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I recently did a research on what software vendors are doing in order to sell through affiliates. I looked on over 400 websites that sell software. After putting all the data together, the first thing that stands out is that most of the vendors haven’t implemented the minimum requirements in order to affiliate efficiently.

Most surely they would like to sell more through affiliates, but this isn’t going to “just” happen. Either they don’t have as many affiliates as they would like or they don’t help their current ones sell more.

Here are the key findings of my personal research:

• most of the vendors (55%) have an affiliate sign up page;
• just a couple of them (5%) are using a special email for affiliate matters;
• very few software vendors (5.5%) help their affiliates with marketing materials (e.g. banners, other web graphics);
• more than half of all software vendors don’t have any PAD files or they don’t update them with the affiliate section.

Vendors must understand they have to help their affiliates sell more through simple, yet effective ways. After all, it’s the vendors’ interest to get more revenue from affiliates, isn’t it?

This morning I’ve got an interesting email in my inbox, apparently from someone that has read one of my articles (so after all someone is reading what I write). I think it was one of these: 6 Tips for Affiliate Managers or Affiliate Merchants Mistakes. I’m going to copy paste the email below because it’s actually raising some good questions:

Hello there, I read several of your articles. In one, you mentioned wishing that people would ask for advice on how to become better affiliate marketers, and that there are so few people asking for advice.

Well, I want to put my product on affiliate networks and do it right, in a way that treats my affiliates well, where everyone is happy and makes a profit. While there’s a lot of information of varying quality on the internet about how to be a good affiliate marketer (as in selling other’s stuff through affiliate networks), there is very little information about how to be a good affiliate manager (using affiliates as a way of driving your business).

Do you have any advice on how to set up good affiliate programs that will increase my sales and make my affiliates happy?

How can one get a channel distribution as conflict free as possible, that generates both online and offline software sales and in the end it makes everybody involved happy – resellers, distributors, affiliates and vendors?

First of all, in case you are wondering why am I writing about selling software offline on an eCommerce provider blog, well, it’s because unlike other providers,  we also have ARMS (Avangate Reseller Management System) – a standalone Partner Relationship Manager system.

I will try to keep it short (I’m running out of coffee) and not write about ARMS (ARMS does this and ARMS that. You can read this on our website anyway).

At a first glance, online sales and channel distribution are competing over the same customers so I want to focus here on when is good to use offline resellers and distributors, potential conflicts with online sales and give you an article to read about solutions to these conflicts.

Download free white paper: "Best Practices in Software Affiliate Marketing"

At any time, but especially during recession periods, a software vendor needs the most cost-effective tools that can bring him extra revenue or at least keep the sales volumes constant. He needs to have a good exposure of his brand and his product(s) on the Internet.

Affiliate marketing is one of the ways to go in the software business. The costs for doing such a campaign are low and the results can make the difference.

But how can a vendor attract affiliates that sell software?

Here are a few simple things to do in order to get the most out of an affiliate marketing campaign:

• Having an affiliate sign-up page on the vendor’s website
• Communicating through a dedicated e-mail address for affiliate matters
• Creating customized landing pages on the vendor’s website
• Sending marketing materials to the affiliates
• Being present on affiliate forums and blogs
• Keeping in touch with your affiliates

This is only the beginning. To be truly “affiliate efficient”, a software vendor must continuously monitor the activity of the affiliates and to pay them commissions according to their performance.

We’ve prepared a white paper: “Best Practices in Software Affiliate Marketing” (yes, it is free!) which will help you find out more about attracting affiliates, solving the channel problem and preventing affiliate fraud. We hope you’ll enjoy it and don’t forget to leave us some feedback on it.

Are you as “affiliate efficient” as you would like to be?