Today we are going to talk about commission percentages and some practices that owners make with them.
Across the affiliate world you can earn a commission by "referring" someone to a business who then subsequently makes a purchase there. You can be an affiliate of some MAJOR companies out there as well as a lot of much smaller home based business.
For the majority of affiliate marketing you will see commissions in the 5-15% range. This will apply to a lot of the major companies out there. Then there are affiliate networks where you can earn up to 100% commission of the front-end product. The secret to these owners making money is the backend products or offers. Usually consisting of upsells of the product of some sort.
But one thing to note is that the severe majority of affiliate networks and affiliate capable companies do commissions one of two ways:
- A set percentage no matter the product
- An increasing percentage based off of number of sales/reliability of affiliate
These seems to be the norm across almost the entirety of affiliate marketing. (We are NOT going to talk about MLM or anything along those lines where the commissions are made up and the sales don't matter). But there are a few smaller niches out there where business owners essentially force their affiliate's to purchase a commission percentage.
An example of this would be if I had a site "MyAwesomeSite" and you joined as a free member you would earn 10% commissions, but if you upgraded you could earn 20,30,40,50,etc.. percentage based off the level of your upgrade. So this is saying, unless you pay me money, you do not deserve a higher commission rate.
In my personal opinion, I think this style of commissions is absolutely outdated and should be completely changed to something more relevant to today and how affiliate commissions are processed.
As an affiliate, if I find that your business, product, or service was a good fit for my list. I will want to tell me list all about what you have to offer. But I ALWAYS think twice if you require me to upgrade to earn a decent commission.
I really love the commissions based on sales approach. This method allows really good affiliates to stand out from the crowd because they are earning a higher commission because they bring in sales. And that is what the heart of affiliate marketing is, isn't it? At the end of the day we ALL love affiliates that bring in sales.
My recommendation if you are a business owner that requires your affiliates to purchase their percentages is to rethink your approach to this. This has been and always will be a MAJOR TURN OFF in the affiliate marketing industry.
That is all for building a better business today and as always, please comment and let me know your thoughts and opinions on this!