Affiliate marketing is a huge industry, with many different companies offering affiliate programs to businesses. But not all are created equal. Some offer higher commissions or lower product costs, while others have more generous referral terms or better conversion rates. So how do you know which one is right for your business?
This article lists three of the most important factors for an affiliate program: Commission, Product Cost, and Landing Page Quality.
Commission
One of the biggest factors for businesses when choosing an affiliate program is how much money it will bring them. Some companies offer affiliates a flat rate, while others payout based on commission tiers. While many factors go into determining what percentage an affiliate program pays you, your main considerations should be whether or not you’ll bring in more money with a higher rate or if it’s worth your while to accept a lower rate in exchange for the volume of sales an affiliate program may generate.
The ability to scale back on a commission percentage when you have limited capital typically separates good affiliate programs from great ones. Getting started with a lower commission percentage is easier, but you can only scale back so far. Negotiating a higher rate is also easier when you have large sales numbers.
It helps to think about every affiliate program on a case-by-case basis and consider the value of each one individually. But generally, if a company offers you 10% or more, it’s usually worth considering. If they don’t offer a rate that meets or beats your normal sales figures, you might be better off turning them down.
An important thing to remember is that not all affiliates are created equal. The ability to bring in a significant amount of sales means a higher commission percentage for you and often attracts more high-quality advertisers who pay even more per sale. So when looking at an affiliate program, look for features that might help increase the overall value of your network (e.g., good landing page templates).
Product Cost
Affiliate marketing does come with some overhead, but most companies try to keep production costs as low as possible while allowing a profit margin for affiliates to make a profit while keeping customers happy.
How much you can make on the program will often depend on how many referrals you’re sending, but it’s important to remember that not all products are created equal in the affiliate world, either. Certain products tend to convert better than others, and some have higher perceived value and allow for more flexibility when making commissions.
If the product cost is too high, it could leave you with no margin for error while also losing money from potentially profitable sales since most affiliates won’t want to promote something without any potential upside for their business.
That number tends to vary regarding how much needs to be charged per sale before you should even consider an affiliate program. If the product cost exceeds $20, that can be a good starting point. That way, it’s low enough to be affordable for affiliates but high enough to have some real value and allow for reasonable commissions without much overhead.
Landing Page Quality
Once you’ve chosen an affiliate program with at least one decent product, it’s time to look at what they offer as landing page templates.
The quality of a landing page will vary from company to company, but there are still some things you should keep in mind when looking through landing pages:
- What technologies does the website use?
- Are their pages responsive, and do they display well on mobile devices?
- Can affiliates integrate ads into the content?
- How easy is it to use the website builder?
- What types of tracking, analytics, and reporting are available for affiliates?
- Does the company allow affiliates to change templates on their site, and what sort of flexibility does that give you in terms of design?
- Is there a way to schedule posts in advance so you can make changes at other times while still posting content at optimal times when your audience is online?
It can be hard to succeed if an affiliate program doesn’t offer satisfactory landing pages. Most affiliates don’t want to create quality content only to have the landing page look unprofessional or fail in some other small way. On top of that, poor landing pages can turn off potential customers and even prevent them from converting since they won’t trust the brand.
So, it’s important to see what templates are available and which ones you like. You can always try out a few landing pages from other affiliate networks or companies in your niche to get an idea of how you’d design it if you had the chance.
This is more of a preference thing than anything else since plenty of fantastic products offer great commission rates but have poor landing pages. But in general, look for something that could be branded slightly without too much effort on your part and try to find one that doesn’t require coding knowledge to make a simple change here or there.
