Affiliate Marketing Websites to Boost Marketing ROI

Most likely, you have been keeping an eye on your competitor's reach if you are here. You're fascinated since you've seen their brand's reputation soar thanks to affiliate marketing strategies. It's possible that they are enlisting influencers, which is excite your target audience.

Alternatively, you may be here because you've come to the conclusion that your affiliate marketing tactics require assistance. It's just too much to handle logistically.

Continue reading if you fit into any of the aforementioned categories and are interested in learning more about how vendors support affiliate marketing. In addition to discussing some frequently asked issues by brands regarding affiliate marketing, we also provide samples of the top affiliate marketing websites.

What are the benefits of affiliate marketing websites?

The benefits of affiliate marketing include the following:

Benefit #1: You are talking to your customers through their voice at a lower cost

A study showed that 7 out of 10 millennials are more likely to buy from their favorite YouTube personality rather than traditional media personalities such as generic actors. Hiring a Robert Downey Jr. for your formal clothing brand may seem like the ideal strategy. You feel that you need to shell out the big bucks and get big actors. Going with an influencer your audience engages with on social media will be more impactful and cheaper.

Maximizing your marketing revenue through affiliate marketing is not tough with the right partnerships.

Benefit #2: Brand awareness will increase at an exponential speed

For every affiliate you onboard, you are tapping into their community. They are spreading the word about your products and helping you acquire customers.

Most affiliates, whether companies, influencers, or other platforms, share product recommendations while providing informational value. They contextualize your product rather than marketing it directly. This generates brand awareness while creating positive value associations in the customer’s mind.

Benefit #3: Low setup burdens

With the right affiliate marketing vendor, you can minimize the costs of an affiliate marketing program. You will also automate a majority of the process. The right vendor will help you:

Connect with affiliates

Set up affiliate discovery and recruiting

Manage considerations related to payment and taxes.

Attribution of revenue and any privacy concerns associated with affiliate marketing.

Now that you know the three main benefits check out these leading affiliate marketing websites that have changed the game for brands regarding customer acquisition.

Leading Affiliate Marketing Websites

The following seven affiliate marketing websites are ideal for new brands unfamiliar with the concept and those looking for better alternatives:

Clickbank

Clickbank offers versatile affiliate marketing options for businesses of all sizes. They provide a robust tech stack of e-commerce tools to help you create direct response offers, i.e., offers that lead to a single CTA, i.e., to buy the product. They claim to have a network of 100,000 affiliates worldwide. 

You will get a central platform for affiliate management and attribution tracking with Clickbank. This includes hiring, managing, and paying affiliates. They have an automated payment platform for commissions. They also provide an in-built fraud protection software to prevent fraudulent charges. They have integrations with about a hundred partners, including Zapier, Payoneer, and Kajabi.

Clickbank contains a versatile education platform that incorporates access to industry events and courses for brand growth.

Tapfiliate

Tapfiliate is an all-inclusive affiliate marketing system that helps companies of any size to find affiliates, monitor their progress, and gather data to increase sales. With Tapfiliate, you can scale your brand and optimize your administrative workflows for affiliates. Tapfiliate has an easy-to-navigate UI. They have over 30 platform integrations, including Shopify and WooCommerce. This means that even the newest sellers with small shops can use Tapfiliate to enter the affiliate marketing game.

Tapfiliate has a 14-day free trial through which you can anticipate how much the tool can help you grow your affiliate marketing programs. It offers your affiliates personal affiliate links and coupon codes. They also include your brand in all referral links.

This extent of personalization is important for brand recall. Further, it helps manage your affiliates through a dashboard so that you can track them easily. They also provide the code to add Tapfiliate to your shop website. Like Clickbank, they claim to have a network of 100,000 affiliates. You can connect with them after viewing their details and performance stats.

WarriorPlus

WarriorPlus is another good option recommended by small businesses. Its main offering is that it provides unlimited upsell and downsell offer creation, along with dynamic pricing and split tests. They have a comprehensive tracking system that allows affiliates and the brand to track unique leads for any product. You will get insight into when a customer clicks, starts checkout, and completes purchases. These can be the foundations of your retargeting campaigns.

WarriorPlus offers customizable coupon options, pre-launch support, and other automation solutions to streamline your affiliate marketing efforts. They also have an affiliate sync option that allows you to export affiliates across products without added paperwork.

Everflow

Everflow has a unique partner program that puts you in charge of the goals it can achieve right from the beginning. They have an Everflow Plus program, through which you will have access to an account manager who will manage your program right from launch. They will track offers and attribution and report to you. They train your marketing and sales teams to ensure everyone is on the same page with the affiliate program. Everflow offers global partner payment processes. This means you can tap into affiliates from across the world without worrying about payment conversions and platform fees.

Everflow automates partnership management in unique ways. Another highlight of Everflow’s services is their Direct Linking tool. Through this, you can track users when they reach your website through a particular affiliate. You can track a user’s buying behavior across all your channels and know which affiliate to attribute these customer actions to.

Rakuten Marketing

Rakuten is one of the oldest players in the game, with over 25 years of experience in affiliate marketing. They offer a global network of affiliates, a network that is constantly updated with influencers and content creators across various niches. These are in addition to traditional publishers, of course. They offer support in the retail, D2C, finance, and travel sectors.

They have a special program called Accelerate, where you outsource all the vital parts of the affiliate marketing funnel to the experts at Rakuten. This includes publisher negotiations, billing, cross-border marketing operations, and other background processes. You can then focus on other instrumental marketing goals and workflows. They aim to become an extension of your in-house marketing teams so that all your operations work like a single well-oiled machine. They provide you with insights and data that can power marketing campaigns which they will also assist you with.

ShareASale

Voted as the Best CPS Network 2022 by mThink, ShareASale claims to have generated over 194 million in sales in 2021. They have a network of over 200,000 affiliates. They provide real-time notifications to help you track your partnerships. They also automate standard communications between you and the affiliates with their automated emails. They have tracking functionalities across mobile and their app.

ShareASale offers numerous educational resources to help you start your affiliate program. They offer advanced combinations of payouts so that you can pay each affiliate precisely how you want to. ShareASale is a good fit for new businesses looking for some hand holding during the process. They are also highly ranked by affiliate marketers, so they are likely to have high-performing affiliates as part of their networks.

Refersion 

Refersion is another great affiliate marketing platform. They stand out from their competition because of their streamlined processes for campaign management, payment and tax handling, hundreds of integrations, and affiliate recruitment processes.

Refersion has a network of over three million affiliates and publishers, one of the biggest networks out there. They track sales with first-party and multi-domain or store tracking. They offer an all-in-one platform to help you manage influencers and affiliates across channels. You can create custom campaigns and track KPIs with ease using a dashboard.

Refersion offers simple onboarding for affiliates via its platforms. They facilitate affiliate recruitment and automate correspondence. Affiliates can be located using many parameters such as platforms, keywords, and more.

In addition, Refersion provides direct payments, payment scheduling, and automatic approvals. In addition to standard payment methods like PayPal and shop credit, they also provide their own separate payment system called Refersion Pay.

Refersion takes care of your tax issues as well. They easily handle 1099s and W-9s so you don't have to.

How to Join the Amazon Affiliate Program in Five Easy Steps

Due to the enormous amount of sales that take place in its marketplace, affiliates of all kinds are quite fond of the Amazon affiliate program. $279 billion of Amazon's net revenue in 2021—roughly $470 billion—was attributed to net sales in North America, which may generate countless millions of dollars in affiliate income.

For many in the affiliate industry, making money from a blog or website is as simple and quick as using the Amazon affiliate network, also known as "Amazon Associates." Amazon's affiliate program offers affiliates a substantial potential to make money due to the company's extensive online presence, massive user base, and exceptionally high conversion rate of 10 to 15 percent (as opposed to the typical ecommerce conversion rate of two to three percent).

To help affiliates capitalize on this revenue stream, today, we will break down what the Amazon Associates program is, what potential earnings affiliates might see, how to get signed up for Amazon Associates, and other important details to help affiliates get started.

What is the Amazon Affiliate Program?

Amazon Associates is the largest affiliate marketing program online, which is unsurprising given the company’s dominance in the ecommerce space. Amazon’s affiliate program enables affiliates and various kinds of creators to monetize their website traffic and social media presence by creating content that promotes Amazon products.

After signing up for the Amazon Associates program, users will be able to generate unique links to products to promote to their audience. When a customer clicks through and converts using one of these links, the affiliate will receive a commission for that sale.

