I disagree. It is a very good idea. Just give it a name only IM's would understand e.g. webmasters, affiliates etc.
Even if the average person would be arsed reading and learning how they could get a discount, they could end up being a good affiliate for you.
Just don't use anchor text like "Earn MEGA Bucks promoting this product!"
OK, read my post again. I explained the reason it's not a good idea is because in doing so you're taking some sales away from the affiliates who send the visitors to your page. That might not seem like a big deal to a vendor because he might get another affiliate from it, but
for the affiliate it's a VERY BIG DEAL because he's the one sending the visitor and
the only thing he gets out of your recruitment is more competion. As far as the affiliate is concerned, all you should be doing with any prospects they send to your page is converting them to sales.
If all you're concerned about is your own needs, then it certainly seems like it would be a good idea. You'll certainly get some percentage of visitors to your page that will click that link, and some percentage of those will decide to become affiliates. But you'll also be losing a lot of seasoned professionals that don't want to promote a page that's designed to siphon off some of the visitors he's sending to that page.
ClickBank even explains the need to cloak hoplinks to prevent losing sales to people changing the hoplinks. They even provide a tool in the Marketplace to create cloaked hoplinks for you. What use is any of that if the vendor is providing the customer instructions to create their own hoplink before making a purchase?
Which would you rather have promoting your product.
- A lot of newbies that found your page because they were potential customers and then decided to become affiliate marketers because 'hey that sounds like a neat idea',
- or would you rather have professional marketers that already know what they're doing, and found your affiliate page because you posted it on marketing forums.
Just having one experienced marketer can bring in more sales than a hundred 'I think I'll give this a try' affiliates.
Here's a few things the professional marketers looking before deciding to promote a product.
- How good is the sales page? Is it likely to convert the visitors they send? How much presell will be needed?
- Is there anything in the sales funnel that will overwrite their cookie so they'll be cut out of their commission if a sale is made.
- Are any visitors they send to the page being siphoned off from the sales funnel for other purposes. (recruiting affiliates from the sales page is one example of that).
- Are there any secondary offers being made before, during, or after the sale? If so will the affiliate get commissions on those sales as well?
- How aggressively is the vendor promoting his own sales page? Is it worth competing with the vendor for sales?
If the answer to any of those questions indicate that the vendor will be taking any visitors away from the affiliates commissions, then the best affiliates won't be interested in promoting it. Sometimes a good affiliate will overlook something if they thing everything else is strong enough that they'll still make money, but most of the time they'll move on to promote something else.
A lot of vendors make the mistake of trying to market their products themselves, in effect competing with their affiliates. Or they resent the commissions they pay out thinking somehow it's a waste to be paying it. If that's they case then why do you even need affiliates, just market the product yourself.
If a vendor decides to use affiliates to sell their product, then they need to understand what they are actually creating is a sales force. Affiliate Marketers are to IM what Independent Sales Agents are to the Insurance Industry and any other commission based sales force. By having a sales force, the vendor can make so many more sales than they could by just promoting themselves it makes it more than worthwhile to pay out the large commissions.
Would you rather make 100% of the sale price, or 25% of the sale price? That's how most vendors think about it, and of course the answer is 100%. But the REAL question is actually, 'would you rather make A) 100% on 500 sales, or B) 25% on 50,000 sales?'. In that case the answer becomes B of course.
Well, if you really would rather have the 50,000 sales then you're complete strategy should be based on having a marketing sales force. Let them do the marketing for you. That frees you up to focus on completing the sale for them (that's the purpose of your sales page) and recruiting more top notch marketers (which shouldn't be done on the sales page).
It's not a bad idea to try recruiting affiliates from your customers, after all if they bought the product then they'll have more knowledge about the product that can be used in their promotions. But, that should be done AFTER the sale, not during the sales process.
If you're using affiliates to do your marketing for you then the purpose of a sales page should be focused totally on making the sale.
So, to sum it up...
If you're more interested in finding lots of newbie affiliates and don't care how good any of them are then... yeah sure, an affiliate link on your sales page is a good idea.
On the other hand, if you want to find top notch professional affiliates who know how to set up successful marketing campaigns then... NO, don't include anything that will siphon visitors sent to your sales page away from the purpose of the page.
