Newbie? Looking for advice... Should I Start an Affiliate Program?

[gingertom]

Hi everyone, happy new year to you all...

New to this ,as the headline states, so please excuse any mistakes...

i run a small unsecured credit / ( prime & Adverse) secured loan packaging company and am looking for some advice..

I am looking to increase the number of leads, for adverse secured loans we are receiving because we are looking to expand, however have tried PPC as well as other methods and is extremely expensive and wondered wether affiliate marketing may be the way forward. Any ideas?

thanks

Gingertom

[Linda Buquet]

HI gingertom,

Welcome to 5 Star.

Affiliate marketing for many companies provides the best ROI
HOWEVER it's not fast and it's not cheap to get started
and will definately take more work than PPC
SO I don't want you to think it's a magic pill.

YOu would need to buy software or join an affiliate network,
set up the program, buy a bunch of banners, hire someone to
manage the program or learn to do it yourself, which is not easy.
Recruit and manage and support your affiliates and more.

It can take up to 6 months to get an affiliate program successfully launched
with lots of time and money spent along the way. So initially its a marketing investment, then the return will build slowly over time and the returns happens only if you do all the steps well.

Not trying to sound pessimistic, just trying to hit you with some realities.
Too many merchants make the mistake of jumping in then hoping the program will just take off magically by itself and make them rich.

If you decide to start a program, for the right reasons and with the right expectations you will far much better.

[Linda Buquet]

gingertom I moved this thread to the merchant/affiliate manager section since you are considering becoming a merchant and you will get better answers here than in the newbie affiliate section.

Anyone else have any feedback for gingertom?

[gingertom]

Hi Linda,

Thanks for the reply, have to admit i didn't think it would cost that much to set up, so thanks for the advice..

what about looking at dealing with rejects, that aren't put through to typical merchant sites or that fail the criteria? is that an option? i do manage to get more clients accepted than many other packagers because we offer a personal service

bottom line i am looking to increase the number of leads by around 25-30 a week initially, what do you think?

cheers

gingertom

[Linda Buquet]

Well it doesn't HAVE to cost that much. You can get software for under 100 that works decent, but you get what you pay for and you still need to put in some time and energy to make it work.

"what about looking at dealing with rejects, that aren't put through to typical merchant sites or that fail the criteria? is that an option?"

Sorry, I don't understand your business well enough to know how that would work. Next week when more are online maybe someone in your industry will have some ideas for you.

[gingertom]

Hi Linda,

my comments regarding " rejects" means the leads that don't fit the criteria of the lenders/ brokers that are buying the leads, so it may be a situation that some affiliates are getting leads rejected because they don't fit the merchants criteria. We are a packager, which means we make the credit decision inhouse and issue all documentation, much like Ocean finance etc, but somewhat smaller....

the reason for the question was purely, due to my experience, with the secured loan market and my inexperience in the affiliate market, we could help each other, by dealing with rejected leads, so some income is derived from these leads..

thanks

Gingertom