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Casual Articles - Affiliate Profit: Are You Losing Money?
Want to find information about someone lost in space and time? The Internet’s here: Just make your search one that doesn’t invade someone’s privacy.Can you remember a friend or relative’s name that has disappeared from the Earth? You haven’t had contact with them in decades, but now you want to find out where they are so you can get in touch. In the old days this would have been nearly impossible, but now things are different. There are many different ways to find people lost in ‘space and time’ on the Internet. Some are free and some cost, but the amount of personal information you can find about any individual in the world is astounding.Besides the simple International White Pages web sites, there are many companies that are masters of locating personal information. Say you used to live overseas when you were a child and you want to see how your best friends from primary school are doing in their lives. You can find out their address, email, and phone number, even about their personal history, like whether or not they’ve got a criminal record! Some might
2) Using Clickbank payout stats to calculate the average refund rate of an affiliate program
In its marketplace, Clickbank publishes payout stats for affiliate programs. The $Earned/Sale factor gives us exactly what we need to calculate the average refund rate of a program.
The $Earned/Sale is the average net amount earned per affiliate per referred sale. This number is mainly impacted by refunds and it reveals the real commission earned by affiliates. With this number, you can have an inner look at the real performance of affiliates programs.
The average refund rate of an affiliate program is: (Commission - $Earned)/Commission = Average Refund Rate
What is the refund rate of popular affiliate programs at Clickbank?
As an example, we have looked at three affiliate programs selling paid surveys databases. We have found their refund rates very high! You will be surprised at discoverin
Many artists create art but when it comes to marketing and selling their work, well, that is another story. It may seem daunting at first but artists can do marketing easily if they just think logically and commit time to the effort.First of all, marketing is not selling, at least not a particular work. It is about selling yourself and the quality of your work, however. If you can develop a self-confidence about that, the rest comes just as naturally. Let us examine just a few simple ways to market your wonderful art and yourself.To do this right, know that you will have to plan on spending at least 50% of your time marketing. That's right. Marketing 50% and the rest of the time goes towards everything else, including creating the art. Also, you'll market consistently throughout the year. You continue even when sales are great because one rainy day they might not be and you want to have other options in the pipeline to pursue.Think of your art business as a pipeline or funnel. You always want something in there otherwise there is sputtering
I have bad news for you: You are probably losing money and you didn't pay attention to it! Let me explain...
When you joined affiliate programs you probably considered the following factors:
- The commission
- The conversion rate
The profit formula looks like a child play: Commission x Conversion Rate = Your Profit
In fact there are three big pitfalls here and if you don't manage them properly, your profit is at risk. Let consider them:
- Price: A high price means a higher affiliate commission for every sale but it may result also in a lower conversion rate… If the product is too expensive, nobody will buy. You shouldn't be blinded by the promise of a very high commission. You should keep in mind that the best price is not the one that gives you the highest commission but the one that makes the highest profit. An optimized pricing that makes satisfied customers and satisfied affiliates is what you should look for.
- Refund Rate: Refunds can kill your marketing efforts! What are worth the sales you see in your account if customers request their money back? A lot of sales mean nothing unless you keep the money! This is the whole responsibility of the merchant to keep refunds as low as possible. A site that sells well is good. A site that also keeps refunds very low is much better! There is only one way to keep refunds very low: To deliver very high quality services meeting customers' expectations or going beyond what they could expect!
- Product Quality: Quality is king! Quality makes superior conversion rates! Quality enables higher prices and better commissions! Quality keeps refunds as low as possible! In a word: Quality should be your compass. Don't associate your business with low quality products or services. On the top of your list, promote only the very best. It will also keep your profit on top.
How much money are you losing today?
The money you earn and lose is significantly determined by the quality of the affiliate program you have selected as your top pick.
The question is: How do you measure what is more qualitative and what is less?
There is an objective criterion to use for answering this question and for optimizing your profit: The refund rate of your top affiliate program!
A high refund rate express clearly that lots of customers are not satisfied with what they get and that affiliates lose money on their sales. On the contrary, a low refund rates indicates a high level of satisfaction among customers and safe earning for affiliates.