Average Amazon Associates Affiliate Income

Like any other form of online marketing, an affiliate’s revenue will vary, depending on various factors like:

Audience size

Average engagement rates

Niche

Hours invested in content creation and promotion

Content visibility and discoverability

Thus, using the Amazon affiliate program can net affiliates anywhere from less than a hundred dollars a month to upwards of six figures annually. That said, the average Amazon affiliate income is roughly $58,000 per year (as of this writing), according to ZipRecruiter. Meanwhile, the bottom 10 percent of affiliates generate approximately $20,000 annually and the top one percent rakes in over $124,000 a year.

Again, there are many factors that will influence an affiliate’s total revenue, one of which is the niche an affiliate inhabits.

With Amazon’s affiliate program, commission rates can vary significantly based on the product category. For example, those promoting luxury items can receive a commission of 10 percent, while those driving traffic to video games will only net one percent.

That aside, when just starting out with Amazon Associates, it is likely that new user earnings will be on the lower end of the scale, so it is wise for these newcomers to have additional revenue streams while they work on growing Amazon sales.

Amazon Affiliate Program Rules and Requirements

If there is one drawback to the Amazon affiliate program, it’s that the company puts forth a hefty set of guidelines for users to follow. Those who violate the policies laid out by Amazon could be barred from the program. Therefore, it is essential to become familiar with these before diving headlong into Amazon Associates.

That said, a sizable amount of the rules included in the Amazon Associates program policies dictate conduct for ethical promotion and are there to prevent more cunning kinds of affiliates from gaming the system.

Some of the most important rules to keep in mind include the following:

Mandatory on-site disclosure of the affiliate’s potential to earn from recommended products.

Not making false, misleading, or deceptive claims about products or recommendations.

Avoiding price mentions (as these are in constant flux)

Not using Amazon affiliate program links in offline materials or emails

Not employing link shorteners for Amazon Associate links

There are just a few critical rules to follow.

Where eligibility is concerned, affiliates must meet the following requirements:

Enrollment and Eligibility: To be eligible to enroll in Amazon Associates, affiliates must produce original content that is publicly available and does not contain any violent, sexually explicit, or obscene material or content that promotes illegal activity. Additionally, content cannot utilize Amazon trademarks, violate any intellectual property, or be aimed at (or collect data from) children under 13 years of age.

Links on Your Site: Affiliates will be adding Amazon links to their site, which enable the company to track, report, and collect different kinds of data. Thus, it is crucial to have a strong cookie and privacy policy in place.

Responsibility for Your Site: Affiliates are solely responsible for the development, operation, and maintenance of their website, meaning that Amazon provides no assistance on this front.

Promotional Limitations: Under this section of the Amazon affiliate program policies, Amazon outlines that affiliates cannot use special links in printed materials, eBooks, emails, private messages, and other prohibited forms of advertising Amazon links.

Distribution of Special Links Through Software or Devices: This states that affiliates cannot utilize special Amazon links or program content on or in connection with any client-side software like plug-ins, browsers, toolbars, extensions, and the like. The same goes for devices such as computers, tablets, any television set-top box, and similar equipment.

Content on Your Site: This section contains a whopping 25 sub-clauses which state that affiliates are barred from trying to buy Amazon’s trademark or bid on its keywords, obscure their affiliate links or conceal that they are linking to Amazon, offer rewards for using affiliate links, and many other activities.

While this presents the Amazon affiliate program guidelines in a nutshell, it is advisable for affiliates to thoroughly review these policies in full to ensure complete clarity on eligibility and expectations.

How to Join the Amazon Affiliate Program

With the foundational materials covered, let’s dive into how to get started with Amazon Associates.

Assuming that affiliates already have a website, mobile app, or YouTube channel up and running, they can join Amazon Associates by:

1. Sign Up for Amazon Associates

Navigate to the Amazon Associates homepage, click the yellow “Sign Up” button, sign in to your existing Amazon account (or create one if you don’t already have one), and choose your preferred language from the menu at the top of the page.

From there, select who the payments will be issued to based on your Amazon account info. This information should include your name, address, and phone number.

2. Enter Your Website and Mobile App List

Next, enter the URL for your website, blog, mobile application, YouTube channel, and other destinations where Amazon links will be listed.

Be aware that you only need to list top-level domains for these properties, not specific pages where the links will appear.

3. Fill Out Your Profile

At this portion of the application, potential affiliates will set their preferred Associate Store ID (this will appear in your affiliate links), fill in additional details about their website or app, the types of products they will promote, and details on marketing tactics.

Starting with website and app information, write a few sentences to explain the purpose of the site and the type of content it houses. Next, select the topics that best describe the website or app from the lists provided. Then, choose all of the Amazon items that you intend to promote via these properties.

Under the “Traffic & Monetization” section, choose the applicable methods you utilize for driving traffic to your site and generating revenue.

Before clicking “Finish,” be sure to read the Associates Program Operating Agreement in full.

From this point, Amazon will move forward with the application review process once an affiliate makes their first sales through their website. If at least three sales are not generated within the next 180 days, the application will be withdrawn.

4. Enter Payment and Tax Info

While affiliates can opt to enter their payments and tax info later, it is best to get this out of the way.

From here, affiliates can add a bank account, select if they prefer to be paid via gift card or check, minimum payout amounts, and provide all of the relevant tax information.

5. Generate Affiliate Links

At this point, affiliates are free to start generating Amazon affiliate program links. However, before doing this, it is advisable to identify yourself as an associate on your website via a disclaimer to avoid accidentally getting banned.

When ready, go ahead and generate an Amazon affiliate link. The quickest and easiest way to do this is by using the Amazon Associate SiteStripe, which appears at the top of every page affiliates visit on Amazon.

Using this tool, affiliates can generate text links, image links, or a combination of the two. SiteStripe can also be used to quickly share product links directly to Facebook and Twitter.

Alternatively, from the Associates dashboard, affiliates can create banners, native shopping ads, mobile popovers, or create custom links to any page on Amazon.

How to Increase Your Amazon Affiliate Program Income

Once you are all signed up for the Amazon affiliate program, the only thing left to do is drive sales.

However, in order to elevate the potential revenue reaped from Amazon Associates, there are some tactics and strategies that affiliates will need to deploy. Those methods include:

Establish a Niche

Amazon offers consumers millions of different items in a multitude of categories. Affiliates aren’t going to score many sales by promoting an array of random products with no throughline.

Instead, it is best to find a niche to focus on and one that is genuinely interesting, as this allows affiliates to build a following in this specific area and promote related items, thereby increasing the chances of earning a sale.

Instead, it is best to find a niche to focus on and one that is genuinely interesting, as this allows affiliates to build a following in this specific area and promote related items, thereby increasing the chances of earning a sale.

Find a suitable niche means you must be able to:

Find a topic that interests you: Good affiliates are highly knowledgeable in a specific area and aim to become industry experts. This means that it is important to find a topic that is interesting and compelling to you so that you can follow such a pursuit.

Solve consumer problems in that niche: People often follow online creators because they are insightful and help them to solve problems that they are facing. This goes back to the point about becoming an expert. In addition to becoming an expert on a topic, you must be capable of creating helpful, informative content on the subject.

Identify a profitable niche: The last thing you want to do is select a niche and pour untold hours into content creation, only to find that it is unprofitable. Therefore, when looking for a topic that interests you, look at market research reports and Google Trends data to determine the popularity of the niche and if consumers in this space are ready and willing to buy.

Create Useful, Original Content

Content is the backbone of affiliate marketing and online search in general. However, the internet is currently flooded with content, which means that affiliates must aim to craft content that is informative, helpful, and appealing to consumers within a specific niche.

Naturally, this will require some keyword research, audience insights, and an overall content strategy that builds a comprehensive library of work that consumers can reference for answers to various questions on a given topic. Some necessary forms of content to integrate into your strategy include:

Product Reviews: Product reviews are a critical form of content for affiliates to produce as this will help to create social proof for an item and help to boost a site’s traffic, as nine out of ten customers read reviews before buying a product.

Product Comparisons: Product comparisons are another vital form of content for affiliates and are incredibly useful for driving traffic for the reasons cited above. Offering product comparisons alongside product reviews will help to take consumer research a level deeper, thereby making them more prepared to make a purchase. At the same time, this will serve to turn affiliates into authorities on a given subject.

