Affiliate Marketing - Affiliate Marketing Programs in NZ
"Affiliate Marketing......
…the technology that most greatly assisted Amazon to become the success it is today."
No one form of online advertising has been so successful as Affiliate Marketing, simply because as a website owner your only costs are directly related to each sale you make....... and yet despite it being the singularly most popular form of online advertising everywhere overseas, New Zealand businesses have failed to realise and understand how and why it is so effective at profitably driving online sales of products and services.
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What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate Marketing is a structure where literally hundreds of other websites within your target market will advertise your products or services at no cost to yourself. These potential customers are then directed to your website and then as and when a sale is successfully completed on your website, they are paid a small commission amount based upon a percentage value of that sale.
This allows the online retailer or service provider to factor an accurate advertising cost into their sale price, without being exposed to online marketing costs that produce little or no sale. It is virtually the perfect online marketing model because it eliminates the financial risk to the retailer or service provider, and it provides a win-win situation for both parties.
Overseas, Affiliate Marketing has become a fulltime occupation for many thousands of private website owners that understand the nature of online marketing and have the technical ability to draw large volumes of Internet traffic to their websites, where they are presented with your products and services being advertised, which are of course then sent to your site.
How do I start an Affiliate Marketing Program on my site?
If you are an online retailer or alternatively a service provider,and you realise the benefits offered by operating an Affiate Marketing Program on your website, you have two options.
You can either:
- Buy Affiliate Marketing Program software and install it on your own server which you then operate on an independant basis or;
- You can sign-up with an Affiliate Marketing company which will operate the program on their servers
Which Affiliate Marketing Program do you Reccomend?
We have been directly involved in Affiliate Marketing in the UK andUS since the mid 1990's and more recently Australia and now New Zealand. During that time we have been involved in virtually all facets of Affiliate Marketing and as a result are well placed to offer accurate and reliable "hands on" advice, but we do not directly offer either product ourselves.
However it is as a result of our involvement in the industry since it's inception that we strongly advocate using an Affiliate Marketing Company as opposed to an independantly operated software package that you attempt to install and run yourself.
But to put our reccomendation into perspective let's consider some pro's and con's;
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To operate your own Affiliate Marketing program independently, you will be required to install and maintain the relevant software package on your own server. Sometimes the installation can provide problems but more often than not it is the problems that can arise from maintaining it that will prove to be a absolute headache. If you expect other websites (your affiliates" to support and advertsie your products on a commission only basis, you need to have their confidence. Loose their confidence and you will find you have an Affiliate Marketing Program but no Affiliates. Using an Affiliate Marketing Company relieves you of all those potenttial problems.
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To operate your own independant Affiliate Marketing Program means that you have to go and find all your Affiliates - those sites that are willing to place your advertising on their websites. From personal experience we know that it can literally take months of work to find a pool of evn a hundred Affiliates. However by there very nature of their business, an Affiliate Marketing Compmay will already have a pool of several thousand active Affiliates to which you have immediate access and little or no work is required by yourself for them to place your advertising on their site.
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Once your Affiliate Marketing Program is up and running and you have a pool of Affiliates publishing your advertisining, and you are receiving the traffic and sales from their efforts, they will need to be paid their commissions each month. Again we can tell you that even if you had only 20 Affiliates providing 20 sales each day, and you have the responsibility of tracking each sale to each Affiliate, over the course of a month you will quickly find that you are forced to employ more staff just to accommodate this additional administration ....and even if you can find the right person with the right qualifications, the additional cost quickly outweighs the benefits. The significant additional benefit of using an Affiliate Marketing Company is that they provide all of this back-office administration for you and you are left free to concentrate on what you should be doing..... working with your affiliates to drive sales and fulfilling orders.
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Liaising with your Affiliates is a fourth key issue. To a large extent, your Affiliates become a significant additional sales force that you have at your disposal and a regular liaison with them is essential if you want to maintain their sales efforts and trust. Operating an independant Affiliate Marketing Program will require you to take that additional workload onboard, whereas the if you are using an Affiliate Marketing Company they maintain all Affiliate liaison requirements for you.
There are also other issues that should also be taken consideration but the four we have already discussed are the key issues. Do not hesitate to contact us if you wish to discuss your specific requirements in more depth.
Which Affiliate Marketing Companies operate in NZ?
In most respects online marketing in New Zealand is still in it's infancy and as a result, no Affiliate Marketing Companies operate from an office address in New Zealand.
However there are 3 such companies in Australia :
- CommissionMonster (Highly Reccomended)
- DGM
- KlixGalore
For those customers with websites in this country whose target markets are New Zealand and Australia we reccommend Commission Monster because they have an infrastructure which allows them to easily offer their services to companies in New Zealand. We also know them and have confidence in both their systems and services. They also have intentions of opening a dedicated office in New Zealand in the near future and they offer the overall most cost-effective entry into an Affiliate Marketing Program.
Should you wish to know more about these companies, the services they offer, please do not hesitate to contact us for further advice.
How to choose the right Affiliate Marketing Company
When looking for to select an Affiliate Marketing Company, the issue that always must be of primary importance is the geographical location in which they are based and operate.
If for example they operate within the UK, they will have an established pool of Affiliates in that country, and if you are targetting the UK as your market, this is where you need your affiliates to be based. While cost, and length of time that they have been established as a company are always important considerations, the primary issue is selecting a company that can provide you with an effective pool of Affiliates that work and specialise in the market that you want to target.
If you need assistance in selecting an Affiliate Marketing Company that is right for you then don't hesitate to contact us for further help as we work with most of the companies listed below.
What are the right Affiliate Marketing Companies to consider if we wish to target other overseas markets?
For the New Zealand and Australian markets:
- Commission Monster
- DGM
- Kilx Galore
For the UK market:
- Affiliate Future
- Affliate Windows
- Commission Junction (UK)
- DGM
- TradeDoubler
For the USand Canadian markets:
- Commission Junction (US)
- LinkShare
For Continental European markets
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