Hi all,

I run a local business selling wood finishing products (stain/dye, varnish, wax etc.) so, as you can imagine, a lot of our customers share beautiful imagery online of their products finished in our stuff. I'm dipping my toe into the affiliate marketing game where customers can share a unique link with their photos/reels and generate a commission (paid by us) to any orders generated via that link.

I've been approached by a couple of agencies who will run this for us and get us on an affiliate network (a website full of affiliates looking for products to share) for around £500 per month, plus commission. All in all, any sale from this will cost us around 20% commission to total, paid across the agency, the network and the affiliate, plus the monthly £500.

I've done as much research as I can, but the majority is aimed at the affiliates themselves, not the businesses looking to utilise them.

So, I'm reaching out to the informed UTC masses as you have served me so well before! Does anybody have any experience in this, and would you recommend going with an agency? I know Leon_C knows his stuff around attraction marketing.

Thanks

Have a look at Awin

http://www.awin.com/gb

Do you use PPC?
Seems alot, unless you do 50k a month turnover

ynot wrote: ↑

Tue Jun 20, 2023 7:02 pm

Have a look at Awin

http://www.awin.com/gb

That's the very network that we'd be using!

Claretprinter wrote: ↑

Tue Jun 20, 2023 8:59 pm

Do you use PPC?
Seems alot, unless you do 50k a month turnover

Yeah, we run Google search and shopping PPC. The beauty of affiliate marketing is you only pay when they make a sale for you.

And what do you mean, seems a lot? The £500 per month fee?

Fretters wrote: ↑

Wed Jun 21, 2023 12:58 pm

The beauty of affiliate marketing is you only pay when they make a sale for you.

That’s what the networks say, but from a technical point of view, you’ll typically pay when a customer clicks on an affiliate ad up to 30 days prior to making a purchase, regardless of whether the ad meaningfully contributes to the purchase.

In my experience, affiliate marketing is quite a poor channel for incremental-sales.

Fence Claret wrote: ↑

Wed Jun 21, 2023 3:55 pm

That’s what the networks say, but from a technical point of view, you’ll typically pay when a customer clicks on an affiliate ad up to 30 days prior to making a purchase, regardless of whether the ad meaningfully contributes to the purchase.

In my experience, affiliate marketing is quite a poor channel for incremental-sales.

It's a flat fee to the network, then a commission on sales, which we can obviously see and track. If we end up being charged for commission on clicks, I'll be knocking it on the head. Thanks for the heads up.

Fence Claret wrote: ↑

Wed Jun 21, 2023 3:55 pm

That’s what the networks say, but from a technical point of view, you’ll typically pay when a customer clicks on an affiliate ad up to 30 days prior to making a purchase, regardless of whether the ad meaningfully contributes to the purchase.

In my experience, affiliate marketing is quite a poor channel for incremental-sales.

I guess this depends on LTV... if you maintain a customer relationship with repeat purchase for a couple of years, then you you can absorb a chunkier cost per acquisition. This obviously depends on the motivations of the customer. If they're buying your product quality or service, then you're in luck.
If you're in a low-loyalty price-sensitive market, then the likes of Amazon will be biting your CPA!