Blogs: Blogging is imperative for raising a site’s visibility in the search engine results pages (SERPs) as this is one of a website’s primary sources of keywords and freshness, which Google values. Blog content is often an affiliate’s primary driver of building subject matter expertise and an excellent vehicle for promoting products.

Focus on SEO

The internet is a crowded place. Thus, being able to reach consumers who are researching products and looking for advice means that affiliates must make themselves visible in the SERPs.

Working to boost a site’s SEO not only means that affiliates need to do keyword research and develop optimized content. It also means they need to invest in optimizing their site overall by paying attention to essential factors of on-page SEO.

Promote Content Via Social Media

Alongside investing in your website’s visibility and long-term viability, it is also essential for affiliates to cultivate a community and reach new consumers by promoting their content on various social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitch, and other popular places.

Not only can affiliates publish their Amazon Associate links in these destinations, but they can also promote their on-site content in these locations to drive traffic.

No matter which social networks affiliates use, it is essential to reach out to consumers in these locations, given that 75 percent of internet users use social media to research products, thus making them a potential wellspring of sales.

Joining the Amazon Associates Program

Amazon Associates is an extremely popular affiliate program for a reason. As one of the largest and most popular ecommerce marketplaces online, Amazon’s dedicated customer base presents affiliates with a dependable source of revenue.

Thankfully, joining the Amazon affiliate program is a simple and quick process. The hard work, however, doesn't end there. In order to get the traffic required to establish a reliable source of income as an affiliate, affiliates must identify a niche, publish valuable content, maximize their social media presence, and increase their online visibility.

Furthermore keep in mind that affiliates are not required to be tied to a specific platform. Join Refersion as an affiliate to have access to hundreds of top brands in the business and boost your affiliate income to unprecedented levels.

Free Affiliate Marketing Tools for Growing Brands

This is a business's golden ear, in many ways. As of right now, a plethora of paid and free affiliate marketing tools are among the many resources available to assist in promoting e-commerce firms.

But, this can be a bit of a double-edged sword because there are so many options available to brands, which can make it difficult and time-consuming to sort through the many paid and free affiliate marketing tools and give them all a try.

We've put up a list of the best free affiliate marketing tools available right now to help brands streamline this process and save a tonne of money, time, and resources when creating, running, and advertising their affiliate programs.

Why Use Affiliate Marketing Tools?

No matter how big or small a brand is, utilizing marketing tools is essential for minimizing the time spent on certain tasks and maximizing the beneficial outcomes of those undertakings.

Thus, affiliate marketing tools help brands to streamline processes, gain valuable insights, automate specific tasks, and earn more revenue while expending less energy.

To be more specific, some of the key reasons why brands should utilize affiliate marketing tools include:

Generate More Revenue

Investing in a variety of marketing tools is a standard means of optimizing campaign performance, increasing sales, and maximizing affiliate marketing revenue.

The fact is that many marketing tools provide users with actionable insights that can help to direct campaign performance and help brands to optimize outcomes, which generally translates to higher revenues.

Greater Efficiency

Paid and free affiliate marketing tools supply brands with excellent resources for streamlining various parts of program and campaign management. Because many of these platforms and services enable rote tasks to be automated, affiliate marketing teams can spend less time on fiddly workflows and monotonous duties and more time working on projects and assignments that will help to increase a brand’s bottom line.

Enhanced Scalability

Employing various affiliate marketing tools supplies businesses with the ability to scale their processes and efforts. The fact is that the more manual a process is, the harder it is to scale. Thus, affiliate marketing tools help to facilitate brand growth.

Paid Platforms vs. Free Affiliate Marketing Tools

For brands that are just starting out or are operating on a shoestring budget, there are a multitude of free affiliate marketing tools available for helping to increase output and performance.

That said, once a company has grown enough to find itself needing or capable of affording more sophisticated and robust features, it should absolutely seek to invest in better tools or paid versions of the free tools listed below.

The fact is that free affiliate marketing tools, while quite useful, tend to be accompanied by a limited set of features, which means there is a ceiling to the value that can be obtained from their deployment.

Additionally, while many platforms like Refersion offer a 14-day free trial, these tools are not free, as regularly using the premium features and functionality they offer requires a paid monthly subscription, thus disqualifying them from this list.

However, once viable, it is strongly recommended that brands invest in these kinds of paid solutions as they are an effective means of powering brand growth.

Nonetheless, there is still quite a bit that can be achieved using the free affiliate marketing tools currently available to brands and marketers.

12 Free Affiliate Marketing Tools to Maximize Brand Growth

As it stands, there are a variety of powerful free affiliate marketing tools online. While many of the tools listed below are not exclusively intended for affiliate marketing, there are many facets to successfully managing affiliate programs and campaigns, and these tools will help to streamline and optimize those efforts.

That said, some of the best free affiliate marketing tools available today include:

1. Zapier

When it comes to automating workflows, Zapier is a top-rated tool among those engaged in affiliate marketing. This tool chains commands together using an “if this, then that” formula.

As a result, Zapier is incredibly useful in helping to streamline processes involved in onboarding new affiliates, uploading creative for new campaigns, and a multitude of other tasks. Additionally, Zapier can integrate with thousands of different platforms and tools, which makes it incredibly versatile.

As far as free affiliate marketing tools are concerned, Zapier is a fantastic time-saver that can be used to automate tons of repetitive tasks that are vital to managing an affiliate marketing program.

2. MailChimp

If ecommerce brands are going to run an affiliate marketing program, it is necessary to send affiliates onboarding emails, campaign updates, and other essential communications. Thus, a robust email platform is vital.

Fortunately, MailChimp, one of today’s most widely-recognized email marketing platforms, offers a free version that accommodates 500 contacts and 2,500 monthly email sends. Brands also gain access to basic reporting features, email templates, segmentation tools, and other useful features.

3. MailerLite

Another email option for those vetting out free affiliate marketing tools is MailerLite, an email platform with a near-nonexistent learning curve that provides plenty of scalability as brands grow.

Contrasted against MailChimp, MailerLite gives those on its free plan up to 1,000 contacts and 12,000 monthly emails. Furthermore, MailerLite supplies users with a drag-and-drop editor, A/B testing features, customizable templates, and other outstanding elements.

4. Yotpo

For brands to run a successful affiliate marketing program, it is crucial to recruit different types of affiliate publishers to fill various roles and keep a constant stream of affiliate revenue flowing.

Thus, in addition to standard affiliates and influencers, it is essential to generate sales with brand ambassadors.

This is where Yotpo becomes a powerful free affiliate marketing tool.

For those who are not already in the know, Yotpo is an extremely popular platform that helps brands to attract and engage new customers. However, it is also a fantastic tool for creating a successful brand ambassador program, as it is highly geared toward building interactive relationships with customers that are already singing a brand’s praises online.

With this platform’s free offering, users gain access to campaign builders, subscriber segmentation tools, advanced analytics and reporting, A/B testing features, and tons of other elements necessary for cultivating relationships with potential brand ambassadors.

5. HubSpot

If ecommerce brands want to limit the number of free affiliate marketing tools they use (and thus, need to learn), then HubSpot is likely to be a good option.

HubSpot is a CRM platform with a free option that offers a variety of different features and tools, including email marketing, ad management, landing pages, signup forms, pop ups, conversational bots, reporting dashboards, and a myriad of other features.

Using HubSpot, ecommerce brands gain access to a variety of elements for growing and managing an affiliate marketing program.

For brands that have limited bandwidth in the number of platforms they learn and use, HubSpot brings many critical affiliate marketing tools under a single, streamlined banner.

6. Canva

Brands often provide their affiliates with images and other assets to utilize to promote various products, sales, launches, and other events. Therefore, brands that don’t have the budget to work with a graphic designer need to have a good graphic design tool at their disposal.

Thus, Canva is a great free affiliate marketing tool for helping to create images and other visual assets to provide to publishers, bloggers, and other content creators to use during campaigns.

With Canva, brands can create custom graphics, add text to images, design visuals for specific social media platforms, and more from one simple-to-use platform.

Plus, Canva offers image templates, video editing features, a library of over 100 million images, a drag-and-drop editor, and everything else brands need to quickly and easily craft stunning assets to share with their affiliates.

7. Tailwind

Affiliate marketing programs are not a set-it-and-forget-it kind of strategy. Therefore, it is vital for brands to continually get the word out about their program and attract new affiliates. Thus, social media scheduling tools like Tailwind are excellent for spreading the word while saving time.

Tailwind focuses specifically on Pinterest and Instagram, which are two of the most prominent social media platforms for product promotion, which means that brands are likely to be able to find and attract ecommerce affiliates through these sites.

This free affiliate marketing tool gives users access to automatic publishing features, performance optimization tools, reporting and analytics, and more.

8. Buffer

For brands that are interested in a social media scheduling tool but looking for something that can reach a broader range of networks, Buffer is an excellent choice.

On top of enabling social media publishing for Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and other social networks, Buffer also supplies users with editing tools, link shorteners, organizational campaign tools, hashtag suggestions, analytics and reporting features, a bevy of social media monitoring elements, and many other valuable components.

As far as free affiliate marketing tools for social media go, Buffer is top-of-the-line.

9. Trello

Affiliate marketing campaigns typically have a fair number of moving parts. Between managing affiliate discovery efforts, onboarding new affiliates, sending out campaign materials, and other such tasks, there is a lot to monitor.

Thus, project management platforms like Trello can be an extremely useful free affiliate marketing tool.

Trello is a user-friendly tool for organizing all a brand’s tasks and projects in a single place. Using this tool, campaigns can be sorted into “boards” and “lists” composed of various to-dos that can be assigned to different team members. This visualization makes keeping on track and making progress on projects simple and effective.

While tools like Asana will certainly boast more features, it also comes with a higher learning curve. Thus, for small teams with a limited budget, Trello is an excellent tool for managing affiliate marketing programs and campaigns.

10. WaveAccounting

If brands are going to manage an affiliate marketing program, it is necessary for them to keep track of how much they pay out to affiliates to provide them with the proper tax documentation. Thus, a free accounting tool like WaveAccounting is in order.

WaveAccounting is a user-friendly platform for brands to manage various accounting tasks such as payment management, invoicing and billing, and other bookkeeping aspects.

Where affiliate marketing is concerned, WaveAccounting can be used to pay affiliates quickly and easily, track payouts throughout the year, provide portals for access to tax forms, and more.

Tracking finances is critical to running a successful affiliate program, so using a free affiliate marketing tool that can help to monitor and manage affiliate revenue is essential.

11. Portent Content Idea Generator

From time to time, brands will need to collaborate with affiliates to come up with content ideas for promoting products. When those times arise, having a free affiliate marketing tool like the Portent Content Idea Generator can make the task significantly simpler.

Using this tool, brands merely need to enter their target keyword, and the Portent Content Idea Generator will supply an endless string of potential blog titles to use as the basis for an article, video, or another piece of content.

This kind of free affiliate marketing tool is quite helpful in finding inspiration for content or even just headlines for an already-written piece that needs a title.

12. Sumo

Again, affiliate marketing is not a set-it-and-forget-it methodology, which means that brands must constantly recruit new affiliates and brand ambassadors to keep affiliate revenue flowing.

Thus, using free affiliate marketing tools like Sumo are great for capturing visitor emails via high-converting opt-in forms, exit-intent popups, banners, and the like. Additionally, Sumo integrates with many of the other free affiliate marketing tools mentioned above, such as MailChimp and HubSpot, thereby providing more substantial value for less effort.

Choosing the Right Free Affiliate Marketing Tools

There are lots of free affiliate marketing tools out there for brands to leverage. However, not all of them are created equal. Thus, it is critical to choose the ones that provide the most useful features and room for growth.

All of the aforementioned free affiliate marketing tools are excellent options for creating, overseeing, expanding, and keeping an eye on different facets of an affiliate marketing campaign. A large number of them even interact with one another, which increases the usefulness and understanding that can be obtained from their use. Make sure to review each and choose the ones that best suit the requirements of your brand.

In addition, get in touch with Refersion to see how our platform may help you optimize your marketing return on investment if you're prepared to make an investment in an affiliate marketing tool that will boost the sales and expansion of your company.

Is BigCommerce a Good Start for My Affiliate Marketing Program?

Are you wondering if BigCommerce is the best platform to launch your affiliate marketing business as compared to other platforms such as:

Amazon

Shopify

Amazon Associates

Rakuten

eBay Partner Network

….Or are you a beginner in affiliate marketing and considering the Bigcommerce affiliate program?

The fact is that BigCommerce is a great place to start your affiliate marketing program because it's user-friendly and their support staff responds quickly to any issues you may have. But as with other platforms, you'll need to get more knowledgeable about the platform if you want to flourish.

You'll learn more about the advantages of BigCommerce over other platforms by reading this blog. We'll talk about its advantages and solutions for its disadvantages. Our goal is to provide you with the knowledge you need to launch your business on BigCommerce.

Why Choose BigCommerce Over Other Affiliate Marketing Programs

As a business owner, you want to ensure your ideal affiliate marketing platform will boost your organization’s success. Your perfect software should also maximize sales to ensure you leverage profits. These factors will guarantee that your choice of platform is the correct wager. 

BigCommerce should be on your top list when choosing affiliate marketing platforms because it offers everything you want under one roof. This can save you plenty of time and money, especially if you’re just starting out. Their platform provides:

Web hosting

A product database

Tools for building your online shop

Inventory management

Marketing tools

Shipping 

Tax calculations 

BigCommerce also acts as a Saas (Software as a Service) platform & allows you to manage all operations of your affiliate program through the BigCommerce App on a mobile device. You can also use the browser on your computer to complete tasks, meaning you will have complete flexibility in how you manage your affiliates. 

Benefits of BigCommerce

Here are the benefits you will enjoy with BigCommerce. 

1. Easy Access to Client Data

Your BigCommerce store’s control panel will contain various helpful features that you can employ to arrange and manage your customer accounts. The platform’s customer group capabilities enable you to search for your customers’ data whenever you want. 

When you have access to your customer records, you will be able to better predict the needs of your client base and decode the kind of products they respond to the most.

You can leverage this information to decide which products from your catalog get more attention from your affiliates and also make better stocking & marketing decisions. 

2. Powerful Dashboard and Strong Support Team

Customers get access to excellent technical help round-the-clock. BigCommerce has excellent live chat support and email assistance, dashboard guidelines, a comprehensive Help Center, helpful videos, and a phone number to call if you still have questions. In other words, if you run into any issues whatsoever while setting up or making the most of the platform’s features, help will be an arm’s length away. 

Here’s where it gets even better: Besides offering regular customer support, they have specialized support departments for account management, technical account management, implementation project management, solution architecture, and catalog transfer, meaning you’ll get true experts to guide you through the process. 

3. Solid SEO Features

SEO is easy with BigCommerce. When deciding on an e-commerce solution, this is an important consideration. While your affiliates may be sending you referral traffic, you still need to drum up your own organic traffic to boost sales. 

With BigCommerce, you can improve your site’s visibility in search engines with the help of their powerful SEO tools. Site elements such as titles, meta descriptions, headers, and URLs (even custom-shortened URLs) can all be easily edited via their native platform. You can also customize your website’s robot.txt to tell search engines which pages must be indexed & which ones must be left out. 

What’s more? Maintaining a blog for your online store is crucial as an effective inbound marketing strategy. BigCommerce makes it easy to run one with its blog features.

4. Highly Scalable and Supports the Growth of Your Online Business

Connecting with customers across several channels is a strength of BigCommerce. It integrates easily with other channels such as Amazon, eBay (if you run multiple storefronts for your products), Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook to help you target your customers with omni-channel marketing. 

If you own a physical store, then native POS systems like Springboard Retail, Square and others can help you keep your product inventory current on an ongoing basis. BigCommerce’s flexibility in accommodating many storefronts and POS systems with a single login is a remarkable advantage because you get to choose the systems you feel most comfortable with. 

5. Tons of Other Impressive Features

Using BigCommerce, you can build a stunning design for your online shop. You can use pre-made templates or come up with your unique style. 

If you’re getting started, then you can edit your pages with the page builder visual editor using a simple drag-and-drop tool; no coding knowledge is necessary. 

If you want to change a theme, then you can use the in-built HTML, CSS, or JavaScript tools. Any BigCommerce theme will allow you to make a site optimized for mobile devices. This also helps you with your SEO efforts as Google prioritizes mobile-first search results. 

In other words, BigCommerce’s smart solutions are a major selling point for online stores. The word encompasses many concepts, from “smart” operations to “smart” scalability. The Catalog API allows you to create and maintain a scalable product catalog from either your admin panel or an external system.

6. No Transaction Fee

On any BigCommerce plan, you won’t have to pay a platform fee to BigCommerce for processing payments. In contrast to its major rivals, this is a huge advantage. 

