Nowadays, many cross-border e-commerce sellers find that the cost of advertising on foreign social networks is getting higher and higher, but they still want to promote their products to more users. Affiliate marketing is a powerful means of promotion, and it is imperative to launch affiliate marketing projects on cross-border e-commerce websites. By enabling affiliate marketing functions and promotion plans for their own cross-border e-commerce websites, website owners can obtain traffic and promote sales in a more economical way.

What is affiliate marketing?

The English name of the affiliate marketing project is Affiliate Marketing. It is called a sales alliance in China, and it is also called affiliate marketing or affiliate marketing in some places. It is actually a way to acquire customers. Cross-border e-commerce websites can generate more sales with the help of content publishers (such as bloggers or other types of webmasters). Once the new content publishers are reviewed and approved through the affiliate marketing program, these publishers become promoters and have their own unique promotion links (also tracking links), which will tell cross-border e-commerce sites that they will cross-border e-commerce Where are the products on the store’s website shared.

Every time someone clicks on the promotion links of these publishers and goes to the cross-border e-commerce website to place an order, these content publishers can earn a portion of the commission.

As the creator of an affiliate marketing project, the webmaster of a cross-border e-commerce website can decide how much to pay to these content publishers (that is, promoters). The amount of money may be a few percent of each sales, or it may be a fixed amount for each imported user. In addition, to activate the affiliate marketing project function, cross-border e-commerce webmasters also need famous terms and conditions, so that content publishers can understand the promotion methods and promotion methods on the website.

Why open the affiliate marketing function and promotion plan?

In theory, all individuals engaged in sales activities on the Internet can open affiliate marketing functions and promotion plans, and whether they are selling physical goods, digital goods or virtual services, they can open affiliate marketing functions and promotion plans. The only condition is that the product is sold through its own website or through a platform with affiliate marketing functions.

The following are some of the reasons for the activation of affiliate marketing features:

• The sales of cross-border e-commerce websites can be increased: high-quality content publishers (ie, promoters) direct accurate traffic to cross-border e-commerce websites, thereby increasing website sales and increasing cross-border e-commerce website sales.
• Cross-border e-commerce sellers pay promotion costs based on actual performance: advertising is very risky, and the effect may not be obvious. Promoters must first complete traffic guidance before they can earn commissions.
• The needs of existing customers: Some customers have already promoted the cross-border e-commerce website and the products on it to others, and these customers prefer to get some compensation during the sharing process, so as to encourage these customers to further promote the cross-border e-commerce website And the above products.
• Improve brand awareness: When content publishers or promoters publish information about cross-border e-commerce websites and products on the website on the Internet, the visibility of the cross-border e-commerce website itself is gradually increasing, which can further improve the website’s popularity. Sales.

Affiliate Marketing VS Promotion Plan

Affiliate marketing or promotion plan can help the website to realize monetization. However, cross-border e-commerce websites can also use some discounts that have nothing to do with making money to promote their business. If you are a WordPress developer, you can launch a free website security scanning business to promote your business. However, this exchange must bring a continuous source of income to one’s own cross-border e-commerce website.

The benefits of this are as follows:

• Website can increase traffic;
• Increase the visibility of the website;
• Obtain more user email addresses to facilitate post-mail marketing;
• Download more plugins or themes (if you are a WordPress developer);
• Download more free PDF files;
• increase sales;
• More users register on the website;

There are two ways of this marketing method, one is the traditional affiliate marketing function, and the other is the promotion plan. If you have your own website, services, products, e-books, or other things that others may be interested in, other users can use your affiliate marketing to promote them on their respective websites. What a cross-border e-commerce website needs to do is to create a landing page for affiliate marketing projects, and then list the terms and conditions of affiliate marketing, and then explain the commission payment structure. Compared with affiliate marketing projects, the groups targeted by the promotion plan are more like the friends of the promoters.

