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Episode 157: How To Start an Affiliate Program
772 Plays2 years ago
Affiliate and reward programs can be an effective way to increase traffic to your website with hopes of increasing revenue. In this episode we will explain the differences between an affiliate, reward and referral program and the best features to look for when starting your program.
Find it quickly;
3:20 - What is an affiliate program?
3:50 - What is a reward and referral program?
7:56 - What platform should I use?
8:50 - Should I change platforms in the future?
10:22 - What features should I look for in a program?
12:45 - What incentives should I offer my affiliates?
18:28 - How do I share my affiliate program?
Recommended
Transcript
Affiliates and Brand Building
00:00:05
Speaker
Yeah, an affiliate program, typically, you would have affiliates or people who are sharing or promoting your product or service. And anybody who books or purchases from that affiliate, anybody that affiliate sends to book or purchase, they would get a kickback. So typically, that is a certain percentage or a flat fee for every person they send
00:00:31
Speaker
Welcome to the Brands at Book Show, where we help creative, service-based businesses build their brands and find more clients. I'm your host, Davy Jones.
Exploring Affiliate and Referral Programs
00:00:40
Speaker
Affiliate and reward programs can be an effective way to increase traffic to your website and, if it works how it's supposed to, increase revenue. In today's episode, we dive into the difference between affiliate reward and referral programs, what kind of program might work for different business types, and how to get started with an affiliate program.
00:00:58
Speaker
As always, be sure to check out the show notes at daveyandchrista.com for the resources that we mentioned during the episode, and we want to hear from you. Let us know what kind of content you'd like to see on the Brands Up Book Podcast as we move forward. To leave your feedback, just send us a DM on Instagram, at daveyandchrista. Now, on to the episode.
Managing Affiliates with Personal Lives
00:01:19
Speaker
All right, back for another episode of the Branson Book Podcast. And today we're talking about affiliate programs. Yeah, I'm excited. We've been on a roll with our podcast recordings so far this month. Yes, getting ahead for summertime. Yeah, hopefully we stay ahead. We just need our kids to keep taking good naps because it is a no school week over here. That's right, which is great. It's so much fun to spend more time with them. It is, yeah. It's also fun when they take naps. Yes, thank you, little Z sleep.
00:01:48
Speaker
That's right. So, but today we're talking about affiliate programs, something that's been on our mind. If you caught our membership episode, all right. So recently we did an episode on just membership must haves, you know, things that we've been thinking about, especially me working on the form fed box website. But we actually, we talked about a few membership sites that you've built lately. So memberships, we've just been doing a lot of membership stuff lately. Part of the membership side of things has been thinking through, I think affiliate programs.
Understanding Program Differences
00:02:15
Speaker
Right. And we've had, I think a good amount of experiences with affiliate programs at this point, either being a part of affiliate program or running our own affiliate programs. Which we've had our own for Dave and Krista for years at this point. Yep. And so I think we've learned a lot from those. We've also had businesses where we've considered referral in affiliate programs and never started one.
00:02:38
Speaker
Right. So we're going to chat a little bit about that today. This episode will likely have a blog post that goes with it. I feel like anytime I'm really thinking through a topic, one of the best ways I can clarify my thoughts, one through a discussion and then two through writing it down. A blog post. Yeah, exactly. So at the outset here, maybe first a few distinctions between an affiliate program, referral programs and reward programs.
00:03:02
Speaker
Cause they sound like they could be the same thing. Yeah. They sound like they could be the same thing. Sometimes people think about them as the same thing and they definitely share characteristics and maybe a program has some aspects of each, but each of them are slightly different. Okay. So you want to start with what is an affiliate program?
00:03:20
Speaker
Yeah, an affiliate program, typically, you would have affiliates or people who are sharing or promoting your product or service. And anybody who books or purchases from that affiliate, anybody that affiliate sends to book or purchase, they would get a kickback. So typically, that is a certain percentage or a flat fee for every person they send your way. So that's the gist of an affiliate program.
