Join your Merchant ABCs host Deborah Carney and Affiliate Eric Nagel as they talk about things merchants need to consider before they start an affiliate program.

Look at merchant site from shoppers perspective
- missing images
- broken links
- lack of professionalism, would you give them your credit card
- links on same site? Go offsite right away?

As affiliate:
- goes through checkout looking for leaks, places where shoppers could abandon cart, phone prompt,
- live chat that is commission based (bad)
- cart recovery – giving away info to 3rd party
- privacy policy
- bad color combination
- bad design
- about us should be complete
- consistent branding, does tracking carry over

Is merchant acting as an affiliate?
Here is an article Deborah wrote for FeedFront Magazine about this topic.
- sending traffic away to same or complementary products
- if you are running affiliate program can’t do that, need to get the merchandise in your cart

Really Basic:
Must link to only your own products on your own site or sites of yours that still track all the sales to your affiliate
Have very clear privacy policy, about us, and contact us pages and information
Live Help – not commission based, convert the sale with the affiliate retaining credit for sale

Make it clear to affiliates about non-commissionable items

No adsense, affiliates can target you
Adsense is a separate bot from the Googlebot, Adsense doesn’t bring search engines to you

Phone numbers:
Sales
- must be trackable, via tracking ID visible on site for operator to ask for, operator must ask for it, affiliates will test this before they promote you
- Pay per Call: affiliates get paid for the call by time in call, may be able to track percentage per sale soon

If Customer Service – as long as sales are completed by the customer online, not a problem

Make sure tracking works, test test test

Back up analytics so you can track where transactions came from and can find problems if they exist.

Get a good management firm, at least do a consultation with an expert, don’t try to do it all yourself.

Find us on Twitter:
Eric Nagel
Deborah Carney (a.k.a. Loxly)
Merchant ABCs
Team Loxly
Geekcast.fm

Thanks to Geekcast.fm for hosting our podcasts, check them out for lots of other great podcasts about affiliate marketing and marketing in general.

Merchant ABCs Episode #2 is a Case Study with Mom Entrepreneur Stephanie Elie, owner of LaLa Baby Boutique. Your host Deborah Carney talks to Stephanie about taking her existing online store to the next level with an affiliate program. We will be following Stephanie through the process and hope that other merchants will “learn as we go”.

LaLa Baby Boutique is an online baby and maternity boutique that caters to mom who aren’t afraid to maintain their sense of style when they become parents. You will find unique baby t-shirts, stylish diaper bags, flattering maternity t-shirts and more at LaLa Baby. We look for unique products that can’t be found out your local chain store.

LaLa Baby Boutique
@lalababy
LaLa Baby on Facebook

Follow Host Deborah Carney on Twitter @loxly and our show @MerchantABCs

Many thanks to Geekcast.fm for hosting our podcasts and many other educational and entertaining podcasts related to all things geeky

Merchant ABCs is hosted by Deborah Carney and Vinny O’Hare of Team Loxly internet marketing. In this first episode they talk to merchants that are considering setting up an affiliate program and outline what merchants need to know before making the jump into creating an affiliate program.

Things we will be doing in future podcasts:
Case Studies
Merchant reviews

Covered in this podcast:
Setting up and starting an affiliate program.
Whether you should have an affiliate program.

What is an affiliate

Our podcasts focus on Retail, not ebooks or information products, or lead generation affiliate marketing

Something that people need

PMS – Solve a problem – Problem Make Solution
Set up your site to sell – affiliates won’t promote a site that isn’t already converting.

Get a consultant to optimize your site for conversions before you even think about about adding an affiliate program.

After your site is optimized to sell, decide if you want to have an inhouse or network affiliate tracking solution.

Affiliates get paid commission, networks get a commission and may have a monthly minimum.

Managing your program – networks don’t manage and recruit, they are just for tracking and payment. We don’t recommend adding the network services for management, they may not be in your best interests.

Some things to think about for your program Terms of Service

Network Vs Inhouse

Set up – Graphics, text links, other creatives

Affiliate Manager – Inhouse or Outsourced. Sales manager or PR person shouldn’t be the guy running the affiliate program. Outsourced Program Manager – OPM – company that manages multiple programs, short term or long term.

OPM – can find you good graphics people, help you decide on a network, introduce your program to appropriate affiliates – they are your shortcut to do things the right way.

Merchant – Affiliate – Network – OPM/Inhouse AM

Affiliate links to your site, the links track through the Network or your inhouse tracking – shopper goes to your site and completes purchase. Network takes the affiliate commission and their fee at the time of the purchase, but is invisible to the shopper.

Links to companies mentioned in the show:
Outsourced Program Managers
Shareasale
Commission Junction
Google Affiliate Network
Linkshare

Zen Cart
osCommerce

Affiliate Summit West and East

Follow us on Twitter:
Merchant ABCs @MerchantABCs
Deborah Carney @loxly
Vinny O’Hare @vinnyohare

Many thanks to Geekcast.fm for hosting our podcasts and many other educational and entertaining podcasts related to all things geeky