After receiving tons of email about our affiliate program, I’m starting to overcome its drawbacks. I have nothing major against affiliate marketing, but really hate when someone advises you a product and you find out it’s actually just another affiliate marketing. How to trust a business, when you know it offers affiliate marketers cash for spreading out a good word for them. It is a complex question, so I’ll guide you through some of the advantages and disadvantages of affiliate marketing for our business.
Pros (+)
- Cheapest and best advertising.
- Best ROI available.
- Users get rewarded for promoting our themes.
- More site traffic.
Cons (-)
- Who believes affiliate marketers? I know I don’t.
- Scheduled payments to marketers also take some resources.
- Can be false and misleading advertising sometimes
Conclusion
It really is a tough decision, which I’m not ready to undertake until someone convinces me otherwise. All our competitors use it and I know we could earn a lot more, but risk of losing our credibility is too big at the moment.
Anthony says
I’ve been thinking about this myself. I’ll be launching a few products next month. I’m wondering if I should open it up to affiliates. I definitely agree that credibility can be an issue (especially in the WordPress themes market).
Affiliate marketing must be the most profitable way to market products online, but I also fear what MIGHT happen.
Another alternative is commission based “Evangelists”. I’m partnering up a guy and we will be the only affiliates for legitimate speed reading program online. The owner doesn’t want to open the affiliate program up to just anyone, for credibility reasons (and she doesn’t have the time to do online marketing). She’ll be putting us through her speed reading training.
I wonder how this will play out. There are a lot of pluses and minuses as well. Bad thing about the evangelist route is there is no going back. Evangelists will be upset if you open up the affiliate program to everyone. So I guess it depends on your future plans. Another thing to note is that he and I both have degrees in advertising/marketing, so I’d like to think we’ll be more efficient and effective than your average “blogger”.
Anyway, I’m trying to do the content creation and “marketing” bit myself at the moment. It’s tough. I’m interested to see what you’ll end up doing. As always, best of luck.
Željan Topić says
Do let me know how it went as I never had experience with commission based “Evangelists”. Currently I’m really diggin’ creative advertising, where site members create ads for you and get a reward for it.
In next couple of weeks/months I’ll probably be launching ad campaign with Smashing Magazine, so this could be one of my options. I’m also letting vistiors to name my upcoming themes, so another creative advertising I guess :)