[shoelover]

I am just in the midst of getting (took out link) affiliate program off the ground and am now looking for ways to get the affiliates who have signed up with me to promote my site (duh?!?)

What sort of motivation (ie bonus) is reasonable to pay an affiliate for their first sale

What are reasonable incremental sales level to reward an affiliate for? Assuming your average purchase is just under $100.00 and base commission is 10%. Bump up the commission 1% for every $500 worth of sales over a thousand (monthly basis)? What have other people found effective in terms of bonus structure, especially if you have no real base line to go from.

If i read every suggestion on this site and others, i would be paying about 150% commission and as odd it may sound, i need to eat too

Thanks

Josh

[Rollerblader]

Josh,

Welcome to ABW first of all. Secondly, you need to buy a program announcement if you want a link to your program for recruitment purposes.

I would suggest removing the link before a mod does for you.

Also, giving a bonus for your first sale is a good motivational tactic. Read in the Affiliate Managers forums and you will find answers to your questions.

[shoelover]

link was just to my website. really wasnt thinking of recruiting here. already have enough in the program at the moment

[Rollerblader]

no sweat, just wanted to let you know =0) There are tons of threads here that will help you find your answers. Just use the search feature for terms like caps, activation, etc...

[shoelover]

much thanks.......

[loxly]

No one thinks you should pay your affiliates an unreasonable amount. If that is the information you are getting from other forums or ebooks or sites, then you REALLY are glad you found ABW. Welcome, get settled with a cup of coffee and start reading.

[loxly]

Oh and recruiting and motivating affiliates is 90% of your job as an affiliate manager. There are no easy answers or quick fixes

[MichaelColey]

A first sale bonus can be very effective.

Let me share a little analogy.

We wanted to help motivate our 4-year old to learn his ABC's. He had picked up about half a dozen letters already, and we decided to try flash cards with him. He had absolutely no interest in flash cards and his attention span was about 15 seconds with them.

My wife decided that M&M's would motivate him, so she offered him one M&M for each letter that he knew. We went through the flash cards and he knew the same M&M's that he did before, so he got about six M&M's but didn't learn anything new.

I decided that he just didn't have the right motivation. I divided the flash cards into a pile of the letters that he did know and a pile of letters that he didn't know. I told him that I would go through the letters that he didn't know with him, and then I would go through them again and give him TEN M&M's for each new letter that he knew at that point. (That was far more M&M's than we wanted to give him, but it motivated him tremendously!) He picked up about four new letters, and he was really excited about the forty (mini) M&M's. Next, I repeated the process with the letters he still didn't know, offering him five M&M's for each new one he picked up. He picked up several more. I would also use M&M's to reinforce the ones he already knew by offering him a certain number (like 5 or 10) if he identified all of the ones in the pile of letters that he knew. (When we just focused on the ones he didn't know, he got discouraged.) Over the next week or two, he eventually learned all 26 letters.

Affiliates are very similar. It can be very beneficial to prime the pump by offering far more than you'll make from a single sale, just to get them active. If just 1 in 10 of those affiliates that you convince to sign up become a steady producer, you'll reap tremendous rewards.

Just make sure you're rewarding the right actions.

[Stephanie Harris]

Great advice, Michael. Hopefully your son didn't go into sugar shock from your motivational techniques :-)

[chillini]

I would offer 80% no matter what.

[lookingfortips]

Go to the program announcement forum HERE and sort the threads by the amount of replies.

Generally, the amount of replies is indicative of a popular program launch that was enticing enough to get affiliates talking about it. However, this is just a rule of thumb. Some of the posts with a high amount of comments came from posters who were unhappy with (or even making fun of) the program (lol). So, make sure you quickly scan through the posts to sort through the ones which generated a lot positive interest vs. negative interest.

After you have seen the programs that are popular with other affiliates, work things out amongst yourself to see what kind of incentives you can afford. Then, offer the best incentive package you can.

Not fool proof but I started doing it last week and have gotten several good ideas.

[MichaelColey]

Excellent suggestion! Also, don't just look at the number of replies, but also the number of views (although there is often a good correlation).

[Rollerblader]

I have to disagree to an extent. The longer the announcement has been out there means it has had more time to get views, more searches to pull it up on the site, etc.... I would take it and also take time into consideration.

You may also want to think about checking to see when the last activity of the AM/OPM posting was, it could be ancient and no longer the same payouts, no longer have a good manager etc... and vice versa, the old manager could have been horrible and now they are under new management and have become a great program, but over time, the thread had been lost.

Also, when you have sorted, many of the people who are very successfull might not spill the beans or post or respond to the thread because they want to keep it on the downlow so that they have the first crack at making it huge for themselves. That is another possibility which has been mentioned in numerous other threads in alternate contexts (when a Newbie asks which programs you use to make a ton of money and everyone says why would we tell you, etc...).

It is a very good way to pick through that forum, however remember the other things that also effect the factors you use to determine what is a good program and what isn't. Great suggestion though!

[Rollerblader]

I just read this out of context, I thought it was an affiliate asking how to determine a new program as being good. sorry about that everyone, I kind of have the flu today and am not on my full game.

[MichaelColey]

I just changed the title to make it a little more obvious that this thread is asking about what merchants can do to motivate affiliates.