How to Start an Affiliate Program (E119)

Arlen RobinsonCo-Founder of Omnistar Interactive Bio: Arlen Robinson is a seasoned business owner and co-founder of Omnistar Affiliate Software which gives businesses the opportunity to set up and manage their own affiliate and customer referral programs. With over 20 years of experience managing and running various aspects of the company, Arlen has a wealth of information that he can share. His current responsibilities involve leading all business development activities for the company as well as hosting a weekly podcast known as the eCommerce Marketing Podcast in which he interviews various marketing experts about successful eCommerce marketing strategies. Sponsors: Drip – Get a free demo of Drip using this coupon code!Spark Shipping – eCommerce Automation Links: https://www.osiaffiliate.comhttps://www.ecommercemarketingpodcast.comhttps://arlenrobinson.com Transcript: Charles (00:00): In this episode of the Business of eCommerce. I talked with Arlen Robinson about how to set up a successful affiliate program. This is a business of e-commerce, episode one 19. Welcome to the Business of eCommerce, the show that helps eCommerce retailers start, launch and grow the eCommerce business. I'm your host, Charles Palleschi and I'm here today with Arlen Robinson. Arlen is the co founder of Omnistar Interactive software. I'm going to star helps businesses set up and manage their affiliate and customer referral programs. I asked Ireland on the show today to chat about how you can create your own affiliate program. So Arlen, how are you doing today? Arlen (00:41): Great. Great. How's it going, Charles? Good. Awesome to have you on the show. Charles (00:45): It say to talk about the whole affiliate program. It's something we've been doing a bit hair [inaudible] and it's kind of top of mind, so pretty exciting topic. So just to kind of get everyone into it, when you say an affiliate program, which is for us to find it real quick it's basically, how would you define it? What's that off there? Arlen (01:05): It's a great question and I'm, I'm glad to define it. A lot of times when people say affiliate program, a lot of times the term referral program gets tossed around as well. But there they're actually two distinct programs actually. So first off with an affiliate program and if the [inaudible] program is actually when you get any outside person, whether they're an actual affiliate and that's what they do for a living or they're an influencer. When you get these outside people to promote your product or services to an audience of people that they typically don't know. So these are, you know, affiliates or influencers, they have a audience of followers and these followers are usually people that they don't know, people that are just following, you know what it is that they do and these affiliates with the affiliate program, they're doing this in exchange for some type of commission or you know, or offering whether it's cash commission per referred sale or whether it is a in exchange for like maybe product free product or things like that. Arlen (02:04): So that's what an affiliate program is. Now the referral program on the other side is when you actually get your customers to refer you other customers and you incentivize your customers. So your customers are going to be, you know, people who of course that are using your products or services. And they're reaching out to typically people that they do know, people that are in their ecosystem, friends and family, colleagues, anyone in their, in their kind of a sphere of influence. And so that's what an F referral program is. And with the referral program, the incentive can be the same as well. It could be a percentage of our order total. It can be a fixed amount, it could be free product, it could be bonus items, a gift or whatever you decide they commission it is up to you. And so that's, that's really the difference.