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.

The joint Avangate – The VAR City webinar is just what the title says: a 60 minute crash course on channel management – touching on key things about selling through resellers, from what it takes to lay the foundations for a successful reseller network to the latest technologies available for channel management.

Are your products channel ready?

Channel expert Ken Beam @ The VAR City brought in his 25 years of experience in Strategic Partnership Management and Development. Channel readiness quiz aside (assuming you passed it :)), Ken pointed out you need to really understand resellers and what motivates them, what business model they work on (a reseller on a 70/30 model, where 70% of revenue comes from services will obviously be interested in services opportunities).

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.

Software Channel Survey Results - download now!

As you know, we’ve done a survey on how the crisis is impacting the channel distribution in the software industry. We’ve looked at the results and – although not statistically representative (survey conducted on the internet on a self-selected sample)-, they make an interesting reading, showing some trends and providing tips & solutions for channel challenges.

Frankly, I was (pleasantly) surprised to see how much weight both ISVs and resellers give to joint marketing programs, measuring, efficiency, communication…  obviously no one can afford to pay lip service to these actions, they are for real.

Encouragingly enough, vendors and resellers acknowledge the same top channel challenges and consider similar solutions for tackling problems.

This is part 2 of a 5-part series: How to convert more software trials to purchases.

There are three camps about asking for contact info before a trial starts:

A.  Ask for nothing – Maximize number of downloads; minimize barriers.
B.  Show 1 – 4 fields - Make them optional. Get what you can, then get out of the way.
C.  Show 14 fields – Get their street address. Only serious people will download so you don’t waste your time with crap trials.

Allow me to convince you that B is the way to go.

Let’s first dispense with C.

If the world of free social media has taught us anything, it’s that “invasion without permission” is dead. You haven’t earned people’s contact information so they won’t give it.

So here you are, another ordinary day running your microISV. Pretty much like yesterday; not unlike tomorrow.

You’re doing what you’ve done, you’re all nice and cozy in your daily routine. The problem you have is that while you’ve been sleepwalking along, the rest of the world has been very much awake. And unless you wake up and stop drifting you’re going to be like someone falling asleep while driving: fine, until you hit the oncoming truck in the other lane.

Let’s take a little test, shall we? Maybe you don’t need a wake up call and can skip the rest of this post.