24. SEO & Affiliate Programs

Wal-Mart Barclaycard & Other Major USA Brands Being Sold In South Africa. Yes its true

Most South African readers of this short chapter will be surprised and amazed to learn that such large organizations not associated with South Africa are actually getting sales from here.

You dont see Wal Mart or Barclaycard ads or billboards adjacent to major roads so how do I know this? Quite simply the answer is that I sell their products on their behalf to anyone in the USA wishing to buy them. That is the power of the Internet and the power is available to anyone with a computer and Internet access.

People and organizations like ours are called affiliate marketers and we sell on behalf of these large companies for commission only using website techniques. We are virtual sale reps ... If we sell nothing we earn nothing. However for Wal Mart their affiliate merchant program enables them to garner a massive world-wide sales force working from home mainly and because of the global nature of the web orders are being taken 24 hours per day for virtually no investment in creating these orders.

24.1 SOUTH AFRICA NEEDS TO WAKE UP ..

To the best of my knowledge there are a maximum of some 20 merchant affiliate programs being run in our country with Dial Direct and Kalahari.net being the ones that always come to mind. There are no large traditional companies with significant web presence embracing affiliate programs to generate low cost sales and leads for their companies. Dial Direct which is an UK short term insurance company is quietly taking chunks of market share away from South African competitors using an affiliate program that pays R50 for every lead generated by an affiliate. Why are no South African insurance companies doing this?

24.2 HOW DO AFFILIATE PROGRAMS WORK?

If a company has a website whose main purpose is to sell products, or generate potential sales leads then it makes simple sense to increase the chances of sales being made by increasing the number of people who visit the website. In South Africa most merchants rely upon traditional off-line and very expensive traditional media promotion techniques to push visitors to their websites without supplementing this approach using other tested low cost and very much better techniques like search engine optimization and affiliate programs.

Successful affiliates depend upon using acquired search engine optimization and Internet marketing skills to generate their traffic and they have to keep up to date with this ever changing web dynamic. Their role complements perfectly that of a merchant whose main aim is higher sales and increased market share at lower cost.

Recruiting affiliates and setting up the affiliate program is best left to experts in the field. The best affiliate program management companies do everything the merchant can possibly want them to do including paying out commission cheques to affiliates and supplying affiliates with their own unique tracking codes. Recruitment of affiliate marketers is almost invariably done on-line in real time no waiting weeks for approval after submitting CVs etc.

Once approved by the affiliate merchant the marketer with whom the merchant has an agreement in place creates websites and/or email programs designed to promote the activities and products of the affiliate merchant. This is done at the cost of the marketer and not the merchant. Using the above example Wal Mart would be the merchant and I would be the affiliate marketer. In this case a USA based company called CJ is the affiliate program manager.

The challenge facing any affiliate marketer in turn is to attract as many visitors as possible to see the marketers site promoting the product or service. Having persuaded visitors to take a look at the website the challenge to click through to their merchants site and buy remains and this is the function of the combined efforts of affiliate merchant and marketer. The merchant who supplies good sales and product information always wins.

Setting up an affiliate merchant program is the perfect low-cost way companies of any size or shape and with almost any product profile can benefit from search engine optimization and other efficient Internet marketing techniques. More often than not these techniques that work very well for all parties concerned are seen as too difficult, dynamic or time consuming to do in-house so they do not get done.

The better affiliates are always looking for new products and opportunities and prefer to team up with established brands and companies who have an off-line reputation.

Affiliate marketing programs are such basic and low cost ways for any company to generate sales that I predict an amazing growth in merchant programs in South Africa during 2005.