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.

OK, so you have the software products to sell and you want to extend your sales force with minimal costs. Using affiliates is a perfect solution, but where do you find them? This is the first challenge that has to be faced by software vendors who are just discovering the affiliate marketing advantages and by newbie affiliate managers.

As I see it, the recruitment process involves 2 elements – finding / contacting the affiliates and the incentives you give them in order to join your affiliate program. Here are a couple of ideas in order to get you started.

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.