Jon Smith / On...

Cashback

Cashback is a relatively new but exciting development in the world of affiliation. Traditionally affiliates earn a commission every time one of their users performs an action on an advertiser site, but the difficult thing was getting customers to come back to your website in the future.

Most affiliate sites earned only one commission from one user. Cashback was the solution. websites such as www.quidco.co.uk, and www.bing.com/cashback/ are affiliate websites, they offer links to websites or products or services and earn a commission, but to ensure that customers come back to them in the future, and don’t just go direct to the advertiser, they share the commission with the customer! That’s right, you buy a new pair of shoes via a cashback website and you can ‘earn’ or receive a percentage of what you spend back. Not bad.

Posted at 9:17pm and tagged with: cashback, affiliation, start-up, start a business, Ecommerce,.

May 2nd 2012

On… Payment Solutions for eCommerce sites

The most important aspect of any e-commerce website, whatever product or service you are providing, is the payment solution – allowing you to charge customers online.

To enable online payments you will need to set up a payment gateway and a merchant account.

Payment gateways are an interface between your website, or more accurately your server, and banks/card issuers around the world.

A search for [payment gateway] or [payment solutions] will return a huge selection of providers. You can choose to work with a specialist provider, your own bank or another bank. Ask for quotes from a selection of the above and compare set up fees, monthly fees and the percentage charge per transaction. Ideally, you want to choose a partner who is sympathetic to your status as a start up and will allow you to scale quickly. Most providers work on a scale, so the more transactions you conduct a month, the cheaper the per-transaction fee will be.

Merchant accounts are a depository (usually a bank account) into which the funds you receive from online payments are paid. This account is separate from your company bank account. Although you may well set up your merchant account with your existing business bank, it is not obligatory.

How does it work?

Which ever payment gateway you choose, fundamentally the process works as follows:

1. Payment Card Data Collection – The customer enters their card details on your website.

2. Payment Card Authentication – Those details are sent via your payment gateway, (i.e. RBS Worldpay, Sagepay,VeriFone) to the card issuer (i.e. the customer’s bank). If the card details cannot be verified, the payment is normally declined your customer is asked to check their details are correct, or use an alternative card.

3. Payment Authorisation – The issuing bank checks the cardholder’s details are correct, that there are enough funds in the account to cover the payment and that the card hasn’t been reported lost or stolen. If the details are all correct, the issuing bank authorizes the amount requested and reserve those funds. Once the payment transaction is complete, a final instruction is sent to the bank to debit the funds.

4. Payment Settlement – Your merchant account is credited with the value of the card transaction within a few days of the actual transaction

Posted at 10:47pm and tagged with: payment solutions, e-commerce, Ecommerce, start-up, start a business,.

March 4th 2012

On… Online Marketplaces and Affiliate Networks

Marketplaces

Marketplaces such as ebay now enjoying their second decade of success, are genius inventions that have revolutionized how we buy and sell. Although ebay was conceived with the idea to enable individuals to buy and sell among themselves, it wasn’t long before a facility for professional sellers, was added.

Ebay, Amazon and Priceminister and Play in Europe among others provide online businesses with the opportunity to enjoy a worldwide audience by listing your products or services and offering them to their enormous customer bases.

By paying a listing fee, and/or a monthly subscription plus a percentage or share of the sale price, your business gains unprecedented reach in a day.

Affiliate Networks

Affiliate networks aggregate advertisers and publishers – this is industry-speak for those who want to sell products, and those who want to help them sell, for a commission.

Many businesses operate and livelihoods are earned solely by promoting the products and services of others using the affiliation model. Some publishers have created vast networks of websites through which they promote everything and anything.

Posted at 5:12pm and tagged with: marketplace, affiliation, start-up, start a business,.