00:03:49
Speaker
Reward and referral programs are a little bit different. Typically, the reward isn't monetary, like with an affiliate program. Typically, with an affiliate program, you're getting paid out money. With the reward and referral programs, usually there's some other reward. For instance, I'm trying to think, I think there's a shoe company, right? I think it brought these. Yeah, right. Don't you get a free pair of shoes for every
00:04:12
Speaker
Well, I think you get a $20 credit for everyone who buys through your link. Sure, sure. And so that could equate to a free pair of shoes. Yeah, exactly. Well, you can't use that credit for anything else, but the shoes, right? Yeah. So that I think would be more in the category of a referral or reward program where you can get some sort of reward for sending people to a certain company, but that reward is usually going to be being able to get more of the product that company sells.
00:04:38
Speaker
Right. I think like HelloFresh, if you share about HelloFresh or some of those boxes, you get credit to use for your own boxes in the future. Exactly. So a little bit of a distinction there between those programs. And I only mentioned that at the outset because when we talk about platforms here in a minute, these platforms focus on different things. So if you know you want to create an affiliate program, you're going to want to make sure that you go out and find a platform that does that really well.
00:05:04
Speaker
So, for instance, the affiliate platform that we use for FarmFitBox doesn't do rewards, but they do store credit. So, let's
Challenges for Service-Based Businesses
00:05:15
Speaker
see. Most of our experience is with, at least certainly running a program, is with affiliate programs.
00:05:21
Speaker
Yes. And that's what we have for Dave and Krista and FarmFitBox. Exactly. In thinking through this for your own business, I think trying to focus on or trying to keep it simple, right? Service-based businesses have it a little bit more, I think it's a little more difficult to run something like an affiliate program.
00:05:39
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I've heard of people doing things maybe with senior photography where if you're a brand rep and your friend's book, then you get like print credit. I've heard of people doing things where if you refer to your friend, you give them like looking for a wedding, maybe like you get a gift or like an album, but I think it gets harder to track that stuff and the programs we're going to talk about probably wouldn't work for these situations.
00:06:03
Speaker
Yeah, I don't want to think if you're running a creative business that provides a service that you can't take advantage of some of this stuff. It just is a little bit more difficult to track, right? And so you want to just make sure it's super clear on how some of these rewards are given, right? If someone reaches out and they say, hey, so-and-so told me, you shot my friend's wedding, they just raved about you, what does that person get?
00:06:28
Speaker
as a reward for referring them. I think to keeping it in our experience, running a wedding photography business, it was just easier to reward people, but not in any official capacity.
00:06:42
Speaker
Right? Send them a surprise gift that they weren't expecting as a thank you. And same with wedding planners. We did that a lot too. Maybe give them a free family session or something like that. But it was, I think two things we thought was one, it felt maybe a little tacky just for our brand to do a set affiliate or referral program. Yeah. And we didn't want that to be the focus for people either. Yeah, exactly. And then two, it's just hard to track.
00:07:06
Speaker
It is, yeah. Whereas the stuff that we're going to talk about today is mostly going to work for e-commerce businesses where somebody goes, they add something to their cart and you know that somebody came from a specific link and bought your product and you can track it that way. Yeah, exactly. So anyways, in terms of just thinking about what kind of program you want to do, I think try to keep in mind what's going to be simple for your business.
Starting Simple with Affiliate Programs
00:07:27
Speaker
Also, keep in mind that you don't have to build out this really intricate system right out of the gate.
00:07:32
Speaker
You can, and we highly, highly, highly recommend this if you've never had an affiliate program before, starting out with something that's simple, something that you know won't undercut your profits too much, and then building on it from there. So anyways, let's jump into some of these and then we can sort of get to some of these other things that I want to chat about.
00:07:51
Speaker
Okay. Do you think that people need to start by choosing a platform? Do you think that determines everything else? Yeah, I think, well, first deciding what program you want to do. Do you want to do an affiliate program? Do you want to do a reward program? Then choose a platform. And that way you know exactly what problem you're trying to solve. Right? Right. So I would highly recommend finding something that has a tight integration with whatever it is that you're using to sell. So for instance, like we use WordPress. So I wanted to find a WordPress tool.
