Whether you own an established business and want to take your sales to a new level, or want to launch a new business that leverages the power of affiliates, starting an affiliate marketing business begins with choosing the right software.

Before we talk about what the right software looks like, let's take a step back and begin with the affiliate marketing basics.

Affiliate markting is using independent representatives or affiliates to help send traffic to your site and makes sales on behalf of your business. Affiliates are not employed by your business, but earn a commission from each sale they are responsible for.

Affiliate tracking software provides unique links and landing pages (replicated web pages) for your affiliates. When a potential customers clicks on the affiliate links, the software tracks that customer throughout their journey through your website and sale.

The right kind of affiliate tracking software does more than just track link clicks. It includes reports on customer activity, page views for each affiliate, length of time on each replicated site, and more. It also provides this detailed information to your affiliates, so they can make the most of their replicated site, driving more traffic and sales to earn higher commission rates.

The right affiliate marketing software isn’t just about finding an affordable price. The best affiliate marketing software is about value. You need to consider: What tools are you getting for your investment?

You could onboard dozens of affiliates, but if they aren’t effective at building an audience, these affiliates won’t send any traffic to your site, and won’t make you any sales. A successful affiliate marketing company comes from attracting affiliates that are also influencers. 

These are affiliates that have the know-how and dedication to build a large audience, either through a blog, a YouTube channel, on social media, and so on. The affiliate can then leverage the trust they’ve built with this audience to promote products or services they choose.

You need to provide affiliates with the tools they need. This means marketing tools, links, landing pages, replication, email marketing tools, and advanced reports. All these tools should be available from a streamlined user interface that is simple to use.

You also need a professional front end website that shows your business, and your products, in their best light. Affiliates want to talk about products or services that have genuine value for customers – an easy sell versus a difficult sell. Your website should communicate your USP or unique selling proposition for customers and affiliates.

If you’re thinking of starting an affiliate marketing business, you probably don’t have a lot of extra time to devote to onboarding affiliates and managing your software. 

You need software that automatically onboards new affiliates. This streamlines the process of bringing new affiliates into the team, and saves both you and your affiliates time.

Marketing automation tools and a built in LMS (learning management system) like the one included in TitanAffiliate will help keep your affiliates selling more.

Marketing automation is software that automates the tedious activities of digital marketing to save you time. A few of the marketing automation tools included in TitanAffiliate are Email Autoresponders and Drip Emails. These are emails that trigger from an event, like a new affiliate signing up, or that can be set up to send over a period of weeks or months.   

You can welcome new affiliates, remind them to check out the training module for help or ideas, congratulate them on an achievement, all without ever logging into your affiliate marketing platform!

 Affiliate marketing software with built in marketing automation will make a huge difference if you’re considering starting an affiliate marketing company.

If you’re thinking about starting an affiliate marketing company, or adding affiliates for your current business, remember: The right software is crucial to affiliate marketing success.