February 29th 2012

On… Website content and your online reputation

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An often quoted phrase you may have heard is ‘content is king’. It’s not wrong. Good content is key to a good website. Good content is attractive to human users because it helps inform, educate, inspire and importantly, sell your product or service. This means more users visit, more users benefit from your content and ultimately more users become consumers of your product or services. Good content is also attractive to other website owners who want to provide relevant, interesting or value-added content to their users, if you’ve got good content, then they will link to your pages. Good content is also attractive to Google and the other search engines because good content means that Google can supply a suitable solution to their customer’s search – a link to your website. But here’s the best bit – if Google thinks the content is good (read: accessible, structured and relevant) and other websites think your content is good, and thus link to it… then Google thinks that these third-party votes of confidence (links) are

Reputation

A by-product of providing good content on your website (text, images, videos, downloads etc) is that other websites will link to your content. This is great in itself because it positions your website as an authority on your given product or service, it results in more traffic as users of other sites click on the link to consume the content on your pages and it also makes Google sit up and take notice of your web pages resulting in more visits from the Googlebot.

Posted at 11:31pm and tagged with: online reputation, start-up, start a business, website,.

February 26th 2012

On… Breaking relations with suppliers

In an ideal world you will not face this issue as communication and service delivery from each and every one of your suppliers will be excellent… However, in certain cases, despite all of your best efforts, relations with a particular supplier can break down and this leaves your business at risk. If you feel that you’re not receiving the best possible service consistently from a supplier (no matter how competitive their pricing) then begin the search for a replacement.

Once established, notify your existing supplier that you will no longer be requiring their services and ensure any outstanding invoices are paid, on time. Assuming you made your supplier aware of when things went wrong, your lost custom should come as no great shock if they made no attempt to make the situation right. Even if you have a great relationship with particular staff members there, if the product or service you receive is sub-standard you have to think of your business first.

Posted at 10:25pm and tagged with: suppliers, Supply chain, start a business,.

February 23rd 2012

On… Placing your first order

nervous

You’re running a new business, and even if you are known personally to the supplier from a previous role or business, chances are your first order will have to be paid for, up front.

Ironically the one time a business could really benefit from generous payment terms is the one time when you won’t get them – as a start up. As well-planned as your business is, you’re being lumped together with all the other start ups that have been and gone. You’re business is a risk and therefore, it’s pretty much guaranteed that you’ll have to pay for everything, cash-up-front.

The good news is, once you have a history with a supplier, once you’ve shown you pay for what you order and assuming you have built a good credit rating, then suppliers will become more elastic with their pricing and payment terms. They are established in the marketplace, you’re not… once you’re on level pegging relationships can and will improve.

When placing your first order, ensure that you double check not just the order contents and price but the essential account information that the supplier is holding on you – your relationship with a supplier probably began when you first made contact asking about their products or services. The person who took that call, or responded to your email, or met you at a trade fair, may or may not have taken down your details correctly. Check your billing address, delivery address, contact number and emails, Company Number/VAT number and payment terms.

Posted at 11:59pm and tagged with: suppliers, supply chain, start-up, start a business,.

February 22nd 2012

On… Managing suppliers

frustrated businesswoman

Keeping good relations with your suppliers is as important as managing your customers. Without your suppliers, you don’t have a business – and suppliers include everyone from your web developer, your accountant to your chosen overnight courier. Even if you’re paying for their services, you won’t always get 100% service and any failing on their behalf has knock-on consequences for your clients, cash flow and success. Don’t forget suppliers have the same pressures and concerns about their business – finding clients, paying invoices, managing staff etc. as you do. A supplier is an individual or a group of individuals who are under internal and external pressures to deliver. Managing suppliers successfully is wholly dependent on how well you communicate with them and it is important to establish a great relationship, right from the start.

Finding Suppliers – the internet will play a huge role in most of the research you will conduct when planning and operating your online business.

Choosing a Supplier

The research you did, the contacts you made and the promotional material you received from the suppliers you didn’t choose, is never a waste. They may not be right for you now, but those suppliers could be perfect sometime in the future. Keep the essential data and contact details and refer back to it periodically as your business grows and your product offering increases.

Posted at 10:59pm and tagged with: suppliers, management, start-up, start a business,.

December 23rd 2011

On… Introducing AdSense / display advertising to your website

Opting to display advertising on your website is a great way to earn revenue – users of your website see the advertising and if they like what they see, they click. Each click earns you money.

For advertising programmes to work, you must have traffic. You only get paid when users click on the ads, so the more users you can show the ad to, the more likely you will get clicks and therefore cash.

Advertising, even the simple text based AdSense can ‘cheapen’ your website. Because you want the ads to be seen and clicked it makes the most sense to give the ads pride of place on your web pages which can distract users from the core content of your site. Granted if your strategy is to drive as many users to your website as possible so that they can click ads, then great, but if you’re trying to create a sticky site; then advertising can work against you.