If you get many refunds with your top affiliate program, you should understand that the quality of this program isn't sufficient for keeping these customers satisfied and it doesn't do the necessary job for securing your profit… You are losing money!
What are good, medium and poor refund rates?
Refunds can't be totally avoided. There will always be customers that are not satisfied even for the most qualitative product or service. So, expecting a zero refund rate on the long run is not realistic. You should wish a refund rate as low as possible in your industry. It's important to consider that there can be significant variations from one industry to another but as a rule of thumb you can use the following scale:
2% or less: Excellent
3% - 5%: Good
6% - 10%: Medium
11% - 15%: Poor
16% - 20%: Very Poor
21% or higher: Run away!
With a 5% or less refund rate you can be happy. Your affiliate program is reliable and your profit is secured. With a 6%-10% refund rate, you should monitor closely your merchant performance to ensure it doesn't get worst. It would be advised to scan the market for a better alternative if you can find one. With an 11%-20% (or higher) refund rate you should be very concerned with your profit. Whatever your industry is, you are bleeding and there is probably a better affiliate program to promote.
What is the refund rate of your top affiliate program?
There are two ways to find the refund rate of an affiliate program:
1) Look at the stats supplied by your affiliate program
Do your math as following: Refunds / Sales = Refund Rate
Let say you make 1000 sales per month, you get a $23.50 commission per sale and about 160 customers request their money back every month. Your refund rate is 160 / 1000 = 16%. In that case it means that you should have earned $23,500 for your sales but you will get only $19,740 because of the refunds. You lost here 16% of your profit or $3,760!
You can ask yourself: Is it only I or all affiliates for this program get similar numbers? If you use Clickbank to promote affiliate programs, you can get the big picture about the whole community of affiliates that promote an affiliate program.
2) Using Clickbank payout stats to calculate the average refund rate of an affiliate program
In its marketplace, Clickbank publishes payout stats for affiliate programs. The $Earned/Sale factor gives us exactly what we need to calculate the average refund rate of a program.
The $Earned/Sale is the average net amount earned per affiliate per referred sale. This number is mainly impacted by refunds and it reveals the real commission earned by affiliates. With this number, you can have an inner look at the real performance of affiliates programs.
The average refund rate of an affiliate program is: (Commission - $Earned)/Commission = Average Refund Rate
What is the refund rate of popular affiliate programs at Clickbank?
As an example, we have looked at three affiliate programs selling paid surveys databases. We have found their refund rates very high! You will be surprised at discovering
A press release is all about the publicity that you can do for your online business. The more publicity you do for your goods and services the more your business gets recognized everywhere on and off of the web. The trick is in making use of all the publicity tools including press releases in the correct way to draw attention to your site. Publishing press releases on the web is one great way of going about the successful publicity of your site.Well, it is not enough just to write press releases and publish them on the web, you must know the correct way of writing a press release to be noticed on the web. There are hundreds of press releases posted on the web on a daily basis and there are chances that the one you write will get lost among the lot. The press release that you write must be just perfect to make you visible on the web.The first and foremost rule of writing a good press release is that the information that you give throughout the press release must be newsworthy. Who will even read the press release that you have written if the information is n
- Product Quality: Quality is king! Quality makes superior conversion rates! Quality enables higher prices and better commissions! Quality keeps refunds as low as possible! In a word: Quality should be your compass. Don't associate your business with low quality products or services. On the top of your list, promote only the very best. It will also keep your profit on top.
How much money are you losing today?
The money you earn and lose is significantly determined by the quality of the affiliate program you have selected as your top pick.
The question is: How do you measure what is more qualitative and what is less?
There is an objective criterion to use for answering this question and for optimizing your profit: The refund rate of your top affiliate program!
A high refund rate express clearly that lots of customers are not satisfied with what they get and that affiliates lose money on their sales. On the contrary, a low refund rates indicates a high level of satisfaction among customers and safe earning for affiliates.
If you get many refunds with your top affiliate program, you should understand that the quality of this program isn't sufficient for keeping these customers satisfied and it doesn't do the necessary job for securing your profit… You are losing money!
