Just like everything else in life, finding a place to start is often the hardest part!  In this section, we will outline five key considerations and decisions that need careful planning in order to get your program off to the best possible start.

You will need to consider the following five strategies before you start an Affiliate Program:

1. A Creative Inventory
2. A Recruitment Strategy
3. A Compliance Strategy
4. An Affiliate Manager
5. A Budget Consideration

Part 1: A Creative Inventory

One of the most common questions that we receive at ShareASale is “Which banner sizes should I use in my Affiliate Program?”   While this is an important part of a creative inventory, it only really scratches the surface in terms of what should be in place prior to launching an Affiliate Program.

This chapter will focus on the following creative elements that make up your entire inventory:

• Banners
• Text Links
• Deep-Linking
• Datafeeds

There are more types of creative, such as videos, widgets, and dynamic tools – but if you spend the time to build up the above 4 bullet points you will be off to a great start.

Banners are the flashy, shiny new car of your Affiliate Program.  It is important to impress any incoming Affiliates with a wide array of options that they can utilize for their websites and blogs.  Don’t skimp here; it is very much a “first impression” kind of moment as these creatives are likely the first thing an Affiliate will see upon joining your program.   It is also a great opportunity to introduce your Affiliate to certain categories, landing pages, or specialties that your store has to offer –they’ll browse your entire creative inventory if you give them a reason to.

Affiliates want options, and they want banners that aren’t just branding actions by the retailer, but are actual calls-to-action.  Focus heavily on banners that link directly to specific pages for product categories, sales, offers, or even actual products.   Remember, Affiliates are paid on conversions so they will want to see a real effort on your part to entice and convert their reader.

Use a categorical structure to help your Affiliate navigate your inventory!   Use category names that will make sense to them, such as “Housewares” as opposed to internal names such as “Category 214”.

Generally speaking, the same rules apply for text links as for banners.  Provide a bunch of options, there is no need to skimp here as the creation of text links is not a time-consuming process.   A good Affiliate Network, such as ShareASale, won’t restrict the number of links that you can create. I would encourage a detailed, well categorized and well thought out inventory of links.

• Housewares >> Martha Stewart Nesting Bowls
• Wedding Invitations >> Hip & Modern Wedding Invitations
• Halloween Category >> Fun Halloween Games
• Free Shipping Category >> 30 Free Days of Shipping at {Insert Merchant Name}
• Summer Season >> Get Outside! Visit {Insert Merchant Name} Today!
• Website Categories >> Classic Pranks
• Merchant Name Variations >> {Insert Merchant Name}
• Black Friday 2014 >> Stocking Stuffers under $30!

It is critical to ensure, with your tech team, that you are able to accept links directly to product pages.   Check with them to see if they have any URL parameters that conditionally display your Affiliate Network tracking.   That sentence might not make any sense at all if you don’t have any experience with URLs, source parameters and tracking pixels – but it should make perfect sense to your tech team.

Most shopping cart platforms, unless you specify otherwise, will be ok by default – but here is a quick test you can do to make sure you are tracking deep-links properly.

1. Create a deep-link, using your Affiliate Networks deep-linking, or custom-linking tool.
2. Click on that link but do not make a purchase – the idea is just to get the affiliate tracking in place.
3. Close your browser completely and if possible – come back in 24 hours.
4. Re-open your browser.
5. Type in your website URL (don’t use bookmarks, actually type it in).
6. Create and finalize a test purchase.
7. Check with your Affiliate Network Reporting and see if the order tracked.

This is just one example, and isn’t an exhaustive test – but should give you an indication whether or not any specific parameters are necessary.  As always – work closely with your Affiliate Network on this feature – it is extremely important to Affiliates and conversion in general. Make sure all of your bases are covered here.

Datafeeds account for a full 5-10% of all conversions tracked on ShareASale. So if you aren’t providing your Affiliates with a detail-rich datafeed, you are leaving sales on the table.

So what is a Product Datafeed?

Put simply, a datafeed is just a giant excel spreadsheet with line-by-line product descriptions and data (such as price, image, and category).

But, why are they so important? For two main reasons:

1.   They allow Affiliates to target specific products when sending you traffic.   If a blog features a post about washing machines, for example, you want them to link directly to the washing machines on your retail site… not a generic home page.   Conversions go up!

2.   At least on ShareASale, you get listed in a bunch of tools that Affiliates use – namely our “Make A Page“, “Widgets“, “Videos”. Additionally, you are more easily found by Affiliates who search for programs based on products as opposed to Merchants.

Your Affiliate Network will have a specification sheet as to what fields to include in your Datafeed, for example – ShareASale has a Product Datafeed Best Practices sheet.

Make sure to provide Category and SubCategory data within your Datafeed.  Without it, your feed may be entirely useless to Affiliates, especially if they build sites specifically around certain types of products or categories.