Affiliate Manager India | Affiliate Marketing India

Google is working on a new version of its search engine program which is code named "Caffeine". Google Caffeine is faster, more reliable and accurate as compared to old Google. The main differences of new version as compared to old one are:

Google going faster: The speed of the search is doubled.

Google relies more on keywords: SEO professionals, your job just got a lot harder. The algorithm’s definitely different. It has more reliance on keyword strings to produce better results.

Real time search: Google is making itself able enough to show the real time news as it happens as well as Twitter, FaceBook, Friend Feed etc.

The new changes in Google will have a significant impact on Affiliate Marketing. Affiliate marketing using SEO as preferred method of promoting will have to face more challenges and hard work. SEO affiliate marketers have to target more keywords and will need to stay updated in the social media.

Affiliate Manager India | Affiliate Marketing India

Federation of Trade and Commerce declared new guidelines for web masters promoting products of others and making commission for each sale referred effective from 1st December 2009. The new guidelines have imposed strict restriction on the way the testimonials and endorsement are being done.

According to the new guidelines, if a webmaster or blogger is promoting some products or services and making money from it, they have to disclose the all details including the commission received and the way it will be received as well as from whom the commission is received. It will increase extra headache to the webmaster and blogger.

According to FTC, it will increase the transparency of the way business is being promoted as well as customers can save their selves from being misguided.

Affiliate Manager India | Affiliate Marketing India

I was happy seeing the latest check of Rs.5125.61 from Google adsense. :-) Still need to work hard to convert more impressions to clicks.

Happy Googling....

Affiliate Manager India | Affiliate Marketing India

There is hundreds of affiliate marketing in each category and even in niche. If you, as merchant think to create a difference among the affiliates then you have to be extra friendly with your affiliates. I had tried to share my views about how should be a good affiliate program.

80% of the affiliates or publishers enter the affiliate marketing industry with a single motive: Making quick money at minimum efforts. People think that it is easy to make money online and in search of making quick money online, people prefer affiliate marketing. But as we all know the 80-20 rule, 80% of the business of a company is generated by 20% of its staff. Affiliate marketers are merchant's sales force who works for performance only.

Here I am discussing about the mindset of the 20% of top affiliates who can refer 80% of the total business which merchant will get from the affiliate channel.

Affiliates look for websites which are clean, fast and having good user interface. The website should have an easy menu structure, easy to understand order processing system, secure payment system, a wide range of payment option which can increase the click to sales conversion ratio.

Many websites list contact emails and phone numbers on every pages as well as accepts order on phone also. Affiliates prefer to stay away those websites which accepts order through phone also because the orders placed on phone may not be tracked.

Few characters of a good merchant website which attracts the affiliates:

• Wide range of salable products
• Full range of payment options including PayPal, Money bookers, Credit Card, Bank Transfer, Debit Card, Cheque etc
• Easy to understand and less complicated order processing forms
• Fast loading websites
• Secure payment process
• Easy navigation
• Facility to deep link to the products

Affiliates always want to join those programs which care of them. The few characteristics which can help an affiliate program to stand out of the competition.

• Regular communication with affiliates
• On time payment with minimum threshold
• Easy commission structure
• Quick validation of sales orders
• Consider affiliates as part of your sales force and treat them accordingly
• Competitive commission structure
• Competitive prices
• Provide as many tools as possible to help them to promote your affiliate program
• Don't change your terms and conditions frequently and if do, give a valid reason

Affiliate Manager India | Affiliate Marketing India

Few months ago, I joined ZnetIndia Web Hosting affiliate program. It was mentioned on their website that affiliate will get 10% commission on hosting plan and 10% commission on domain registration. I started promoting them as an affiliate and referred few sales. After few months when I checked the status I found that they had not given commission on few sales. I was wondering that why did that happened. I had spent a few bucks promoting them and referring new business but still then rejected the commission on sale.

I contacted them. There was no dedicated affiliate manager to reply the query. After 5-6 calls and 4-5 emails I got a reply from them: "The commission was declined becaused we had given discount to the customer and therefore our margin is to low and therefore we can't give commission".