Misunderstandings in opening affiliate marketing functions and promotion plans

Misunderstanding 1: It is not easy to personalize the technical aspects of the affiliate marketing function

In fact, even those who are not so sensitive to technology can easily set up affiliate marketing functions.

• Most e-commerce websites can be easily integrated with affiliate marketing platforms, and some even have affiliate marketing tracking functions. Users can add a “join affiliate program” button on the website to activate affiliate marketing functions and promotion plans.
• For most businesses, setting up affiliate marketing project tracking functions is relatively simple. Just add some code to the sales confirmation page. Most affiliate marketing platforms have introduced branch descriptions or provided technical help documents to help merchants complete their affiliate marketing platforms.

However, software and application products are excluded, especially when the seller needs the promoter to import actual sales rather than traffic. However, if you are a person in this field, you must have relevant developers or subcontractors, they can help you handle these businesses

Myth 2: Affiliate marketing projects feel risky and the investment is not small

In fact, the opening of the affiliate marketing function and promotion plan has low risk and low investment.

• The risk is low, because the cross-border e-commerce website collects money first, and then pays the content publisher’s commission. But to advertise or sponsor others to let others help you promote you need to pay first, and the final promotion effect cannot be guaranteed.
• It is the most economical way to acquire new customers. Compared with pay-per-click advertising, audio broadcast sponsorship, Facebook advertising, content marketing, and marketing through blogs, opening an affiliate marketing function and promotion plan is one of the most economical ways to acquire new customers.
• If your platform has a built-in affiliate marketing tracking function, the commission plan can be launched from 0 to 10 dollars per month. Many affiliate marketing platforms also need to pay monthly. In this case, using affiliate marketing platforms may not be the best choice.

To open the affiliate marketing function and promotion plan, users also need to consult a lawyer or self-study related laws of affiliate marketing.

Misunderstanding 3: The activation, setting and management of affiliate marketing functions are time-consuming

In fact, the opening, setting and management of affiliate marketing projects does not take a long time. However, before users activate affiliate marketing functions and promotion plans on their own cross-border e-commerce websites, they must analyze the competition of affiliate marketing plans, and then optimize the structure of affiliate marketing projects to ensure the attractiveness of content publishers.

Open affiliate marketing function and promotion plan (WordPress as an example)

Let me share with you the specific steps involved in opening the affiliate marketing function and promotion plan. The following steps are in the sense of general knowledge. This is because the products on the cross-border e-commerce website and the applications used on the website may be different. However, before turning on these functions, some things also need our attention.

Step 1: The product quality must be guaranteed

Before starting to open this function, the first thing to ensure is the quality of the product. This is not a bluff. If the quality of the goods on your cross-border e-commerce website is not guaranteed, the result of the promotion by the promoters is that-other users will not place orders in your store later.

Many websites with affiliate marketing functions have their own brands. The brands of these websites have been established after years of hard work. They will not risk recommending inferior products to fans. If you do this, the result will only lead to the loss of customers.

In addition, if the quality of the goods in the store is poor, refunds are likely to occur, which will not only cause trouble for the store owner, but also make it more difficult to deal with affiliate marketing commissions in the later stage. The end result is either losing money or losing promoters. Therefore, first of all, the quality of goods on cross-border e-commerce websites must be guaranteed.

Step 2: Choose the right affiliate marketing platform or plugin

If you choose affiliate marketing to promote products on a cross-border e-commerce website, even if you use WooCommerce to make a cross-border e-commerce website, the promotion plan will not be carried out inside the website. However, if you choose to use a WordPress plugin, all settings related to affiliate marketing functions and promotion plans will be managed and set on the back end of the WordPress website. However, each method has its own advantages and disadvantages. Therefore, below we will list the more popular affiliate marketing platforms and affiliate marketing WordPress plugins.

Step 3: Recruit affiliate marketers and promoters

Affiliate marketing platforms have a strong marketing network, which is also a major advantage of such platforms. Cross-border e-commerce websites can use these platforms to immediately promote products and services on the store.

