How to start in Affiliate marketing and succeed in it: 10 steps

Before starting your own affiliate program, research what your competitors, or just the companies you like, have. A little research will help you understand what prices are in your market, or what functionality is needed.
You can call this step zero, and then proceed according to the list:

1. Choose a technological solution.
   Depending on your budget and development resources, you have several options: do everything yourself, buy an enterprise platform, or use a SaaS solution. Each option has its own advantages, however, if you are at the very start, it will be faster and cheaper to use a cloud solution.
   
   
2. Decide on the reward.
   In this place, you can focus on at least two factors: what conditions are offered in affiliate programs from related areas, and also the amount comfortable for your budgets. Perhaps you will pay less for a specific action than your competitor, but your conversion to payment will be much higher, and under such conditions it is more profitable for partners to work with you.
   
   
3. Prepare a website and landing pages.
   Affiliates will lead their audience to your landing pages, so do not be lazy once again to make sure that everything works correctly and maximizes a good conversion. Different promotional materials carry different messages, and it is advisable to customize landing pages that match them.






4. Set up integration.
   One of the most difficult and important steps is to “make friends” the site and the tracking platform. Integration can be pixel or API for more complex solutions. And it happens that it is better to use both in order to correctly transfer data from both the frontend and backend.
   
   
5. Post information about your affiliate program wherever possible.
   Sites with a list of partners, comparisons and ratings, resources where webmasters and your potential partners “hang out” - declare yourself wherever you can, and it will be beneficial. And to save your time, we have already prepared a list with examples of such resources.
   
   
6. Invite partners.
   In addition to posting on the resources, you must actively contact potential partners and involve them in your program. There is a separate article on how to look for them here .
   
   
7. Decide on payments.
   How much, how often and how you will make payments also determines the internal functionality of the platform. You can start with a simple unloading of commissions and transfer the details and amounts for payments to the accounting department, notifying through the partner system that you have transferred payments to work. And also, you can connect a provider for payments and do everything right from the interface.
   
   
8. Set up conditions for motivating and rewarding partners.
   There are different motivation strategies for partners to help achieve the desired goals. For example, an increase in rewards from a certain number of successful actions per month, a drawing of gifts among those who have achieved high results, as well as special conditions for those who join the program by the end of the month. Special promotions are needed not only for your customers, but also for partners - announce an increased rate at certain periods, or for certain types of offers, and also motivate them by clearly showing the success of other partners.
   
   
9. Diversify promotional materials, promotions and special offers for partners.
   One link to the site is not enough, and many partners welcome different formats of materials for promotion: from pictures and videos to html-banners and registration forms. If resources are available, you can create special codes for insertion on partner sites that act as interactive banners. Such forms for collecting applications are very popular. In addition to the promotional materials themselves, it is important to diversify the events so that the partners have reasons to focus their audience's attention on you more often, for example, this month you have a super-discount on irons, and then Black Friday, and then the 1 + 1 = 3 promotion. .. Share your insights, for example, that this particular jacket is the best sold in winter, and those who sell 500 of these jackets will receive a smartphone as a gift.






10. Collect feedback from partners.
    They are often the engine of progress in materials decisions and a source of fresh ideas. Conduct surveys on how to improve your offers, use all available channels (mail, Telegram, calls, etc.)

You can complete all these steps using GoCPA solutions for your affiliate program. And we, in turn, are ready to help and share our expertise at any stage. 

Watch our short manual on how to start your affiliate program with GoCPA: