Affiliates, Merchants & PPC
Advice for merchants.
First of all what is PPC?
Pay Per Click, example Google Adwords, Overture, Espotting and so on.
It is possible for merchants to carry on doing their own PPC and still work in harmony with affiliates. It is also possible for merchants to outsource their PPC to the affiliates who have a great deal of expertise in this area.
But before you do any of this it is crucial to protect your own domain names. If for example, you have registered anydomainname.com, you should also try to register other extensions and misspellings, this will avoid a) your competitors gaining an advantage b) will help you maximise your revenue. Humans are not perfect on the keyboard how many times has your finger slipped or you can’t quite remember that name. (Choosing a simple, memorable easy to spell domain name will help you in the long run.) If you are serious about your online business regardless of whether it’s generating income and regardless of where you’re in the world, you need to register a trademark. A trademark will protect you and your brand as you continue to grow and . It can also be used in a legal context to prevent any of your competitors from bidding on your name or any misspellings. Trade marking can cost anything from as little as £350 Approx $600 , the price is based on classification of your website for example a consultancy website like affiliate program advice.com is that the lower end of the scale whereas casinos may have to pay a higher price. Once you have a trademark it provides protection it is also a clear indication that you are serious about your business it signals to potential investors that you know what you’re doing.
Avoid conflict with PPC Affiliates.
There are three types of situations whereby a merchant who has an affiliate program could potentially come into conflict with their affiliates. The first is the most common, affiliates are who bid on the merchants domain name only. The second is when merchants want to carry out their own PPC campaigns. The third is when a merchant doesn’t really understand how pay search works and is in the experimental processes of learning this specific industry skill.
The first issue, let’s use Google by way of example. For a merchant who owns the domain name, Google will only charge a small amount of money, pennies or cents. If a merchant has an affiliate program based on for example a commission on all referred sales, the cost of a sale can be greater then the cost of the merchants clicks.
The second issue, if the merchant is PPC savvy and have their own campaigns running and the affiliate knows nothing about this campaign it is potentially possible that the merchant and the affiliate will be outbidding each other thus causing tension and frustration on both sides.
The third issue, again one of the most common problems merchants simply doesn’t understand the whole PPC paid search arena. Paid search is neither simple nor straightforward, it is complex and oddly enough there is no literature online explaining the fundamentals. It could be argued that it is not in the interest of the paid search facilitators to issue guidelines or instructions for the beginner in other words the more mistakes you make the more revenue for paid search facilitator.
It may surprise you to know that some of your affiliates are experts in this particular marketing strategy. My advice if you don’t understand paid search let the experts do this for you. If we’re talking about extra costs with regards to bidding on your domain name, remember most affiliates put their hand into their own pockets to finance your PPC campaign but in the strongest terms this is affiliate marketing whereby you only ever play on results. It is imperative that you have clear terms and conditions, this is not only good for you as an exercise which could highlight your own weaknesses but it is a working document which you can refer to, the affiliate can refer to and the networks.
The best way to avoid any conflict is talk to your affiliates. Affiliates are a marvelous resource, most if not all are very friendly and very knowledgeable. Trust me when I say it’s OK to admit a weakness, you will get more respect from your affiliates as they will feel part of the team.
Most affiliate’s will respect your PPC policy and not bid on your name if you ask them not to. There are rogue affiliates out there that will completely ignore anything you say, luckily they are few and far between and in my personal opinion, we don’t want those kinds of affiliates promoting us.
At the end of the day it’s all about communication, understanding and arbitration.
If you have any further questions please feel free to post, whilst PPC is not my forte if you post a question that I cannot answer chances are Ill know some one that can help you.
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