But whether using a platform or a special plug-in, users need to find a way to independently promote cross-border e-commerce websites.

Users can promote by sending emails, opening tourist blogs and other ways. All the promoted links should ultimately be the landing pages of cross-border e-commerce websites or individual product pages. According to statistics, 80% of the order sales of many stores in the world come from 20% of affiliate marketers, but we don’t know who belongs to these 20% of promoters.

However, there are several factors that can be used as evaluation conditions in the selection of promoters-the source of the traffic, the quality of the traffic, the volume of the traffic, the commission application, the type of promotion, the rate of realization of the traffic, and the situation of the sales funnel.

Step 4: Tracking, management and optimization

Some of the platforms and plugins mentioned below can help cross-border e-commerce webmasters use various tools to track, manage and optimize affiliate marketing projects.

Affiliate marketing platform

The affiliate marketing platform integrates the network and technology. There are a large number of affiliate marketers and promoters on this network; technically, this type of platform can help cross-border e-commerce webmasters manage and develop their promotion plans. Generally speaking, the cost of affiliate marketing platform is relatively high, but the benefits will be more. Users have the opportunity to have a wider base of promoters, and the affiliate marketing platform will also manage and optimize affiliate marketing projects for the webmaster.

ShareASale

ShareASale has a large number of affiliate marketers and promoters. This platform has been in operation for more than 13 years and has a great reputation in the field of affiliate marketing.

• Welcome kit-4 weeks of training for new affiliate marketing project managers;
• Continue training through webinars;
• Real-time tracking of clicks and commissions;
• Group and sort by tags (users can classify and group their own promoters);
• View click attributes (for example, let users know which customers clicked on the link before placing an order);
• Merchant API function used to retrieve protected data; More features;

price: The starting price is US$650, and the minimum is US$25/month;

Impact Radius

Impact Radius is a younger affiliate marketing platform than ShareASale, but its reputation is not small. The platform allows businesses to track all media channels, automated tag management, payment partners, and other aspects, and it also introduces tools for browsing and optimizing conversion paths.

The main function: The biggest feature of Impact Radius is the way it manages partners (affiliate marketing promoters). Content publishers can have their own partners.

price: Different volumes have different fixed costs.

Use Refersion to open affiliate marketing functions and promotion plans

Refersion can help merchants quickly establish and start their own affiliate marketing network, Refersion is responsible for all the tedious work, and merchants can focus their attention on cooperating with content publishers (such as bloggers, internet celebrities, promoters) Business in order to further expand their business.

price: It costs $29 per month and accepts up to 30 affiliate marketing orders; or $89 per month and accepts up to 130 affiliate marketing orders. If the order is not limited, the merchant also needs to contact Refersion to inquire about the price.

advantage:

• Refersion has launched a 14-day free trial service, so merchants can try it out before the official monthly payment;
• If the business uses Shopify to open a store or BigCommerce to open a store, it can also integrate with Refersion;
• Most customers rate the Refersion team’s customer service quality relatively high;

shortcoming:

• Refersion feels unreasonable according to the pricing rules of the order quantity. If the order quantity exceeds the quantity specified by Refersion, neither the merchant nor the affiliate marketer can see the change of the order, and it is only possible to upgrade the account. Promoters will not like this, especially those who like to pay close attention to real-time promotion data;
• Refersion cannot automatically pay commissions to promoters, and promoters must manually withdraw cash every month;
• Some users find that their user interface is outdated, and the navigation interface is also very confusing;

Affiliate marketing WordPress plugin

This type of affiliate marketing plugin can convert a WordPress website into its own affiliate marketing project, and all tools related to affiliate marketing can be found in the WordPress backend.

The advantage of affiliate marketing plug-ins is that cross-border e-commerce webmasters can fully control their affiliate marketing network. But the downside is that the management of affiliate marketing projects increases the workload of the webmaster.

