good fit for your program based on their: 
• Traffic: How much traffic do they have on their website or other internet property.
• Audience reach: How many followers do they have on social media?
• Email List: Do they have an email list, if so how many people are on that list?
• Reputation. How closely do their business values match your own?
• Goals. Are they focused on catering to the needs of their audience and providing quality content?

Review and approve affiliates

Use a search engine tool to see how the content of your chosen affiliate ranks in Google. Let’s say you sell fitness equipment and want to partner with bloggers to spread the word. This type of tool shows you how much traffic their content gets and how many times it gets shared: This is a good judge of how well that affiliate will do in terms of bringing in some sales.

The more shares and traffic the report shows for their urls content, the better the chances are that these bloggers will reach a lot of people and generate lots of sales for you.

Also, see if you can figure out your affiliates authority in their niche — for example, look at their domain rank using one of these tools because the higher the rank, the better because they’re seen as trusted sources.

Conduct ongoing affiliate reviews

Once you’ve approved affilaite, do regular reviews to see:

• Which affiliate are generating lots of traffic to your site
• How much of this traffic is converting
• How much you’re paying out to affiliate every month
• Which products are the most popular

Use this information to see how successful your program is and which affiliate are helping you increase your sales. You might want to offer your top affiliate bonuses or tweak their commissions to keep them onboard.

Based on what’s working, focus your affiliate program on certain products and also introduce new ones to the program let affiliate promote the most successful products. Staying on top of affiliate and product performance ensures your program meets your and your affiliate expectations.

To get more affiliate engaged, you may want to offer incentives that included different commission levels. Publishers found that the more they shared, the more they got back in commissions.

Making your ecommerce affiliate program work for you

If your advertising has hit a wall or traffic has plateaued or sales have dropped, consider expanding your reach with an ecommerce affiliate program. Audiences appreciate product recommendations from the influencers they trust, so use this strategy to introduce new products to new audiences.

To make sure your program meets the needs of publishers and increases your sales, test different parts of your program to find the sweet spot — a program within your budget and that affiliate are engaged with. Over time, your sales are will increase.