When you’re running an e-commerce site and you want to get more customers or increase your sales, there are many solutions, but one of them has earned its spurs because it’s so profitable and easy to set up: e-commerce affiliation. But how do you find affiliates for your e-commerce site?
Find out more about e-commerce affiliation, its advantages and how to set up an affiliation program.
What is e-commerce affiliation?
E-commerce affiliation is a marketing strategy that enables an e-commerce site to increase its traffic and sell more products or services.
The e-commerce site or advertiser establishes a partnership with an affiliate site or publisher.
Through this partnership, the affiliate site sells the advertiser’s products and receives a commission for each sale made.
To make this partnership a reality, the advertiser’s e-commerce site uses an affiliation program.
This affiliation program makes it possible to track sales obtained thanks to the intervention of the affiliate site.
To sum up e-commerce affiliation in 5 steps :
- The advertiser/e-commerce site creates an affiliate program.
- The publisher/affiliated site promotes the advertiser’s product.
- The product sells.
- The advertiser checks whether the affiliate site is the source of the sale.
- The affiliate site is remunerated by the advertiser.
There are two advantages to using an affiliate system:
- You add an acquisition channel to your marketing and sales strategy.
This increases your sales and traffic. - You increase your brand awareness.
The affiliate site must recommend you in order to sell your products.
A recommendation means that your site or products are of high quality.
How do you set up an affiliate system for your online store and find affiliates for your ecommerce?
Determine the cost of commission
Before setting up an affiliation system (and therefore before trying to find affiliates for your ecommerce), you need to take into account elements such as the cost price.
Using the cost price of your product, you can determine the amount of commission you’re going to pay your affiliates.
Next, find out how much commission your competitors are offering, so that you can match or beat them.
After all, commission is important to affiliates.
62% of them take commission levels into account when choosing an advertiser.
So you need to offer an attractive commission.
Create a dedicated page to help potential affiliates find you
A link to your affiliate program is a must in the footer of your website.
This lets potential affiliates know that you offer e-commerce affiliation.
They can then contact you easily.
This link should then redirect to a dedicated page.
This page should contain all the information about what you offer:
- general conditions of partnership between affiliate and advertiser,
- percentage of remuneration,
- registration form, etc.
By displaying this information, you have less sorting to do when it comes to recruiting affiliates.
Support your affiliates
Because knowing how to find affiliates for your ecommerce business isn’t enough, in parallel with the process of setting up your affiliate program, you need to consider how to support your affiliates.
To help affiliates sell your products more effectively, you’ll need to provide them with banners featuring your image, which they can place on their websites.
You can also create pop-up windows.
These elements ensure that only the graphic elements you provide are used.
In this way, you convey a single, consistent image to your prospects on the Internet.
Keep track of your data
To ensure that your e-commerce affiliate system runs smoothly, you need to keep track of your data:
- commissions paid,
- number of products sold per affiliate,
- traffic acquired through affiliation,
- return on investment, etc.
This can be done manually, which can be time-consuming.
You can also use software that automates data collection.
This way, you can better monitor the performance of your affiliate program.
Share your e-commerce affiliate links
To promote your affiliate program and find new affiliates for your ecommerce business, share your links!
You can do this by registering in affiliate program directories or specialized affiliate forums.
Potential marketers and affiliates can find you there and contact you.
How to find affiliates for your ecommerce?
Affiliate profile
Before looking into how to find affiliates for your ecommerce business, you need to determine the criteria on which you choose them.
When a well-known site redirects its readers to your website with an inbound link, search engines place you in better search results.
In effect, this tells the search engines that your website is of high quality.
Therefore, choose affiliate sites that already have regular traffic and that are of high quality.
Also, a quality affiliate site is certain to convert prospects into customers.
It’s better to focus on a few affiliate sites with traffic that converts, than many affiliate sites with very little traffic and conversion.
Keep an eye on the competition
Another way of recruiting affiliates for your ecommerce site is to identify the backlinks of your competitors’ sites.
Backlinks are incoming links from blogs or other websites pointing to your competitors’ websites.
By identifying these backlinks, you can pinpoint the origin of your competitors’ traffic.
You’ll know which websites are promoting their products.
If these sites are of high quality, you can contact them to sell your products too, and become an affiliate.
Search online
Do an online search for product comparison sites.
For example, if you sell mixers, look for an appliance comparison site.
This type of website can become a good affiliate site and could recommend your products.
You could then propose a partnership through an affiliation.
You can also search on social networks.
Many influencers can be found promoting products on these networks.
You can then get in touch with potential affiliates.
Contact bloggers
Identify blogs that cover topics related to your field of activity.
Once you’ve identified a quality blog with an interesting audience, you can get in touch with the blogger.
This can be a time-consuming but profitable way of recruiting affiliates.
Indeed, bloggers are often interested in being paid to make their blog profitable.
What’s more, if they’re in a particular product niche, the traffic is often high quality.
Join an affiliate network
As well as recruiting your own affiliates, you can also join an affiliate network.
This gives you access to a panel of existing affiliates.
This allows you to quickly test your affiliate program.
Start with one or two platforms, such as DaisyCon or Awin.
If this bears fruit, you can consider joining others.
To conclude on how to find affiliates for your ecommerce business
You now have an overview of how affiliate marketing works in e-commerce.
Now all you have to do is start your own affiliate program for your online store and find affiliates.
Now it’s up to you!
And if you need any help with your e-commerce, don’t hesitate to contact me. As a Prestashop & E-commerce developer with over 10 years’ experience, I’ll be happy to help you with your web project.