Affiliate WP

AffiliateWP may be the best affiliate marketing WordPress plugin on the market. This plug-in is developed by the Pippin team. The code of the plug-in is excellent, and the quality of the team’s customer service is also guaranteed. Moreover, this plug-in also comes with a set of powerful affiliate marketing management tools

The main function:

• Powerful affiliate marketing tracking function;
• There is no limit to the number of affiliate marketers and promoters;
• control panel;
• Real-time report Promoters can get the report;
• Affiliate marketing project registration is very simple;
• Promo Code;
• The commission structure can be customized (such as percentage or fixed fee);
• Compatible with mainstream payment gateways (such as PayPal and Stripe);
• Compatible with Easy Digital Downloads, WooCommerce, Gravity Forms, Paid Membership Pro and other popular plugins;
• There are many other extension plug-ins;

price: US$49 per website;

Ultimate Affiliate Pro

This is a paid version of the affiliate marketing WordPress plugin, which can enrich the way affiliate marketing projects and promotion plans run on cross-border e-commerce websites.

For example, you can choose different payment methods on cross-border e-commerce websites-including PayPal and Stripe, but also include coupon codes that can be used on the checkout page, as well as features such as discounts on hot products. In addition, cross-border e-commerce websites can also set up a commission structure, setting different commission structures for different products recommended by affiliate marketing and different levels of promoters. For long-term affiliate marketing promoters, cross-border e-commerce websites can also pay them lifetime commissions, continuous recurring commissions and even bonuses.

If a cross-border e-commerce website wants to build an affiliate marketing membership system, this WordPress plugin is an ideal choice.

WordPress Affiliate Manager

WordPress Affiliate Manager is a streamlined version of affiliate marketing WordPress plugin. It is compatible with WooCommerce, WP eCommerce, Simple Shopping Cart and other plugins. Almost all WordPress cross-border e-commerce websites can use its affiliate marketing toolkit.

The main function:

• easy installation;
• Real-time report Unlimited number of affiliate marketing promoters;
• Fixed commission and percentage commission setting;
• Manual setting and payment setting;
• Use PayPal’s Mass Pay to make payments to all promoters;
• Affiliate marketing application registration can be customized settings;
• Extension staff management; More features;

price: Freemium and USD 39 per website;

Affiliate Manager Tutorial (Affiliate Marketing Plugin)

Step 1: Install Affiliate Manager

In the background of the WordPress website, follow the steps of plug-in → install plug-in, and then enter Affiliate Manager in the plug-in search box to find the plug-in, and click the install now button. After the installation is complete, click the enable button.

Step 2: Set up the installed Affiliate Manager plug-in

After installing and starting Affiliate Manager, we will see the Affiliates option on the left side of the administrator background interface. Move the mouse to this option, and then find the Settings option in the pop-up menu and click the option to enter the specific settings page.

Step 3: Complete page setup

Therefore, we need to enter these pages and fill in some meaningful information to encourage affiliate marketers to join your affiliate program. Especially on the homepage, cross-border e-commerce websites should try their best to let promoters know more detailed information about the conditions, commissions, and payment dates required for affiliate marketing projects. Cross-border e-commerce websites cannot expect customers to fully understand the purpose of affiliate marketing functions and promotion plans on cross-border e-commerce websites, so such information must be detailed.

Step 4: Integrate with other plugins

Using these extension application plug-ins, the cross-border e-commerce website platform can customize the commission payment situation, and it can also break the system default of proportional or fixed amount of commission payment.

Step 5: Create affiliate marketing promotion links or advertisements

Affiliate marketing links or promotion links will not be created automatically, so cross-border e-commerce webmasters need to create the links themselves. Find the My Creatives option under Affiliates and click on it. On the page that pops up, we click the Create New blue button

Step 6: Familiarize yourself with the control panel of Affiliate Manager and start paying commissions