By Cristian Dorobantescu
Affiliate Network Coordinator / Avangate BV

Bob says that a (Micro) ISV owner has to wear about 47 hats to keep the business running. I have to agree with Bob on this one, as from my experience in working for and with (Micro)ISV, 47 it’s just about the right number of hats!

Still, there is one hat that an ISV owner might not need to wear (if they already use an Electronic Software Distribution company like Avangate, Regnow, Plimus or Element5 to run their sales), and that is the Affiliate Marketing hat. I know, I know, most ISV don’t trust Affiliate Marketing so let me get you through 3 steps: 1. what it can do for you, 2. Nailing down the reasons why (Micro)ISVs don’t always run Affiliate marketing and 3. Why you don’t have to wear an (extra) hat for it (because the ESD companies will wear it for you).

1. So let me first tell what Affiliate marketing can do for you:

• Download portals, discount sites, reviews, blogs and editorials. They all work, one way or another, based on an affiliate business model, getting commissions from affiliate sales. If you want them, you need to enable affiliate marketing for your products.
• Efficiently outsource Marketing and Sales efforts while you develop the products. ISV are started by technical people most of the time, who then try to wear a sales/marketing hat while coding. I’m not really a technical guy but I can say that the actual product development takes a lot of time and resources. Then why not outsource some of the marketing and sales efforts to some guys (the affiliates) that should do it well enough to make a living from it? After all, affiliate marketing it’s based on efficiency, you don’t have to pay for it unless it generates sales / makes money.
• Having multiple storefronts for your products. You can’t expect that every potential customer for your product will know about you and get to your homepage. So having your product on sale in multiple places greatly improves your chances to have that buy button clicked on.

2. Let me see if I can further narrow down the target for this article; if you aren’t already using affiliate marketing to help your sales and marketing you are probably in one or more of the following categories:

• You don’t think affiliates will bring you money. Still, they have to make a living out of it, so they need to actually make some sales somewhere. It can be for your competition or for you, what would you choose?
• You don’t want to share the profits with affiliates (after all, they just place a buy button on their site, while you did all the hard work). Truth is that if they just place a buy button, they will never make a sale, so you don’t have to worry about sharing your hard earned money with them, the lazy bones. And if they make a sale, it just means they did more than ad a simple buy button.
• You are afraid of affiliate fraud or you don’t have the knowledge to manage the affiliates. This actually gets me to the part with the Hat you might not need to wear, because we can do it for you. See below.

3. Affiliate Marketing is the (extra) hat you don’t need to wear on your own because:

• The Electronic Software Distribution companies are ready to wear it for you: they are providing you with the technology, tools and know-how to run affiliates
• You don’t have to worry about writing checks every month or the legal burden of having contracts, because EDS will do it for you.
• You get instant access to an already established network of affiliates. They already know how to work with the system, and most of the time they get all the info they need from the products details you use for your own regular sale process.
• Tracking the affiliate sales is done by the ESD company in fully secured conditions. They have advanced systems to prevent fraud and keep things under control.
• You get all the tools and the business model to make things efficient.
• So before going crazy with all the hats you have to wear, just think about the ones you might get other people to wear. If you don’t do affiliates already, it’s easier than you might think and it’s good for your sales.

PS: that’s me wearing the affiliate marketing hats for you

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About the author:
Cristian Dorobantescu has been involved in international software sales since 2002, with a special interest for online sales. Currently the Avangate (www.avangate.com) Affiliate Network Coordinator, he has previously worked on distribution channel development and online sales for international software companies.

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