00:08:17
Speaker
Well, we use WooCommerce. I'm sorry, yes. We use WooCommerce. But I wanted to find something that worked with WordPress WooCommerce, that integrated directly with it, that I didn't have to create all sorts of workarounds in order to get it to work.
00:08:29
Speaker
And I'm sure that most cart systems have some sort of built-in system or at least a plugin that you could add on. I'm sure Shopify has plugins that you can add on to do affiliates. I know that Thrive Cart has affiliate stuff built into it. So you might just need to look for your platform name and then search affiliate and figure out exactly how to do it. But I think any of the good reputable cart systems are going to have a way to do affiliates.
00:08:52
Speaker
Yeah, and Shopify is the first one that comes to mind. If you Google Shopify affiliate apps, you're going to notice in the first page of Google, each list is going to have basically the same names. And that's a good place to start, just something that's reputable that other people use. Something else that you might want to consider too is on the one hand, you don't want to have to continually switch affiliate platforms, right?
00:09:16
Speaker
Because then all of your affiliates would need to switch their links and that might be hard to do. It's just a pain. With that said, I think the tendency is like, well, I want to choose something that's free or inexpensive to get started and then I'll switch it down the line. Just keep in mind it does get difficult to switch it down the line. I'm not saying you have to go pay for the most expensive, most feature-rich affiliate platform out there, but you do want to choose something that you feel like you could grow into.
00:09:41
Speaker
Yeah. And I think that the good thing about a lot of these plugins is that they're not super expensive, like maybe a couple hundred dollars a year at the most. But if you're thinking about how much revenue these affiliates could bring in, I think that would offset the cost. Yeah, exactly. I think that there's definitely, you want to think about your return on investment there and affiliate
Impact on Traffic and Sales
00:10:00
Speaker
programs. Do you have the potential to create more revenue?
00:10:04
Speaker
I mean, that's the goal of having an affiliate program. I know that with FarmFitBox, like the minute we launched an affiliate program, we saw more traffic to our website. And not only that, had our biggest month as well. So, you know, there's definitely a return there. And you want to keep that in mind when you're choosing it as well.
00:10:20
Speaker
Yeah, the next thing just in terms of choosing a platform, just some features to look for. Not every affiliate program is easy to use. I know, for instance, like one of the affiliate programs that we're a part of and a couple of different companies use this is like, I think it's called share sale.
00:10:37
Speaker
But it always feels so difficult like logging in and finding my links and all that. Yeah. And there might be different links for each product, which can get confusing. And you don't know, like if I share a link to project X and somebody buys project Y or product Y, does my affiliate still get that commission? So I think that can get confusing. Do you want to share what we use? Yeah. So we use WP affiliate.
00:11:02
Speaker
And we use that on both of our web, FarmFed and Davey and Krista. Yeah, and it's been great so far. And this is a WordPress WooCommerce solution as well. A few things that I really like about it, and again, just kind of keeping these things in mind when you're looking for an affiliate platform. One, I really like how they have sort of a standalone affiliate portal. So for Davey and Krista, we don't use this. For FarmFed Box, we do use this. I know, it's on the list.
00:11:25
Speaker
But for farfedbox, when people go to their affiliate program, it actually opens up a new portal. It's not part of their WordPress dashboard. I know that might sound like, oh, well, is that difficult for people? No, it just opens up in a new tab, but it's super clean. It just looks like it's very easy to navigate. It's very easy to see exactly how many people have clicked on your affiliate link and all your other stats. It's really easy to get your link, find creative and copy, that sort of thing.
00:11:53
Speaker
So one thing that I really like about that platform is it's just super easy for the affiliate to use. I also like how I can upload creative and copy. We actually just link out to a Google Drive folder because we just find that's the easiest way to keep it updated. Yeah, exactly. Get people what they need and to stay organized.