You’ll only need to pay the POS system you choose that handles credit card processing a fee, which is inevitable in e-commerce transactions. What you pay will depend on the payment gateway you use.

Drawbacks of BigCommerce

The needs of e-commerce businesses are so varied that no single platform, including BigCommerce, can satisfy them all. In addition, the ecommerce sector is constantly evolving & these needs can change. Although BigCommerce has many benefits, you should also know its drawbacks before purchasing.

1. Yearly Sales Threshold

There is a cap on your online store’s annual sales volume with each BigCommerce plan. If you exceed your subscription’s limit, then BigCommerce will upgrade you to the higher plan level.

Although these volume-based restrictions on e-commerce platforms are not unheard of, they can limit companies looking to grow. Plus, there are rivals like Shopify that don’t put on such conditions.

If you’re just starting your ecommerce store, then you don’t have to worry about these caps just yet, so BigCommerce can still be a great option for you. 

2. No Email Marketing Tools

Using email marketing is a fantastic strategy for attracting and keeping customers. Unfortunately, email services are not available through BigCommerce.

You can easily use a freemium tool such as MailChimp or others to do your email marketing and run those campaigns separately. 

3. No Subscription Features

If your online business intends to offer subscriptions or accept recurring payments, then you may have to purchase the feature from a third-party app.

Luckily, there are many tools out there that supplement this.

4. No Multilingual Options

BigCommerce only supports one language, which is English. You might need to invest in a third-party program if your ecommerce store serves different linguistic groups.

5. Steeper Learning Curve

While BigCommerce’s user interface is intuitive, and the store can be built using a drag-and-drop builder, its comprehensive features mean that it is not necessarily the best option if you’re looking to launch an online store with little time investment.

Launching an online store with BigCommerce can therefore take more time than with alternatives like Shopify, especially for those new to the e-commerce world. However, it’s worth mentioning that you don’t have to make use of all features of BigCommerce right away; you can still learn those on the go and just set up the store first. 

The benefit of investing a little time early on to learn how to measure, analyze and track different metrics that determine performance will go a long way, though, so we highly recommend it. 

How to Overcome BigCommerce Drawbacks

Affiliate marketing on BigCommerce is not without hurdles, especially when first starting. A firm grasp of these challenges is essential for a smooth integration of affiliate marketing.

Okay, but what are they?

Some challenges you may have when launching your affiliate program are:

Lack of tracking tools (lesser data points)

Inability to recruit highly competent people from a centralized source

No way to manage multiple affiliate programs from one dashboard (especially if you have multiple storefronts for your products)

Despite this, you may find BigCommerce a great option to run your ecommerce store & affiliate program,  especially if you can supercharge the data points you get from it through third-party apps like Refersion. 

Refersion’s versatility as a data collection and processing platform makes it a valuable tool for affiliate tracking. You can get started in minutes thanks to the company’s connection with BigCommerce & get access to all the features the native platform lacks, including data points that help you recruit, retain & reward top affiliates in your niche.

It also provides a dedicated affiliate signup page that features your brand’s colors and messaging. Plus, it’s flexible enough to accommodate many affiliates. 

If you manage an affiliate program, you understand how crucial it is to have all the resources you require in one handy location in order to operate your business. This procedure is streamlined by the Refersion platform, which also automatically pays out to your network. Its recruiting tool can also be utilized to start a new affiliate network or grow an already-existing one.

A fantastic place to start if you want to experience the software is with the 14-day free trial that Refersion offers.

17 Most Important Data Points for Your Amazon Affiliate Program

Take a look at these statistics: Ninety percent of advertisers acknowledged the importance of affiliate marketing to their overall marketing plan, according to SerpWatch. Although there is much more at play, the ROI of this channel alone makes affiliate marketing a competitive arena when it comes to attracting and retaining elite affiliates.

Since they only pay for clicks, leads, or sales—that is, when the firm is profitable—entrepreneurs are aware that they can hire as many affiliates as they like. The scenery becomes even more tense as a result. Data can help with this problem.

The affiliates who bring you the most sales may be easily identified, rewarded, and kept on board with the use of solid data points. It can also be used to forecast which of the things in your inventory you might need to stock up on soon or which items, once commission rates are deducted, are the most profitable. In other words, having the correct data points can make affiliate management easier.

Discover what data points to check for and how they can help you expand your Amazon storefront by reading on. 

Which Types of Data Points Are Available on Amazon for Owners of Amazon Storefronts?

Every owner of an Amazon business should be aware of the key indicators indicating the effectiveness of their affiliate program. 

While Amazon does offer some really insightful data points like revenue & net monthly sales, its dashboard doesn’t report or track other very useful metrics that can simplify business decisions. If you’re interested in data-driven marketing or believe in approaching decisions with an eagle-eye view, then you should invest in an affiliate marketing SAAS that has the data points you need. 

Here are the most important data points to help you determine your affiliate program’s success: 

Revenue 

Revenue is the most crucial metric to keep track of for your Amazon Affiliate Program. Knowing how much money you make is critical in gauging success. This can also help you make comparisons about the kind of niches that do well or poorly in terms of sales for you. 

For instance, knowing the revenue you made from selling a multitude of products can be used to determine things like: 

My revenue is more when I sell more products in fast-selling niches, such as self-care, food, personal finance, fitness, and health.

If I want to increase my revenue, then I should focus more on these niches, as long as the commission rates don’t eat up my profit. 

Not to mention, paying your affiliates a revenue-based commission rather than a fixed percentage of sales also allows you to earn more; you could focus on categories that allow for it. 

Net Monthly Sales 

The net monthly sales figure is the total amount of money you make in a month after deducting Amazon’s cut. These figures clearly show how much money your product generates in profit every month. 

With Amazon’s extensive product catalog, sellers have loads of opportunities that keep cash flowing monthly. You can find this metric on your earnings report page and in your Amazon email notifications. 

Clicks 

This represents the total number of people who clicked on ads you may have run on Amazon to promote your products. 

While nothing beats the satisfaction of seeing your ad or product gain exposure through various promotional channels, you need these data points to see how you can increase the number of clicks from each ad and/or determine the ROI you are getting from that campaign.

Use the right keywords for each product and compelling product images or titles to accomplish this. The idea is to entice people to click through and earn more.

Earnings Per Click (EPC) 

An EPC provides a single insight that allows an affiliate marketer to understand how each product performs. 

For a store owner, EPC can be used to determine the amount of money their affiliates have earned for each click on a product. With a higher EPC rate, you can make more money and continue attracting traffic to new offers.

Effective Earnings Per Click (eEPC) 

Despite the success of EPC, a sizable proportion of affiliate marketers prefer to track earnings via eEPC. This is the average amount they earn for each visitor to their site. The advantage of this approach is you can study the best-performing products and pinpoint the best-performing affiliates from the rest. 

With this information, you can gauge the element that sets these products apart and use it to predict consumer buying patterns as well.

Top 10 Affiliate Partners 

The top ten partners, or those who account for most of your sales, significantly impact your revenue flow. By collaborating and rewarding active partners who generate traffic and sales, you can efficiently improve the performance of this metric.

This will also help you gauge whether it’s time to find new affiliate partners well-suited to your niche to expand your network. It would be best to focus on regularly optimizing your metrics by monitoring your data changes and making adjustments based on what you discover.

Sales Per Affiliate 

The sales-per-affiliate metric exhibits how much money each of your affiliates brings in for you. It also assists you in identifying top-performing affiliates as well as those with growth potential. 

The metric allows brands to take the proper steps to retain, collaborate & award top affiliates to nurture that channel. 

Number of New Affiliate Partners 

The number of new affiliate partners metric expounds on new entrants added in the last month. If you make successful partnerships in a month, then this is a good indicator of performance. 

Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) 

The customer lifetime value metric indicates how much money your customers will likely spend with you over their lifetime. 

While this is a critical metric for any business, it is crucial for affiliate marketing because it determines whether or not a partnership will be financially beneficial in the long run.

Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)

The return on ad spend metric can help you compare how much your affiliate marketing campaigns make when compared to how much you spend on Amazon ads. For example, if your ROAS is 10%, you will generate a profit of $1.10 for every dollar spent on advertising. 

Once you do a cost-benefit analysis, you will be better equipped to allocate your marketing budget to different channels. 

Organic Traffic 

Just because you have an affiliate program, it doesn’t mean you can’t display your products on your own website outside of Amazon. 