What a funny answer. First of all, I was never informed by them but when the time came to give commission, they had raised the question. I had written about how merchants cheat affiliate and this is a live example. You (The Affiliate) spends money and other resources to promote and refer business to them but when the time comes to give commission, they decline by giving such reasons.

If merchants are launching the promotional offers, they do it to increase their business. Affiliate Marketing is a channel through which they get extra promotions and have to pay for the performance only. But by using such type of unethical business practices, they cheat affiliate and save more money for their business.

Affiliate Marketing fraus by merchants is increasing and affiliates must take care of it.

Comments are welcomed...

Affiliate Manager India | Affiliate Marketing India

As we all know, affiliate marketing is not accepted as preferred medium of online advertising and customer acquisition among Indian advertisers at its potential. I want to know that what is happening in the Indian affiliate marketing industry and if I want to get the right picture than none other than Mr.Anurag Gupta, Director of DGM-India, one of the largest affiliate networks in India, can help me in getting the answer of this question.

I contacted him through Email and he politely spent some time to give the answers of questions asked. He had presented the current status of affiliate marketing industry in India, challenges and opportunities. I had published the interview with him in my Blog.

Yogendra Oza: What is the current position of Affiliate Marketing as a preferred method of advertising among Indian advertisers?
Anurag Gupta:I would say that Affiliate Marketing as a channel of customer acquisition is still pretty nascent in the Indian Market despite DGM being a major proponent of the same in the Indian Market for past 2 ½ years! However what is heartening is that we have recently begun seeing a huge amount of acceptance from the Indian Advertisers.

Yogendra Oza: What are the challenges to Affiliate Marketing in India?
Anurag Gupta: The challenges are manifold. Few top ones would be:

• Low level of understanding amongst the advertisers as to how affiliates can potentially drive winning traffic to the Advertiser Eg PPC Affiliates
• Poor payment cycle norm in India amongst the Digital ecosystem
• Small size of eCommerce business in India.

Yogendra Oza: What is the future of Affiliate Marketing in India?
Anurag Gupta: Future looks to be very bright as Affiliate is the only channel that delivers pure performance / ROI to an Advertiser. Hence over a period of time I am certain that every Advertiser who is on digital medium will be using Affiliate Marketing.

Yogendra Oza: Why very few retailers have their own inhouse Affiliate Programs?
Anurag Gupta: Like I said earlier, eCommerce in India is woefully small as of now. Hence we do not see too much action in this segment as of now. However, in line with the global trends, we feel that ecommerce / retailing will be one of the most significant revenue earners for Affiliates in times to come.
As far as in-house programmes are concerned, world over Affiliates mainly tend to trust third party programmes like DGM. Hence we strongly recommend our Advertisers to use third party programmes rather than setting up their own programme which can prove to be more uneconomical & less efficient over a period of time.

Yogendra Oza: What can be the reason that an advertiser stops using affiliate marketing?
Anurag Gupta: There are 2 categories of Advertisers. One category is where the Advertisers have a campaign to run with a limited budget over a limited period. In such case an Advertiser uses our network for a defined limited period to meet his specific objectives. We call these Advertisers Campaign Advertisers.
The other category is where an advertiser is looking for performance over a sustained period. Such Advertisers generally do not stop their Affiliate Marketing programme. One rare situation where we have seen such Advertisers pausing our programme is where they are unable to track sales at their end and de-duplicate them. In such instance these Advertisers will want to continue the programme only after they are able to sort these issues.

Yogendra Oza: What is your strategy to recruit new affiliates?
Anurag Gupta: We have a 2 pronged strategy- Push & Pull. We advertise on Search Engines like Google and we have a publisher acquisition team that has the mandate for acquiring new publishers

Yogendra Oza: What are your expectations from a serious affiliate marketer?
Anurag Gupta: A serious Affiliate Marketer must look at Affiliate Marketing as a long term channel and not look at a short term campaign strategy, Only then will he be able to invest money and resources to grow this channel that can ultimately become a significant source of customer acquisition.

Visit DGM-India, the top affiliate network of India.

Affiliate Manager India | Affiliate Marketing India