What are good, medium and poor refund rates?
Refunds can't be totally avoided. There will always be customers that are not satisfied even for the most qualitative product or service. So, expecting a zero refund rate on the long run is not realistic. You should wish a refund rate as low as possible in your industry. It's important to consider that there can be significant variations from one industry to another but as a rule of thumb you can use the following scale:
2% or less: Excellent
3% - 5%: Good
6% - 10%: Medium
11% - 15%: Poor
16% - 20%: Very Poor
21% or higher: Run away!
With a 5% or less refund rate you can be happy. Your affiliate program is reliable and your profit is secured. With a 6%-10% refund rate, you should monitor closely your merchant performance to ensure it doesn't get worst. It would be advised to scan the market for a better alternative if you can find one. With an 11%-20% (or higher) refund rate you should be very concerned with your profit. Whatever your industry is, you are bleeding and there is probably a better affiliate program to promote.
What is the refund rate of your top affiliate program?
There are two ways to find the refund rate of an affiliate program:
1) Look at the stats supplied by your affiliate program
Do your math as following: Refunds / Sales = Refund Rate
Let say you make 1000 sales per month, you get a $23.50 commission per sale and about 160 customers request their money back every month. Your refund rate is 160 / 1000 = 16%. In that case it means that you should have earned $23,500 for your sales but you will get only $19,740 because of the refunds. You lost here 16% of your profit or $3,760!
You can ask yourself: Is it only I or all affiliates for this program get similar numbers? If you use Clickbank to promote affiliate programs, you can get the big picture about the whole community of affiliates that promote an affiliate program.
2) Using Clickbank payout stats to calculate the average refund rate of an affiliate program
In its marketplace, Clickbank publishes payout stats for affiliate programs. The $Earned/Sale factor gives us exactly what we need to calculate the average refund rate of a program.
The $Earned/Sale is the average net amount earned per affiliate per referred sale. This number is mainly impacted by refunds and it reveals the real commission earned by affiliates. With this number, you can have an inner look at the real performance of affiliates programs.
The average refund rate of an affiliate program is: (Commission - $Earned)/Commission = Average Refund Rate
What is the refund rate of popular affiliate programs at Clickbank?
As an example, we have looked at three affiliate programs selling paid surveys databases. We have found their refund rates very high! You will be surprised at discoverin
MySpace is a Santa Monica, California based website that allows you to network through the Internet. It is the definitive social networking portal that offers an across-the-board range of services like blogs, groups, personal profiels, photos, musicm MP3, videos, and it even has an internal e-mail system.Its range of services has made it very popular amongst networking afficianados, who are looking for their kind of space. According to some estimates Myspace.com ranks fourth in term of popularity for an English language website and ranks sixth in terms of global popularity. In the United States, it has no competitiors and having a share of 4.46 percent of Internet visits, it is the most popular website. Over the years there have been various websites that have looked to go one-up over MySpace.com. Sites like Friendster, Xanga, Classmates.com, and Livejournal.com, but they have simply not matched up to the standards set up MySpace.com.Its increasing influence on some areas of popular culture has led many to believe that, it is getting too popular. A workforc
A high refund rate express clearly that lots of customers are not satisfied with what they get and that affiliates lose money on their sales. On the contrary, a low refund rates indicates a high level of satisfaction among customers and safe earning for affiliates.
If you get many refunds with your top affiliate program, you should understand that the quality of this program isn't sufficient for keeping these customers satisfied and it doesn't do the necessary job for securing your profit… You are losing money!
What are good, medium and poor refund rates?
Refunds can't be totally avoided. There will always be customers that are not satisfied even for the most qualitative product or service. So, expecting a zero refund rate on the long run is not realistic. You should wish a refund rate as low as possible in your industry. It's important to consider that there can be significant variations from one industry to another but as a rule of thumb you can use the following scale:
2% or less: Excellent
3% - 5%: Good
6% - 10%: Medium
11% - 15%: Poor
16% - 20%: Very Poor
21% or higher: Run away!