High-traffic websites are attractive to advertisers and the bigger advertising brands and the bigger payouts will be offered to those high-traffic sites willing to offer advertising and that drive significant traffic to the advertisers pages.

Signing up with Google’s AdSense program is very straightforward, as is integration onto your site. You can use Google’s back office tools to select the type of advertising you’d like to show on your site, and the adverts that are shown are of course relevant to your website.

Display or Advertising Banners – often use the CPC (cost per click) or CPM (cost per thousand views) model. Some brands are happy to pay, simply for the exposure and some are looking for leads or sales. Most advertisers are looking for a combination of all three.

There is always a difficult decision to make when you operate an online business and rely on or require advertising revenue. Where to place the advertising? On one hand if you’re going to try to earn advertising dollars, you want to maximise your traffic’s exposure to ads, but conversely, if the first or only thing your user sees is ads, you run the risk that they’re going to surf elsewhere in the future and that they’ll ignore your core offering.

Posted at 11:07pm and tagged with: adsense, display advertising, start a business, monetising your website,.

November 3rd 2011

On… Becoming an affiliation network publisher

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affiliation_network

Let’s say you’re interested in selling lingerie online. It is quite possible to run a successful business selling hundreds of orders a month without once ever buying or selling your own stock. You don’t need to ship any orders and you don’t have to process any card payments or deal with customer service issues… this is possible through affiliation.

How?

Banners – at the ‘entry level’ of affiliation is the option to place advertiser banners on your website – these can be simple text links, search boxes or larger banners and images that you add to your site along with appropriate content – for example an article about the latest shoe fashions with a corresponding mention and image of an advertiser’s website. If your website visitor clicks on the link, and buys a product (even if the actual purchase occurs up to 30 days after the initial click through) then you earn a commission – usually a percentage of the sale price. By incorporating advertiser banners on your site, you can promote an unlimited amount of advertisers and earn revenue every time there’s a purchase that originated from your website.

A great example of this practice at work: http://www.best4sure.co.uk/

This website compares dating websites – the website owner writes a review of each of the services and provides a link, it doesn’t matter which service her visitor chooses, if they click through and register, she earns a commission.

Product Feeds

At the more ‘professional end’ of affiliate marketing, is the product feed or XML/CSV feed. Accepting a product feed from an advertiser can require some development work and API integration, but what this gives you is the ability to display as many or as few products as you wish from an advertiser’s website. For example, maybe you want to promote healthcare products, by integrating a feed, your website can display the images, the product names, prices, product descriptions and customer reviews etc. Your user can browse the products and should they wish to purchase, seamlessly click through to the advertiser’s website and buy – earning you a revenue for simply providing the customer.

Posted at 10:23pm and tagged with: affiliation, start a business, online business,.

November 1st 2011

On… Affiliation and your new online business

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affiliation

Affiliation is a multi-billion dollar industry, encompassing every possible product or service category you can think of. Affiliation is easy to implement both as an advertiser (those who want others to help them sell their product or service, by paying a commission) and as a publisher (those who want to help sell the products and services of others, to earn a commission) and it can be a very quick way to make money online and never even have to process a single order or provide a service yourself – essentially you are a traffic aggregator for your chosen affiliate partner/s and you make money earning a commission every time one of your visitors clicks on a link, fills in a form or interacts with your advertiser’s site, through your site.

Confused? Let’s look at some examples. Amazon provides an affiliation service which it calls Amazon Associates. Anyone with a website or a blog can become an Associate. Once you’ve registered you are able to access tracking codes, banners, search boxes and tools to add to your website and actively promote Amazon and its enormous product range. Payout percentages vary depending on the product and the volume of business you create, but anyone who buys one of the books on this page earns the Associate (in this case, me) a healthy 8% of the total value of the customer’s shopping basket – I get a commission for the sale of my book, and, a smaller commission from the value of whatever else that customer buys at the same time. Not bad.

This is great if you want to promote the products Amazon sells, but what if you want a range or products or services, or you don’t want to work with a single provider and like to keep your options open? Read tomorrow’s post to find out.

Posted at 11:43pm and tagged with: affiliation, start a business, online business,.