You can create a dedicated page for affiliate signups, run ads & SEO campaigns that promote your Amazon storefront, and more. You can also collaborate with your affiliate network to cross-promote items.

If you take this approach, then knowing how much traffic you get from search engines, free listings, and other non-paying sources will be key. 

People who visit your site through organic search use relevant and best-performing keywords on Google. 

One way to Increase organic traffic to your site is by promoting social media content and answering queries on Google’s People Also Ask section. You might also consider employing the latest SEO optimization and influencer marketing tactics.

Trigger Links 

The trigger link metric indicates how frequently someone clicks on one of the affiliate links for your store.

Whether these links are paid or organic, keeping track of this metric is crucial because it allows you to determine how much money and time you can expect to spend on a marketing campaign. 

If you have set a benchmark for the kind of customer acquisition costs you are willing to pay for each new customer, then you can use your trigger link metric to determine if it’s worthwhile.

Growth

We cannot deny that growth is an important affiliate marketing metric. You must, however, monitor your growth rate by comparing data collected over a certain period and not base decisions on short-term data points. Try to evaluate growth on a bi-yearly or quarterly basis.

It’s also important to note that you cannot compare growth recorded during peak periods such as Christmas to less-performing months if you want to establish a more accurate picture of your efforts and overall growth.

Traffic Quality

Traffic quality is a vital factor in gauging if your affiliates are developing strong and long-lasting relationships with your audience. The audience is more likely to engage with a blog and convert at a higher rate if they build trust. 

In short, trust breeds loyalty and positive word of mouth. In the long run, a brand may benefit from a steady stream of repeat customers and a faster process down the funnel if the people your affiliates are funneling to you are really in the market for your product(s). 

To receive better quality traffic, your affiliates should be encouraged to increase online activity for your products through videos, guides, emails, e-books, case studies, social media content, and listicles on their own websites or social accounts. 

Average Order Value (AOV) 

The average amount a customer spends on your products helps you keep track of customers’ preferences and the program’s overall effectiveness. 

These figures can help you determine how much money to expect from each sale and whether it’s worthwhile to continue paying affiliates to bring in deals.

If your traffic has a higher AOV, then you will better understand the ideal audience to target. The goal is to maintain a friendly relationship with affiliate networks. Not only do they help you increase the amount of traffic to a product, but also they translate to a successful Amazon Affiliate Program. 

Conversion Rate

A low conversion rate speaks volumes about your progress, even if you have a high revenue income and clicks per ad. The conversion rate is the proportion of clicks that result in sales. 

This indicates your affiliate program’s overall performance. It also assists you in identifying areas where you need to improve conversions, such as pricing, landing page design, or segmentation. These elements entice visitors to purchase a product with minimal cajoling.

Affiliate Engagement

While some experts believe that increasing the number of affiliates produces magical results, this is not always the case. Instead, engaging your affiliates and instilling a strong desire to promote your services or products is critical. 

Prepared to build enduring affiliate relationships is essential if you hope to keep your partners happy. You will have to work twice as hard to engage them by praising them and giving them room to develop. Reward the efforts of newbies and encourage them to learn the ropes.

The more information you have about your Amazon affiliate program, the more likely it is that you will be able to make more calculated choices to increase sales. For this reason, we advise you to make investments in all facets of affiliate administration, high-quality content creation, and success monitoring.

Refersion may provide these extra data points that an Amazon native dashboard does not, which can help you maximize your affiliate marketing efforts. To assist you in making decisions more quickly, we simplify data and consolidate information from several sources into a single dashboard. From a single dashboard, you will be able to recruit new affiliates, monitor performance, analyze the data you receive, and award top affiliates according to their achievements.

Tactics to Put Your Amazon Affiliate Marketing Program in Hyper Gear

Take use of affiliates who can sell your products through their own channels as you watch the revenue quietly come in from such sales if you're an Amazon storefront owner searching for low-effort strategies to promote your product line.

With more than 900,000 members worldwide, the Amazon Associates program continues to be one of the largest affiliate networks since its launch in 1996. Many website owners, content producers, and influencers have been able to monetise their reach by advertising and selling a variety of products through their platforms, thanks to the e-commerce giant's development of its product line over time. You can expose your products to their current audience by taking advantage of it.

In this blog, we discuss proven tactics you can deploy today to promote your Amazon affiliate links and recruit affiliates that make selling even more passive for you.

Why Recruit Affiliates for Your Amazon Affiliate Program?

An average Amazon seller makes at least $1000 in sales through their Amazon storefronts, but many super-sellers end up making more than $100,000.

Getting to $100,000 is much easier when you’re not competing for eyeballs just on Amazon. Many business owners who sell their products on Amazon also promote their products on their own websites, and getting more websites selling for you can only increase the visibility of your storefront even more.

That’s where affiliate marketing comes in.

Promoting your Amazon affiliate links through solid affiliates has numerous advantages:

Reach a Larger Audience Quickly

You can only reach only so many people through your own platforms. Having more people on your team who promote your affiliate links through their own channels is an opportunity to grow your pool of potential customers in less time.

You Can Collaborate With Trusted People in Your Niche

Modern consumers trust the advice of industry influencers, niche experts, and other customers more than corporations–leverage this for your benefit and get them doing the selling for you!

You also have an opportunity to negotiate the percentage of sales they will receive and only collaborate with those who understand your product, audience, and how to sell to them.

Only Pay When a Sale is Made on Your Behalf

Get multiple people promoting your links without any risk to you–you only pay them when they have contributed to your own bottom line & helped you make money.

Take Your Time Back When Others Do the Selling

Making your affiliate marketing program sustainable and successful requires that you collaborate with like-minded individuals. Having influencers and trusted experts in your niche sell for you lets you focus on generating sales passively while you search for other opportunities, such as additional high-margin products for Amazon affiliate marketing.

7 Ways to Promote Your Affiliate Marketing Program

1. Identify Who Your Ideal Affiliates Are

Working with a team of five affiliates who know your product and understand your industry is better than working with a team of ten who don’t. The right affiliates will be able to recommend your products with more authority and authenticity and speak in the language of other potential customers who are in search of your products.

2. Connect with Niche Bloggers

Bloggers make good affiliates because:

●  They already have an audience that trusts what they say, and

●  They create high-quality content around the product they are promoting

Finding bloggers whose niche and audience match yours can help you attract more targeted affiliate traffic and generate higher conversions.

3. Create an Optimized Sign-up Page on Your Website

If your program is seriously worth considering, your sign-up page will need to make it known clearly to potential affiliates. Dedicate a specific page on your website for your affiliate program and make sure it is easily noticeable by visitors. Social media or email campaigns targeted toward recruiting can also link to this page.

Make sure to share about your program’s commission structure, affiliate benefits, and what to expect in clear and concise language. Include proof elements like:

●  Stats on how much an average affiliate makes through your program;

●  Stats on how many orders your affiliate network has generated for you;

●  Stats How long your affiliates have worked for you (have you been able to retain them for years?)

●  Video Testimonials from your existing affiliates

●  Written reviews from your existing affiliates about their experience.

Don’t forget to follow that up with a clear sign-up button at the end.

4. Make Your Loyal Customers Your Resellers

If you are selling reliable products while providing a great customer experience, chances are that you already have happy customers who are promoting your products and service through word of mouth. Why not have them join as an affiliate and make a commission on the side while they are at it? Conversions are also enhanced when they share their authentic experiences with your products.

5. Invest in PPC Campaigns

While this is a costlier option, you can use this method if you’re looking for quick results.

These paid campaigns allow you to define specifically the type of audience you are targeting, which can help you be found by potential affiliates looking for programs to join or customers looking to buy. It’s advisable to run separate ads for both of these objectives.

Depending on your budget, you can run these campaigns via Google Ads, Facebook Ads, LinkedIn ads, and more.

6. Incentivize Existing Affiliates to Bring in Referrals

Depending on how many referrals your current affiliates bring in, you can pay them. This can be achieved by paying them a different commission for the referrals they bring in and by periodically rewarding them with bonuses for both sales and referrals.

The more knowledgeable affiliates you have on your roster, the more passive income you may generate.

Benefits of Partnering with Coupon Publishers

Good bargains are difficult to resist. Because of this same reason, coupons have been a mainstay of marketing since the Coca-Cola business introduced them in 1887.

