I am thinking some time about how we could provide or support our affiliates with content information. Although I believe an affiliate should start a blog or website on a subject the love, know or at least are passioned about it, it could be helpfull to get them started.

We recently, as a company started our on blogs, where we have news items, video (interviews), etc. And I suppose you could set-up a content portal with feeds from blogs or sites which have content that is relevant for your products. Disadvantage hereby is that the content is not unique.

But than again, maybe it’s up to the affiliate to enrich the content.

As you can see my mind is not set-up totally..

I do like the idea of a contest with a nice incentive….

I believe there are at least three things that affiliate program managers can do to help affiliates take advantage of the shift. These 3 things are: (i) run contests/promos, (ii) share success stories, and (iii) offer hands-on help.

1. Contests/Promos

Not too long ago we advised a client to run a “Build-A-Blog – Get Cash” promo where affiliates were encouraged to start a brand new blog covering the merchant’s vertical. We provided three extrinsic motivators (they can be easily remembered as three C’s): (i) content, (ii) cash, and (iii) commission increase. For content – see point #3 below. As far as cash, knowing that one the keys to running successful blogs is posting regularly, we paid affiliates $10 as soon as they posted their 4th article within a month (we encouraged them to post at least once a week). In addition to cash we also agreed to increase affiliate commission as soon as they posted that 4th article.

2. Success Stories

It is important to also encourage affiliates by sharing success stories of other affiliates in the program. Obviously, all confidential information (e.g.: affiliate ID, URL, keywords used, etc) has to be kept private, but if you see that within 7 days a blog affiliate has generated more sales than any coupon affiliate in 1 month (by the way, this is a real-life example), you want to use this example to encourage others to use their blogs, forums, social networks more actively (or launch new ones). Again, all sensitive information must be kept confidential.

3. Hands-on Help

Providing free content is a good example. We did it as a part of the above-mentioned Build-A-Blog promo. The merchant agreed to provide affiliates with the text of the first article to post on each blog (unique article for every blog) making things even easier to start.

Additionally, affiliate program managers should be ready to help affiliates install blog platforms (e.g. WordPress), themes, forums, and even when he/she is not qualified to answer a question, know where to get the answer from.

Hope this helps, and feel free to share your own ideas too.

Could you maybe share your thoughts how AM’s best can support their affiliate to capitalize on this shift? Should merchants offer free content to their affiliates? Can webservices be a tool to support affiliates in their development of social media applications?

Regards,

Ralph Remkes