Part Two – PAD Files

This is the second part of a series of blog posts about making the affiliate sales channel bring revenue to software vendors. In the first post I focused on the importance of the affiliates information page and how it helps you recruit affiliates. In this post, I will talk about another important component of the affiliate sales channel optimization process: PAD Files.

PAD Files – what are they good for?

Short for Portable Application Description, PAD files are special XML format files that contain information about a software product, from software vendor contact data to product description and price.

The main plus point of PAD files as a standard in the software industry is they offer a more simple way for webmasters to automate product listings, without having to manually edit every minor change the software vendor makes to the product price or description. This works best especially when dealing with download portals which aggregate lots of software titles.

Geno Prussakov CEO of AM Navigator LLC

I recently had the pleasure to interview Geno Prussakov, one of the most important voices in affiliate marketing, founder and CEO at AM Navigator LLC. He has been involved in affiliate marketing for over 6 years now, currently helping online businesses succeed with this marketing channel by consulting, speaking and writing on the topic.

Here’s one of the things I like – Geno’s opinion on the issue of affiliate marketing not working:

If it’s the competitors of my clients that are thinking that way, I don’t want to convince them otherwise.

And he’s right – affiliate marketing is really working for those that understood they have to be involved in this channel.

Or his tips on how to recruit quality affiliates:

There are 6 techniques that I use on a continuous basis. All of them start with a letter “S”: (1) software, (2) social media, (3) search engines, (4) second-tier affiliates, (5) summits and symposiums, and (6) symbiotic recruitment.

I better stop here with the teaser – go ahead and read what Geno has to say about motivating affiliates, the ways to recruit good affiliates and the pitfalls to avoid as an Affiliate Manager.

Lots of software vendors ask themselves this question and, unfortunately, I’ve seen cases when the conclusion they reach is that “affiliate marketing doesn’t work” or as Joel Spolsky says, in his case, it’s “ a big waste of time“.

Both for these vendors and for the ones that think their affiliate sales channel could be improved and seeing the positive feedback I got from our software publishers regarding the issue of vendor involvement to motivate affiliates, I’m starting a series of posts with a more hands-on approach. I hope you will find them useful.

Affiliates Info Page

The first thing I’m going to talk about is what you can do in order to help potential affiliates find you and join your affiliate program, thus maximizing the chances to sell more using this channel.

Affiliates Sales Channel Tips

I finally got some time to study in detail the new AffStat Report 2009. It offers a comprehensive overview of the affiliate business and, from my point of view, it’s something every affiliate manager should read.

Starting from the affiliate responses, I put together a list of tips for the vendors that want to use the affiliate sales channel at its upper capacity. Having also put my experience so far in this list, it’s especially aimed at software affiliate managers; however, the principles can be used for other verticals too.

What do affiliates mainly need? I think you’ll agree with me that this is a question with many possible responses. But, as you will see, there’s one thing it really matters to affiliates and that is the involvement of the software vendors.

In April 2009 we did our annual Avangate Affiliate Survey and we got interesting feedback from our affiliates. Here are the main conclusions that stand out from the survey from the publishers’ point of view:

• The affiliates think that more discount coupons from the software vendors would help them sell more;
• They find it rather difficult to cope with the fact that some of the software vendors aren’t more helpful – offering unattractive affiliate commissions, lack of marketing materials, no commissioning schemes to stimulate competition.

The Intel® Business Exchange Software Store in Europe has just been launched, bringing a new sales channel for selling software to European countries – with localized sites for the UK, Germany,  and France (official launch to follow by the end of the month). Good news.

We are, of course, proud to boast that Avangate provides the hosting, billing and process execution of the new market place… that the Avangate eCommerce platform is the core engine of the European Intel® Business Exchange… More good news.

Focused on SMBs
Yes, indeed, Intel ® BX is focused on SMBs – providing an advantage for this market. Why was there a need for this? Because SMBs often struggle to find technology products, services and support that fit their particular budgets and needs. The Intel ® BX Software Store helps them quickly and efficiently find the software solution they need to help implement business solutions. That’s why the store features extensive product details and facilitates customer ratings and reviews.