00:12:11
Speaker
But those are all things that I look for when I'm an affiliate. I'm thinking one of my favorite affiliate programs that we're a part of is Elementor. Just because when you log in, it's super easy to see, okay, these are how many people have clicked on the link. This is how many people have purchased using the link. This is the payout you can expect. All that stuff, super simple.
00:12:33
Speaker
float us because a good job with theirs as well. Yeah, exactly. So I would think through maybe some of the affiliate programs you've been a part of or some of the referral programs that you've been a part of and make a list of those features and then keep those in mind when you're shopping for a platform.
00:12:48
Speaker
Okay. Good to know. Next up, I think is talking about what kind of incentives to give people.
Balancing Incentives and Profitability
00:12:55
Speaker
So, but incentives do mean like percentages or versus like dollar amounts, et cetera. And I think this is the, one of the hardest parts about creating an affiliate program is you want to incentivize people to share. You also want to remain profitable. Finding a balance there can be difficult.
00:13:14
Speaker
Yeah, because I know I've seen a lot of affiliate programs where somebody might have a code that's like for 50%, well, that's a big percentage, like 20% off. So you would use the code like Krista20 at this cart, and then that takes 20% off, but then I'm assuming the affiliate also gets a commission. So that could be a big percentage off of your revenue if you're doing both of those things correctly.
00:13:36
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. I think a few things that make an affiliate program effective is being able to give the affiliates a coupon code that their community can use to save some money. So there's some incentive for people to buy. So again, if you're giving the affiliate a 15% commission, and then you're also giving their audience a 15% discount code, that can add up.
00:14:02
Speaker
Yeah, again. So you want to think through those things as you're coming up with commission, right?
00:14:07
Speaker
And that's gonna vary pretty broadly based on what you're selling and how much your product is. I mean, if your products are really low cost, something like that might not work for you because it's gonna cut too far into your revenue. Yeah, a lot of people go with percentages versus one time or versus flat fees because a lot of us sell products at different price points. So it's easier just to do a percentage of that product sale. I will say
00:14:32
Speaker
especially if you're working in, if you're a SaaS business, which I'm guessing a lot of people listening are not running SaaS businesses, right? But if you are selling like a digital product, it is, I would say any affiliate program that doesn't give at least 20% commissions, it's not really worth it.
00:14:50
Speaker
Yeah, I mean I feel like we use Flowdesk as an example a lot. I like theirs because I share a code and everyone who uses that code gets 50% off of their membership forever and I get I think like $20 and that's like a flat fee. So it definitely gives me an incentive to share that code especially with design clients who I know are going to sign up anyways because they get 50% off which is amazing for them. Yeah, exactly. So there's a lot of incentive for both parties. I think also the thing with Flowdesk too is that they just make it so easy to share.
00:15:18
Speaker
I guess what I'm talking about is if you're, I'm thinking about some of the plugins, for instance, that we've been asked to be part of their affiliate programs, and it's just like, you get three dollars for somebody purchasing. And it's hard to put in a lot of effort as an affiliate in creating the collateral that you would have to create in order to get people to purchase that. So I think 20% is probably a pretty good benchmark for a lot of people. With that said, of course, you have to do what's profitable for you.
00:15:48
Speaker
And I'm not saying that it has to be 20% to be successful. But for digital products, I'm certainly looking in the ballpark of 20 to 30%. ConvertKit for a long time was one of the best affiliate programs out there because it was 30% recurring over the lifetime of the account, which they've since changed.
00:16:06
Speaker
So if you were grandfathered in, do you still get that recurring revenue? There's been a lot of controversy there. So I don't want to get into that, right? And you could probably Google it and figure all
Changes in ConvertKit's Program
00:16:15
Speaker
that out. But it used to be that you got 30% recurring commission for everybody who signed up using your link. And I mean, that's an awesome affiliate program for the affiliate.
