Five-Part Series on Affiliate Marketing: The Agreement

It’s important to have a formal agreement, which is the fourth thing you need to make your affiliate marketing relationships work. 

It’s important to understand what your rights and obligations are. Some affiliate marketing relationship agreements are only a few paragraphs long. Others are pages. One is not necessarily better than the other. What is more important is clarity. Do you understand what you can — and cannot do — to promote the relationship? Do you understand how, and when you will get paid? Is there anything prohibited by the arrangement? 

For example, some affiliate programs (like domain name registrar 1and1.com) will allow you to use your own affiliate link to purchase products and services, and you’ll get paid on the order — basically, giving you a discount. Others strictly prohibit you from using your own affiliate code. AdSense, for example, will kick you out of the program if they find that you click on the ads that appear on your content, because this artificially inflates the income you receive from the advertising program. It’s important to know this!

Payment is also an area that isn’t often examined too closely by resume writers and career coaches. You might be thrilled to learn you’ve earned a couple of 30% commissions — until you see that the payment is still “pending” in your account. It’s one thing if your payment was just held up a bit while you submitted a tax identification number form to the affiliate network — it’s quite another if the affiliate provider has a $250 payment threshold…and you earn about $25 per month. Do you want to wait almost a year for your payment?

So there’s a balance. You might choose to affiliate with an independent program that pays a healthy commission on a regular basis — OR you can choose to go with an affiliate network that offers multiple affiliate opportunities, but at a smaller commission, because it’s easier for you to hit the payout threshold if you’re promoting multiple products.

The fifth, and final post in this series: Your promotional plan.

Five-Part Series on Affiliate Marketing: What Not to Promote

This is the third article in a five-part series for resume writers interested in affiliate marketing.

A key part of the affiliate marketing process is an understanding of what you want to promote and not. This is the third thing you need to make affiliate relationships work. There are certain things that you should not be promoting. This brings us into the discussion of what you shouldn’t be selling.

For example, have you ever visited a resume writer’s website and he or she had Google Ads on the home page — and the ads are promoting low-cost resume writing services? (I tried finding an example for this blog post, but fortunately, the majority of resume writers realize this is a huge "no-no.") If you do use Google Ads on your site, did you know there is a setting you can adjust on Google AdSense to eliminate your competitor’s ads from being shown on your content?

However, if you’re looking for complete control of what appears on your website and/or blog, don’t affiliate with Google AdSense. Even though you can exclude direct competitors, you still can’t control exactly which ads, from which companies, will appear on your content.

When working as a direct affiliate (that is, not just hosting ads on your blog or website or in your newsletter), you don’t want to promote any product that you don’t have personal knowledge or experience with. After all, as an affiliate, you are basically endorsing these products. You are staking your reputation on the products and services you choose to affiliate with. One definition of the word affiliate is: A company in which another company has a minority interest; more generally, a company which is related to another company in some way. So when you become an affiliate of a company, you are tying your brand to their brand. This is why it is important to carefully consider which products and services you choose to promote.

Next up in the series: The importance of a formal agreement.

Five-Part Series on Affiliate Marketing: Your Online Presence

The second step in developing effective affiliate relationships is having a website, blog, or online presence. 

E-newsletters are nice, but you’re not going to get everyone to opt into receiving your e-newsletter. So if you don’t have some other online presence — and most often that is a website or blog — you’re missing out on the opportunity to talk to non-clients — or prospective clients — about your services — but also your affiliate marketing services.

The same content-to-advertising ratio used in e-newsletters applies to your website and blog. Make sure you’re providing useful content in both of these forums — and don’t­ let it overshadow your primary marketing focus — whether that’s resume writing or career coaching.

And make sure you disclose your affiliate marketing relationships. (But that's a whole other blog post!)

Next up in the series: What you shouldn't be promoting with your affiliate marketing.

Five-Part Series on Affiliate Marketing: Your List

This is the first in a five-part series on Affiliate Marketing, building on our "Introduction to Affiliate Marketing for Resume Writers" post last week. The first post focuses on your list.

Those in the affiliate marketing world believe the list is the Holy Grail. But it’s not just the size of your list that matters. Frankly, the quality is more important. If I gave you a phone book, you’d have a list. But it wouldn’t necessarily guarantee you any sales, whether for resume writing or affiliate marketing products. Sure, you could probably get 1% of the folks you contacted to buy, but the return on the time and money you’d have to invest to make that happen probably wouldn’t justify the effort.

On the other hand, what if you could get 20% of your existing resume clients to purchase a resume distribution service or recruiter targeting service?

A few years ago, I conducted an interview with Steve Shellist, of ResumeSpider, which bills itself as the “E-Harmony” of job search. He gave this example of the kind of revenue that a resume writer could expect promoting ResumeSpider:

If you write 5-7 resumes per week, and convert 5-6 of them each month to become ResumeSpider clients, you will earn $100 to $120 per month (based on a $65 average sale price, resulting in a $20 commission per order). But remember, they don’t have to be one of your clients to be a client of ResumeSpider — meaning, every visitor to your website is a potential sale. You can easily double your affiliate profits if you have a web site that gets decent traffic and you promote ResumeSpider visibly to visitors.

If you’re the type of writer that generates a resume each day (and/or you get 5-10 job seekers looking at your website each day), you could conceivably convert 20% of them into affiliate marketing product users … and you’d make that $100 per month goal.

Next up in the series: Establishing your online presence.