Inspinn has seen thousands of affiliate businesses over the last decade, some of which have become brilliantly successful and others that have fallen by the wayside. The affiliate industry is incredibly dynamic and the forces that affect success change regularly. We are here to offer advice to publishers regardless of size, status or funding with the ultimate goal of helping you become more successful as a business. To better define how we might be able to help you, we have put together some of the most common questions that publishers should be asking themselves and in turn, highlighting where Inspinn may be able to help:
+ Is affiliate marketing right for you?
The affiliate industry can be tricky to master for even the most experienced website owner. On the one hand it looks too good to be true as it opens the door to thousands of retailers that would otherwise be unavailable. On the other hand, understanding the different launch phases of an affiliate business and coming to terms with language used can be quite the challenge.
Partnering with Inspinn will help you understand how well suited your business is with the affiliate industry. This kind of insight from an industry veteran can save weeks or even months of partner testing, sponsorship and misguided time and resource.
Most major affiliate networks will provide you with vital information about tracking setups, de-duplication rules, validation processes, quality of feeds and commission rates and in the hands of Inspinn, this information provides the key to unlocking your affiliate potential and answering the question of whether this industry can service your business needs.
+ How do you sell to the affiliate industry?
Inspinn recognises that the way in which a publisher presents its own offering is vital to its long term prospects. We can help you understand the perceived notion of ‘incrementality’ which is hugely prevalent in the UK market whilst also providing competitor analysis to help create a clear unique selling point that forms the core of your marketing efforts.
With a clear message ready to distribute, Inspinn can aid in the production of marketing collateral that demonstrates how valuable your affiliate offering is and why it represents a good return on investment using the language that retailers have come to expect from the affiliate industry.
Lastly, Inspinn can direct you towards the most progressive and forward thinking retailers that have a history of embracing new ideas and new opportunities to help give you the best chance of selling successfully to the affiliate industry.
+ How much should I charge as a publisher?
One of the most challenging aspects for a publisher is understanding the value of the services they offer and the flexibility with which most affiliate programmes operate. When a new publisher starts signing up to programmes, it’s rare for them to be aware of how their offering fits into the advertiser’s own marketing objectives and how likely it is they’ll be able to secure better rates than the ‘default’ ones.
Inspinn can help change that by offering guidance on suitable commission and ‘influencer’ rates as well as suggesting ways to package (and price) tenancy opportunities. We provide the right balance between being attractive to prospective retailers but also stretching earning potential as far as reasonably possible.
+ How do I utilise datafeeds and APIs?
Datafeed and API access sounds brilliant conceptually when you’re a new publisher. The notion that millions of products are freely available instantly generates excitement and an enthusiasm to build out product specific sites with comparison features. The reality is often a little different as the variation in quality, depth of information and ways of handling similar product sets all blur the lines of what would ideally be a uniform data set primed for innovating on top of.
Inspinn’s experience with the affiliate industry can help point you towards the best quality feeds with proven conversion and draw attention to retailer’s that make API’s accessible for their publishers. Our understanding of combining feeds from multiple networks as well as tools that can turn feeds into product widgets or white label comparison services will ensure that no matter what your intended usage of feeds, we can help guide you in the right direction.
+ Networks aside, what other tools should I be using?
The number of third party services and tools that are available to new publishers is significant. They can be used to solve common problems like aggregating performance data (or even feed data) from multiple networks into one simple format. They can also be used to solve more specific problems like knowing how to link straight into baskets or enabling purchases from your own site. In spite of all these solutions existing, it’s not uncommon for new publishers to try and reinvent the wheel and solve these issues for themselves.
Our goal at Inspinn is to prevent wasted time for new publishers and point them towards pre-existing solutions. We believe this helps new publishers focus on the things that matter like building their website, writing new content and growing their audience.
Get in touch to see if we can help you hit the ground running…