With a 5% or less refund rate you can be happy. Your affiliate program is reliable and your profit is secured. With a 6%-10% refund rate, you should monitor closely your merchant performance to ensure it doesn't get worst. It would be advised to scan the market for a better alternative if you can find one. With an 11%-20% (or higher) refund rate you should be very concerned with your profit. Whatever your industry is, you are bleeding and there is probably a better affiliate program to promote.
What is the refund rate of your top affiliate program?
There are two ways to find the refund rate of an affiliate program:
1) Look at the stats supplied by your affiliate program
Do your math as following: Refunds / Sales = Refund Rate
Let say you make 1000 sales per month, you get a $23.50 commission per sale and about 160 customers request their money back every month. Your refund rate is 160 / 1000 = 16%. In that case it means that you should have earned $23,500 for your sales but you will get only $19,740 because of the refunds. You lost here 16% of your profit or $3,760!
You can ask yourself: Is it only I or all affiliates for this program get similar numbers? If you use Clickbank to promote affiliate programs, you can get the big picture about the whole community of affiliates that promote an affiliate program.
2) Using Clickbank payout stats to calculate the average refund rate of an affiliate program
In its marketplace, Clickbank publishes payout stats for affiliate programs. The $Earned/Sale factor gives us exactly what we need to calculate the average refund rate of a program.
The $Earned/Sale is the average net amount earned per affiliate per referred sale. This number is mainly impacted by refunds and it reveals the real commission earned by affiliates. With this number, you can have an inner look at the real performance of affiliates programs.
The average refund rate of an affiliate program is: (Commission - $Earned)/Commission = Average Refund Rate
What is the refund rate of popular affiliate programs at Clickbank?
As an example, we have looked at three affiliate programs selling paid surveys databases. We have found their refund rates very high! You will be surprised at discoverin
Firstly a quick explanation making money via affiliates is where a visitor to your website or blog follows one of your links and makes a purchase. You then get a percentage of this purchase. Examples of affiliates are the merchants found in affiliate networks such as Click Bank and Commission junction.PPC (pay per click) is where you get paid for a visitor to your website or blog clicking on one of the ads – there is no sale required. Examples of this are Google AdSense and Yahoo Publisher network.Benefits of Affiliate SchemesHigher CommissionFirstly the commission is usually greater than from PPC ads. This can run up to big 3 figure sums per sale depending on the product.Recurring CommissionSome affiliate schemes have recurring commission an example of this is a membership site that pays a percentage of the monthly membership fee to the affiliate every month the customer remains a member. This can bring in a steady stream of income.Multiple tiersSome affiliate schemes have multiple tiers. Not only do you get
With a 5% or less refund rate you can be happy. Your affiliate program is reliable and your profit is secured. With a 6%-10% refund rate, you should monitor closely your merchant performance to ensure it doesn't get worst. It would be advised to scan the market for a better alternative if you can find one. With an 11%-20% (or higher) refund rate you should be very concerned with your profit. Whatever your industry is, you are bleeding and there is probably a better affiliate program to promote.
What is the refund rate of your top affiliate program?
There are two ways to find the refund rate of an affiliate program:
1) Look at the stats supplied by your affiliate program
Do your math as following: Refunds / Sales = Refund Rate
Let say you make 1000 sales per month, you get a $23.50 commission per sale and about 160 customers request their money back every month. Your refund rate is 160 / 1000 = 16%. In that case it means that you should have earned $23,500 for your sales but you will get only $19,740 because of the refunds. You lost here 16% of your profit or $3,760!
You can ask yourself: Is it only I or all affiliates for this program get similar numbers? If you use Clickbank to promote affiliate programs, you can get the big picture about the whole community of affiliates that promote an affiliate program.
2) Using Clickbank payout stats to calculate the average refund rate of an affiliate program
In its marketplace, Clickbank publishes payout stats for affiliate programs. The $Earned/Sale factor gives us exactly what we need to calculate the average refund rate of a program.
The $Earned/Sale is the average net amount earned per affiliate per referred sale. This number is mainly impacted by refunds and it reveals the real commission earned by affiliates. With this number, you can have an inner look at the real performance of affiliates programs.
