Richard Moloney's Blog

Welcome to all my readers both new and returning.  If you have not already done so why not sign up to my RSS feed for notification of when I post new posts here.

This is the third post in a series of posts about Affiliate Marketing.  I intend to publish these each Monday and Friday and may also publish other non related posts on Wednesdays.

Rebates or Discounts – Should you Offer them?

What is a rebate or a discount?

Quite simply it is a reduction on the price of the product or service you are offering your customers.  The customer is getting a bargain but the seller is losing out.  If you as the seller offer a 50% discount on the product then you will need to sell twice as many items to make the same money.

If it is your own product this may not be as important as you will attract more affiliates to sell the product for you by offering them 50% commission or even 75% commission.  On the other hand if you are selling some one else’s product for which you earn 50% commission then you are definitely losing out.

As an example:  You are selling an affiliate product priced at $197 for which you will get $98.50 commission and you then offer a 50% discount to your buyers you then only end up with $49.25 for each sale.

Whilst this may attract more buyers in the initial stages it can end up costing you large sums in the long term.  Why?  You ask?  Your customers will expect you to keep on offering 50% discount on every product they buy from you in the future.  You will attract customers who will never pay the full price for anything from you in the future.

These cheap customers have a something for nothing attitude and are of no real value to you in the long term.  The best way to get customers to buy from your link for the affiliate product at the full price is to offer something of value as an incentive bonus.

Even if you have to pay for each bonus item you give to your customer it is much better than giving a discount.  These customers will have bought at the full price and will be a better class of customer who will buy from you at the full price in the future.

Offering a discount is easier and does not take as much work as finding bonus items that are of sufficient value to encourage a customer to pay the full price for the product or service you are offering.

Let the lazy Affiliate Marketers offer the big discounts on price.  They will attract the cheap customers and leave you to make your future profits from those who purchase from you at the full price and you will leave them behind in the money making stakes.

People need, want and will pay the full price for the product you are offering and if your bonuses are better than those being offered by other affiliates for the same product or service you will get the sale.

In the past I lost out on some commissions as customers got more from other marketers than I was able to offer.  One customer said he signed up because of what I said about the training course but still signed up with another marketer.

It is much better to add value to your offer than to offer a discount on the price.  By offering a discount you may even break the terms of your affiliate licence and be barred from selling that marketers products in the future.

This series will continue in part 4 which will be published on Friday.

Your comments are always welcome and I look forward to reading them.  I will publish all comments which are not classed as spam by Akismet.

Richard

Welcome to all my readers both new and returning.  If you have not already done so why not sign up to my RSS feed for notification of when I post new posts here.

This is the second post in what will become a series of posts about Affiliate Marketing.  I intend to publish these each Monday and Friday and may also publish other non related posts on Wednesdays.

Uniqueness Contd.

In my last post I was talking about becoming visible and credibile in your niche.  You might be wondering why this is important?  The answer is very simple poeple do not like to buy from strangers over the internet.  They want to feel they know, like and trust the people they are going to buy products or services from.

By investing your time and effort into becoming visible and credible you will ensure you gain a good reputation and your credibility will make you unique.  This will help you to gain customers for the products or services you recommend.

To help ensure your customers buy a product for which you are an affiliate marketer from you and not your competitors you need to give them a very compelling reason to do so.

Add Extras or Free Gifts

When someone buys from your link you should offer them something extra or a number of different extras which enhance the initial product.  Do not under any circumstances offer something which has no relevance to the product you are promoting as this will ruin your credibility and reputation.

These extras can be ebooks from other recognised authors who give you permission to offer them.  But even better is to offer training which will make the product or service better or easier  to use via a webinar which you run only for those who buy from you.

Running a webinar is not something you should be thinking about if you are just starting out in affiliate marketing as the costs may be out of your reach at present.

If you are intending to run a webinar then you may be able to get the producer of the product or service to speak on it.  To do this you will need to plan far enough ahead.  People love webinars especially if they are free and this may just give you the edge in getting people to buy from you and not your competitors.

Your webinar may be limited to just 100 spaces and you can then offer a recording or a transcript to those customers who do not get to see it live.  By recording the webinar you will have a video product for future use.

You can also make an audio product from the webinar and turn the transcript into an ebook thus giving you 3 products to help promote the original product or service.

You need to have an edge over your competitors and this will help you to stand out from the crowd.

This series will continue in part 3 which will be published on Monday.

Your comments are always welcome and I look forward to reading them.  I will publish all comments which are not classed as spam by Akismet.

Richard