00:16:26
Speaker
With that said, they had to change it, right? Because they determined that they could no longer grow, you know, by giving people that commission, right? Right. So they've had to make adjustments to that. And that's really hard. You have to think about down the line if I change this, right? And keep in mind too, I think people have basically built their businesses around
00:16:43
Speaker
being ConvertKit pros, but that commission they were getting was a big aspect of their revenue each month, right? So for that to change, right? And you have to think like, do you want, like, are you going to be able to change things down the line without upsetting your community?
00:17:00
Speaker
Right? So you don't want to put yourself in a position where all of a sudden you have to walk back on the commission you're giving people or the structure that you're paying people out with because it's not profitable. So that's why I highly recommend starting with something pretty conservative and then building on it from there.
00:17:20
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's a great idea. Yeah, but I mean, you can do recurrent commissions, one-time commissions, you can do flat rate, you can do a certain percentage of the product.
Enhancing Affiliate Engagement
00:17:29
Speaker
I believe for FarmFitBox right now, we're doing 20% commissions. A few things that you can do though, to also incentivize people to share, you can create competitions and you can create leaderboards, you know. I know a couple affiliate programs we've been a part of, they'll publish the top 10 affiliates and the top affiliates will get extra
00:17:47
Speaker
payout. So it's like a top affiliate might get $200 at the end of this competition in addition to what they're being paid out. And can you do this in the affiliate software that you use? Or is this something you'd have to manually do? No, no, no. I think this might be a feature of WP affiliate. And I can look that up real quick as we talk. But yeah, a lot of affiliate platforms out there have this as a feature.
00:18:12
Speaker
Right? Yeah, I think that's really cool. It doesn't drive me, but I know that there's some people who might drive – be driven by that sense of competition. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Well, I'll look at this later. Moving on. I think another big thing is to make things really easy to share.
00:18:28
Speaker
So one thing that we did for, well, we did this for both Farmbed and Dave and Krista, but we have this Google Drive folders filled with images and video clips in various sizes for various products to make it really easy for people to share to social media or share in an email newsletter. And I think that Dave and Krista might even have some swipe copy. You know what Dave and Krista has? We have a free sales page that our affiliates get to help
00:18:53
Speaker
Sell our products so we did that to make it really easy for people to just plug in their codes and then help sell our products yeah i mean anything that you can do to make it to take i don't know just any sort of effort out of sharing. Goes a long way one of the things that we're doing with the farm fed boxes were sending a monthly affiliate email.
00:19:13
Speaker
basically just letting our affiliates know like, hey, this is what's going on. This is what's coming up. And here are different promotions that we have. And, you know, just again, just to keep people kind of up to date.
00:19:25
Speaker
Yeah. And I think that's great if you're a business like FarmPad that has different seasonal boxes. Like I know that you're going to have different boxes coming up for different holidays. And so that's probably awesome. Yeah. And just reminding people like where can they find their links, where they can find creative a copy for those various things and not expecting that they're going to go in and refresh that Google drive document.
00:19:45
Speaker
Right, yes. Most people don't have that much time. And I think making it easy to share is, I think the name of the game when it comes to an affiliate program. And I just think about the affiliate programs we share a lot about. The affiliate programs that we share a lot about are the ones where the affiliate portal is really easy to use and understand. It's worthwhile sharing, but then also it's just easy to share.
00:20:06
Speaker
If we like the product, we're gonna be sharing it about it naturally, but how much we use that affiliate link really comes down to how easy it is to use.
00:20:16
Speaker
Yes, definitely. Anything else you can think of when it comes to affiliate programs? I don't think so. Yeah, I think this is a great introduction to affiliate programs.
Future of Affiliate Programs
00:20:25
Speaker
If you have more questions, this is a topic that I've been thinking about a lot lately and just love to think about in general. So send us your questions about affiliate programs or even just membership stuff. I've been thinking about that a lot lately and who knows, maybe we'll do a few more episodes along these lines. Okay. Cool. Yeah, that sounds good. Awesome. So thanks for joining us guys.
00:20:46
Speaker
Thanks for tuning into the Brands That Book Show. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing and leaving a review in iTunes. For show notes and other resources, head on over to dvandchrista.com.