The average refund rate of an affiliate program is: (Commission - $Earned)/Commission = Average Refund Rate
What is the refund rate of popular affiliate programs at Clickbank?
As an example, we have looked at three affiliate programs selling paid surveys databases. We have found their refund rates very high! You will be surprised at discoverin
Increased productivity: At the end of the day this is the main reason you delegate. Your goal is maximizing the human resources you have available in your group to the fullest. The more the team can get work done the greater the productivity you see.Staff development: In many cases the assignments and responsibilities you delegate provide your staff members opportunity far growth. As they gain success in them, their skills and abilities strengthen. Competence - and often confidence and motivation - grows.More assistance and coverage: Delegating often serves as a useful mechanism for filling holes. Sometimes you're vulnerable because you're the only one who can do a function that affects day-to-day operations, or one of your staff is that key solo performer. Delegating to utilize more people in the operations gets you more help and better coverage in return.Better use of your time: By shifting some of the day-to-day operational work to staff to , handle, your attention and time get to shift elsewhere - to the big-picture stuff.
2) Using Clickbank payout stats to calculate the average refund rate of an affiliate program
In its marketplace, Clickbank publishes payout stats for affiliate programs. The $Earned/Sale factor gives us exactly what we need to calculate the average refund rate of a program.
The $Earned/Sale is the average net amount earned per affiliate per referred sale. This number is mainly impacted by refunds and it reveals the real commission earned by affiliates. With this number, you can have an inner look at the real performance of affiliates programs.
The average refund rate of an affiliate program is: (Commission - $Earned)/Commission = Average Refund Rate
What is the refund rate of popular affiliate programs at Clickbank?
As an example, we have looked at three affiliate programs selling paid surveys databases. We have found their refund rates very high! You will be surprised at discovering how much money affiliates can lose when promoting these programs:
- SurveyScout: 16.2% refund rate!
- Survey Platinum: 20.9% refund rate!
- My Consumer Survey: 35.2% refund rate!
To get into the details, on November 29th 2005 figures were as following:
SurveyScout
Affiliate Commission: $23.50
Average $Earned/Sale: $19.69
Refund Rate: (23.50 - 19.69) / 23.50 = 16.2%
Example: For 100 referred sales you should earn $2,350. In fact you will get only $1,969 because 16 customers out of 100 have requested their money back!
Survey Platinum
Affiliate Commission: $23.50
Average $Earned/Sale: $18.58
Refund Rate: (23.50 - 18.58) / 23.50 = 20.9%
Example: For 100 referred sales you should earn $2,350. In fact you will get only $1,858 because 21 customers out of 100 have requested their money back!
My Consumer Survey
Affiliate Commission: $40.84
Average $Earned/Sale: $26.43
Refund Rate: (40.84 - 26.43) / 40.84 = 35.2%
Example: For 100 referred sales you should earn $4,084. In fact you will get only $2,643 because 35 customers out of 100 have requested their money back!
Remark: My Consumer Survey has a poorly designed site and a high price for buyers. We estimate its conversion rate to be significantly lower than other paid surveys programs. Despite its high commission, affiliates will lose the most money with this program.
We learn three lessons about these paid surveys affiliate programs:
- A lot of customers are dissatisfied.
- Affiliates lose big money.
- The quality of these programs is very questionable.
What should you do to stop the bleeding?
You have no influence on the quality of the affiliate programs you promote. Your only real influence is on the quality of your recommendation!
Giving your top recommendation to a very professional affiliate program that delivers the utmost quality services to customers will keep your profit as high and as safe as possible.
How to identify quality in affiliate programs?
Defining quality is a difficult job. In general, people can't define clearly what quality is but they recognize it when they see it. So what should you look at in affiliate programs?
The most qualitative affiliate programs find the right balance between the value they offer to customers and the value they generate to affiliates:
1. Value to customers – It includes:
- Rich content
- Good looking website
- State-of-the-art organization
- Friendly functionality
- Affordable Price for most visitors
- Detailed documentation
- Bonuses strengthening the main offer
- Timely Customer Support
2. Value to affiliates – It includes:
- High conversion rate
- High commission
- Low refund rate
- Commission paid on time
- Good affiliate support
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