Since then, people have been totally devoted to the concept of using coupons as a means of saving money; as many as 90% of consumers have utilized coupons at some point during their shopping experiences. In actuality, the digital age has simply increased their potency. According to Statista data on U.S. coupon market trends:

"Things that were before discovered in periodicals and sent to prospective clients' doors are now frequently discovered, searched for, and utilized online. When asked how they found coupons, almost half of American consumers replied that they either looked them up online or acquired them through emails from brands they follow.

Moreover, coupon publishers that consumers search for online are likely to see a considerable spike in popularity as more and more shoppers are looking to spend less and less. According to RetailWire, “54 percent of Americans consider being called “cheap” a compliment at times and 53 percent are proud of being labeled a bargain hunter.”

For these reasons,  those who are using affiliate marketing to increase conversion rates should consider developing relationships with coupon publishers a no-brainer. However, if you still require a bit more convincing, today, we will explore the top five benefits of teaming up with coupon publishers to help promote your products.

But before we get into the nitty gritty of the topic, let’s take a moment to analyze if your ecommerce brand should be using coupons in the first place.

Should Your Brand Use Coupons?

While coupons are an immensely popular and effective marketing tool, as with most things in life, this strategy is not for everyone all of the time. Thus, if merchants aren’t already offering coupons, it is necessary to take a step back to determine if doing so makes sense for their brand.

Generally speaking, coupons are most effective for brands that operate in highly competitive markets and offer commonly available products. The fact is that ecommerce brands in these spaces are going to be vying for dollars in only a few arenas, namely brand loyalty, price, and shipping costs. 

However, customer loyalty has been in decline for years, which means that merchants in highly competitive markets need to look at price and shipping (among other strategies) to help stand apart from rival retailers. Thus, coupons open an opportunity for ecommerce brands to break through and compel shoppers to buy from their company over a competitor.

This is especially true in times of economic uncertainty, as consumers are currently switching brands to deal with inflation. Therefore, opting to forgo working with coupon publishers could mean that you are conceding sales to your brand’s competition.

On the other hand, if your brand sells unique products that do not have a lot of competitor products, then providing coupons might only serve to eat into company profits. Unless, of course, these sorts of retailers seek to use coupons to incentive new customers to buy or to continue to reward long-term relationships with existing consumers. In which case, coupons could be a good fit.

All that said, if price is a determining factor for consumers in your space, then coupons are likely to be an effective tool for generating sales.

On that note, let’s go ahead and take a look at the benefits afforded to ecommerce brands that partner with coupon publishers via their affiliate marketing programs.

The Benefits of Working with Coupon Publishers

If coupons are right for your brand, there are many benefits to partnering with coupon publishers to get your products in front of consumers, including:

1. Ability to Be Present Among the Competition

For brands that fit the bill of those that should be utilizing coupons, there is a good chance that their competitors are already doing so or are at least considering utilizing them as well. Additionally, because coupon publishers tend to have incredibly loyal customer bases, these sites are typically quite effective at delivering results for retailers. As a result, scores of ecommerce brands are partnering with these sites to increase sales. 

Thus, if your brand isn’t present on these sites, competitor products are gaining awareness, traffic, and sales through these online portals, while your merchandise continues to sit.

In order to compete in today’s crowded ecommerce ecosystem, it is imperative that you are everywhere your customers are and present them with compelling offers that are too good to pass up.

2. Complete Control Over Commission and Promotions

Alongside elevating visibility, awareness, and reach, partnering with coupon publishers allows ecommerce brands to control the type of promotional deals used, as well as for how long those offers are available.

When an ecommerce brand works with coupon publishers, the aim is to cultivate a mutually beneficial relationship where the retailer generates sales thanks to the site and the publisher receives a commission on each sale they help to drive. Thus, these sites will only publish deals and offers that have been approved by a merchant, and only for an agreed upon period of time.

Naturally, if a coupon publisher violates the terms of the agreement, retailers will not have to pay out commissions for sales made by an unapproved promotion or one that is outside of the sale window. Of course, repeat offenders will see the relationship terminated. However, these sorts of instances are quite rare. Moreover, if a relationship is fruitful, most publishers are more than happy to respect merchant terms to maintain brand partnerships.

In addition to controlling the promotions published, ecommerce brands also control the commission rate for the relationship, as would be the case with any individual affiliates or influencers partnering with brands.

Of course, retailers should utilize strategic commissioning practices that offer higher commission rates (thus, incentivizing) driving new customers to a merchant’s site, as opposed to returning buyers. Additionally, by utilizing a premium affiliate marketing platform to track data, conversions, and other vital campaign details, retailers will have the ability to gain a high-level understanding on coupon publisher performance and adjust commission rates to optimize outcomes, increase sales, and average order sizes.

3. Coupon Publishers Are High Converting Partners

As it stands, there are a wide array of coupon publishers, with the most common types including:

Coupon publishers: These sites offer shoppers coupons across a myriad of product categories

Deal publishers: These sites aim to offer shoppers premium deals, with or without a coupon

Product-specific publishers: These sites focus on specific product categories.

While the focus of each site differs, the common thread for all of these publishers (aside from offering great deals) is that they are all high converting affiliate partners.

The reason for this goes back to the average consumer’s desire to get a great deal. As Statista data on the annual number of redeemed digital coupons in the U.S. reveals:

“The use of digital coupons is becoming more prevalent in the United States. In 2021, the number of redeemed digital coupons in the U.S. amounted to a total of just over 337 million coupons, up almost 40 million from the figure in the previous year. In comparison, the redemption volume of free-standing inserts (FSI) declined, from nearly 300 million redemptions in 2020 to about 230 million in 2021.”

In a nutshell, this means that consumers are moving away from physical coupons and increasingly seeking out their digital counterparts, often through online coupon publishers.

By ensuring that a brand’s products are present on these sites, retailers stand to capitalize on consumers’ growing desire for digital coupons, particularly as fears of recession grow as inflation continues to climb. However, by offering shoppers a deal via coupon publishers, ecommerce brands can continue to power brand growth through an economic slowdown. 

4. An Excellent Means of Product Liquidation

As we move through the years and one season changes into another, ecommerce brands are often left holding a surplus of seasonal goods that are much harder to move at full price. After all, no one is shopping for bathing suits in the fall.

However, enlisting the help of coupon publishers to promote out-of-season goods at a discounted rate can help to drive sales of products that would otherwise sit stagnant.

The fact is that using coupons to promote deals on out-of-season goods allows retailer and coupon publishers to:

Stimulate sales from consumers who otherwise wouldn’t convert

Encourage impulse purchases

Gain new customers by inspiring brand loyal shoppers to buy from competitor brands

Through relationships with coupon publishers, ecommerce brands stand a far greater chance of successfully running through inventory that is only taking up warehouse space and not generating revenue in the current season.

5. Ability to Test Top-Performing Coupon Publishers via Refersion

In order for ecommerce brands to be truly successful in their coupon publisher partnerships, it is important to be selective in the coupon sites that are admitted into a retailer’s affiliate program.

Naturally, merchants will want to develop relationships with vetted, top-performing coupon publishers that have a proven track record of generating sales and delivering results.

Fortunately, ecommerce brands using Refersion have the ability to test out the best coupon publishers on the web, as we have gone to great lengths to seek out the top-performing coupon publishers online today. Through our platform, retailers can be assured that the coupon publishers in Refersion’s VIP program are the crème of the crop, as these folks have been vetted as high-performing partners that have a solid track record of maintaining profitable, abiding relationships with ecommerce brands.

Using Coupon Publishers to Promote Ecommerce Sales

There is no getting around the fact that shoppers love a good deal, which means that coupon publishing sites can and should be an essential component to a brand’s marketing mix.

Furthermore, a growing number of shoppers are using coupon publishing websites to find the best discounts as more and more people rely on the e-commerce ecosystem for their buying needs. It is nearly a given that an online retailer is losing business to rivals if customers can't find them when they visit these websites.

Retailers should therefore prioritize forming partnerships with reputable coupon providers in order to boost sales and enjoy the aforementioned advantages.Get in touch with Refersion to see how we can assist you in starting to build these lucrative partnerships if your company wants to increase its revenue by collaborating with some of the top coupon publishers in the market.

10 Tips on Setting Your Affiliates Up for Success for Black Friday

eMarketer estimates that Christmas spending will total $211.7 billion in 2022, growing at a steady 3.5% annual rate.

Naturally, it is essential to prepare your brand for cyber week 2023 and beyond, given how immensely profitable and significant Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the remainder of the holiday shopping season are for ecommerce brands.

