New to Affiliates Programs - Any advice?

[well-its-1-louder]

Hi,

I've no background knowledge of affiliate programs and am wondering if this would be a good idea for our company, www.vintageheirloom.com?

We sell for the most part expensive, vintage bags and jewellery. Would an affiliates program be appropriate or possibly annoy and hinder customer loyalty rather than promote it?

I'm using WP with Woocommerce and have seen a plugin that connects Woocommerce with Ambassador. Does anyone have any previous experience with this company, worked well, any things to watch out for etc.

One issue that puzzles me if that I get the idea that you can put a tracking code on say a 3rd party blog banner, person clicks and buy product, that gets tracked. But what if customer abandons sale, comes back later directly to site and purchases? I'm guessing this isn't tracked. Is that right?

As an aside I've a blogger friend who I'd like to pay for sending traffic that leads to sales. Is this the best way to track? Would the addition of 'How did you hear about us' question during 'Add to cart' process be a back up method? Any downsides to that, other than customer ignoring it?

Thanks a lot for looking & any suggestions you may have!

Kevin

[KeriMorgret]

I'd go to Rae Hoffman's website at http://sugarrae.com/ and read all of her posts about affiliate marketing. She's one of the top in the business, and gives out good information.

[ProductPearson]

As long as the products you are promoting fit with the feel of your site and are not straight up advertisements, they will unlikely mess with your customer loyalty.

When a user clicks on a 3rd party link, they get a cookie on their computer. How long that cookie exists for depends on the program. Amazon is only 24 hours, but others can be from 30-90 days. That means that a user could come back within 30 days and buy the product (or related product depending on the program) and you would still receive credit for that purchase. However, if the user clears their cookies, you will lose that affiliate lead. That's why in my opinion the 24 window is ideal, and that is probably why Amazon sticks with it, being one of the most popular programs.

There is endless material to read online, and Keri's suggestion is a good place to start. Put some hours into it and you will understand affiliate marketing inside out in no time. Some famous blogs using this type of approach include ProBlogger, and they have some nice tips etc on there for beginners.

Hope I helped.

[well-its-1-louder]

Ashley & Kerri. Thanks for getting back to me and for the great resource links. I'll dive into those.