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A few years ago, Keyen Farrell authored a guide to incentive promoting titled Mastering Incentive Websites. In it, Keyen Farrell shared his observations of the trade and detailed the steps he took to form Topaz Financial, a network of Incentive Websites that ultimately drove more than 100,000 advertiser actions. Topaz Financial was additionally chronicled within the Spring 2006 Issue of Colby Magazine. As we have a tendency to head into a brand new decade, Keyen Farrell desires to share two pieces of recommendation that he hopes people who currently are in or aspire to be in incentive promoting, could realize useful.

Free Trials are The New Leads
Several years ago there was no shortage of advertisers needing to partner with incentive marketers on a pay-per-lead basis. It’s readily apparent that the pay-per-lead has gone the manner of the dodo. The few pay-per lead programs that remain grant payouts well below what is needed to actively promote them. Pay-per-lead offers have forever been the motivation marketer’s Holy Grail since they enable conversion rates that are many times those of pay-per-sale affiliate programs. Furthermore, pay-per-lead programs provide more consistency than pay-per-sale programs since the payouts are fastened rather than a proportion of a final sale. Fastened payouts are continually a lot of engaging to users and convert at a significantly higher rate.

It should come as no surprise that in the Incentive promoting area, what matters at the end of the day is conversion rate. Each part of an Incentive Web site, from the visitor funnel to the individual offers should be tuned to drive the best conversion rate and ultimately the very best revenue per visitor. In 2005 we experienced conversion rates as high as 20% on sure pay-per-lead offers.

As true pay-per-lead opportunities (assume lead generation) have evaporated, a connected model remains a viable source of conversions: free trials. Most clearly, free trials involve no immediate cash outlay from users, lifting conversion rates. Secondly, the acquisition funnel is much shorter and additional direct than nearly all pay-per sale funnels. Free trials are an offer type where the merchant’s goals are directly aligned with yours. The issue with pay-per-sale affiliate programs is that the purchase funnel is long and can be downright confusing to the user. Several pay-per-sale affiliate links will direct users to a landing page that’s either irrelevant or too high in the purchase funnel. This is often usually an intentional merchant tactic since not all sales or actions could be needed to get affiliate payouts. You should always scan the fine print in the terms of each pay-per-sale affiliate agreement. Free trials are a key strategy to keep your incentive marketing competitive this decade, and as models of digital media distribution still evolve, the opportunities can solely grow.

Do not Go In-House
If the degree of actions you drive becomes important, it’s more than doubtless that the merchant can request to bring your relationship in-house. Removing the affiliate network from the equation results in deep and immediate cost savings for your merchant partner - since affiliate networks charge merchants as abundant as 30% of every completed action, merchants can happily bump up your payout as an incentive to lure you in-house. My recommendation is simple: Don’t do it. Whereas the prospect of higher payouts may appear alluring, in-house relationships will be fraught with trouble even among the most reputable merchant sets.

Affiliate networks offer a valuable service to you by acting as a powerful intermediary. If you’ve gone in-house and a merchant decides to bilk you, there’s no recourse. The merchant is solely risking your relationship. In fact, if you’ve got a blowout month in that you are owed a large commission check, an unscrupulous merchant might merely decide that the risk of losing your referrals is worth stiffing you on the check. In an affiliate network, this merchant’s actions would jeopardize their relationship with that network’s entire affiliate base. Smart networks will de-activate deadbeat merchants and fight for you if you have been wronged. Some merchants will reverse or cancel more transactions than they ought to, and also the network may be a valuable arbiter of such disputes. You’ll doubtless find that your network is keen to lend their ear when you have issues. They acknowledge that the integrity of the network rests on a quality publisher and merchant base. You cannot have a quality network while not both. And don’t forget, the network gets paid when you do! So when the phone rings from your prime payer’s affiliate manager, say yes to the free schwag, but say no to going in-house!