For those that use affiliates during this time, knowing how to position your affiliates for success is essential to maximizing sales and having a successful, happy holiday season for both the brand and its affiliates.

You've come to the correct spot if you're seeking for affiliate marketing advice for Cyber Monday, Black Friday, and the entire holiday season.

Here is how to set your affiliates up for success during this critical quarter.

How to Set Your Affiliates Up for Success: 10 Critical Tasks to Complete

As far as getting your brand and affiliates ready for the holiday shopping season is concerned, there a quite a few brand-focused and affiliate-specific to-dos that must be completed, including:

1. Review the Previous Year’s Performance

The first thing you will need to do is review your affiliate performance from last year’s holiday shopping season. It is important to identify who your brand’s top performers were and how they are doing with your brand now.

For those that are still going strong, reach out to them with special offers of dedicated landing pages, promo codes, and other personalized materials to show your appreciation for their efforts and dedication to your relationship.

If there are affiliates that performed exceptionally well last year but have since fallen off, try and find out what caused the drop-off and how you can get the partnership back on the right track.

2. Finalize Promotional Deals

Part of how to set your affiliates up for success is delivering to them the information on the promotional deals for the season. Getting this info to them in a prompt manner enables affiliates to start planning and creating content to help ecommerce brands drive sales.

Thus, finalizing the sales and promotions to be run during the holiday season should be a high priority for retailers.

3. Cement On-Site Placements

On-site adverts or newsletter highlights can be a great tool for increasing awareness of a brand’s holiday deals. Therefore, retailers who plan on running paid placements with their affiliates should secure those spots now, as inventory goes quickly for this time of year.

4. Speed Up Affiliate Onboarding

Attracting top affiliates into your affiliate program can be a challenging task in the exponentially expanding world of affiliate marketing. Once you do manage to get these folks in the proverbial door, it is essential to ensure that your onboarding process is as quick and smooth as possible. Therefore, you will want to review your onboarding procedures prior to the holidays and eliminate any points of friction.

When analyzing your affiliate onboarding course, consider everything from the affiliate’s perspective, ensuring to include everything you would want to know, including:

Where to find creatives

Proper linking procedures

Strategies for selecting products to promote

Who to contact with questions and how to reach them

Incentives

Payment information

If your brand hasn’t already created and implemented a “getting started” guide that covers all of these materials, now is the time to get that together and smooth out any rough spots present in your onboarding process.

5. Revamp Commissions for the Season

When it comes to getting affiliates to promote your products over another brand’s, money talks. Therefore, it is necessary to review your current commission rates, margins, and industry averages for your brand’s product categories to figure out how much you can bump commission rates during the holiday shopping season.

Keep in mind (and clearly communicate) that these are not permanent bumps but are limited-time offers that are restricted to specific weeks or months. The details you will want to share with affiliates about the revised commission rates include:

Commission: Present affiliates with the commission amount for specific products or categories.

Cookie Length: Determine the amount of time (in days) that can elapse from first click to conversion for the affiliate to be credited with the sale.

Payout Details: Clearly define payout methods, thresholds, and timelines to help set the affiliate’s expectations on how and when they will be paid for their efforts.

Terms of Service: Establish the exact parameters of the program and provide an explicit agreement between ecommerce brands and affiliates.

6. Ensure Open Channels of Communication

If you want affiliate marketing tips for black Friday that will teach you how to set your affiliates up for success, few (if any) are more important than making sure that affiliates know how to reach someone at your brand and that they are responding in a clear and timely fashion. This is especially true for questions about product details and promotional offers.

Thus, it is wise to establish a contact portal, dedicated email address, or to utilize a comprehensive affiliate marketing platform for affiliates to reach out to the brand. At the same time, it is advisable to commit a team member to monitor and respond to affiliate requests quickly.

Communication is key to any relationship, and when it comes to working with affiliates, it is essential to be there for them during the run-up to cyber week and other major sales holidays.

7. Align Affiliate Efforts with the Brand’s Marketing Team

For every marketing campaign (especially critically important ones like those run during the holidays), it is critical to get all of your marketing channels on the same wavelength to promote a single, consistent message.

Thus, it is vital to ensure that your internal marketing team and affiliates are using the same information so as not to confuse shoppers and erode consumer trust.

This means that affiliates should have access to your upcoming promotional information and creative such as messaging, imagery, and other assets, which brings us to our next point.

8. Generate and Provide Access to Holiday Creative

Getting your holiday creative together early is critical for engendering the best campaign outcomes possible and is a key element in how to set your affiliates up for success so that they can start creating content right away.

Aside from information about the promotions themselves, there are a number of creative assets that should be provided to affiliates to help them promote your brand, including:

Approved Copy: Help your affiliates to promote the right messages to their audiences by providing authorized copy and talking points. Additionally, it is wise to include different versions of the for different audiences, thereby increasing a brand’s chances of resonating with various consumers.

Images: This should include completed images for promotional copy offers and branding kits that feature the brand’s logos, color profiles, typography, slogans, company image, and other such materials. Also, be sure to post product shots, image banners (with the necessary code) and other visual assets that can be used to create content for the brand and its affiliates.

Video Clips: If your brand has video footage for products, it is wise to include these for affiliates that are focused on platforms like YouTube and TikTok.

Approved Codes and Links: For affiliates that will not have more personalized offers, it is vital to provide brand-approved coupons, codes, and functioning links to dedicated holiday landing pages where deals can be claimed.

Other Useful Materials: If your brand has any awards, media mentions, endorsements, noteworthy rankings, or other distinguishing achievements, these can also be useful to provide to affiliates.

9. Create Personalized Landing Pages and Codes

High-quality, optimized landing pages are an essential component of holiday sales events as this is a critical juncture in a shopper’s journey. When it comes to the holiday season, themed landing pages delight consumers and can be an effective tool for driving conversions.

That said, in addition to creating holiday landing pages for affiliates to promote and drive traffic to, your brand should consider offering its top affiliates personalized landing pages and special discount codes to help incentivize these folks to continue working with your brand and to show them that you are committed to the relationship. At the same time, this sort of offer will help to raise an affiliate’s esteem in the eyes of their audience, thereby creating a win-win situation.

No matter if you are creating an individualized or generalized landing page, be sure to include the following elements:

Above-the-fold offer confirmation (price cut, savings amount, free gift, etc.)

Compelling visual imagery

Streamlined page layout

Easy-to-find CTA

Persuasive copy that answers consumer questions or potential objections

Images of the affiliate and their branding elements (if the page is personalized)

Inclusion of social proof (testimonials, star ratings, etc.)

Exit popups

By creating personalized landing pages for top-performing affiliates, ecommerce brands can effectively incentivize partners to promote a brand and persuade their audiences to purchase its products during sales events like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the like.

10. Personalized the Affiliate Experience

Ecommerce brands are likely working with a mix of affiliates at differing levels of experience. While some might be influencers who have participated in many holiday seasons, others can be brand-new to the world of affiliate marketing.

When it comes to how to set your affiliates up for success, a lot of this comes down to meeting each affiliate where they are and helping to support them. This means that some affiliates will require little help, while others will require a bit more hand-holding. Therefore, you will likely need to answer more questions for these folks, potentially engage in brainstorming sessions for content ideas, and discuss the brand’s products in depth to supply them with the level of understanding needed to promote them to their audience.

Additionally, retailers should take the time between events like Black Friday to quickly analyze performance for affiliates that need more help and let them know what is working and how they might be able to tweak their tactics.

Similarly, after the sales event is over, retailers can take a deeper dive into the campaign data and give each of their affiliates a more detailed breakdown of their effectiveness, where they did great, and what can be improved.

Supplying affiliates with a personalized experience and helping them to be more effective in their efforts can be an important factor in retaining affiliates for your program and generating more revenue for them and your brand.

Affiliate Marketing Tips for Black Friday and Beyond

Increasing affiliate marketing sales over Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and other critical holiday sales events means that brands need to effectively support their affiliates with the information, materials, and assistance they require.

A lot of this involves planning ahead, providing affiliates with creative materials well in advance of the event, and being accessible to answer any inquiries regarding goods, special offers, and similar matters.

Make sure to highlight the benefits affiliates will receive from the sale as well, such as increased commission rates, customized landing pages and coupon codes, exclusive awards for top performers, and any other advantages your company may be providing.

If you use the strategies mentioned above to prepare your affiliates for the Christmas sales season, you should see a significant increase in affiliate performance and overall holiday income for your company.