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While one-time payment sales are common in affiliate marketing, they aren’t always the most lucrative option. When you sell only one type of product, you risk countless income-earning opportunities each year.
Subscription products are those that enable you to collect payments on a continual basis. They can offer your customers value (through constant content updates), while providing you (and your business) with more financial stability. Even better, subscription products are easy to set up and require very little maintenance effort.
In this post, we’ll introduce the benefits of adding subscription products to your program. We’ll then outline three tips for becoming a successful subscription affiliate with the help of Easy Affiliate. Let’s get started!
Why You Should Sell Subscription Products on Your Affiliate Site
Subscription products are those that your customers pay for on a recurring basis. These include site memberships, courses, and even consultations. While they're not as popular as one-time payment products for affiliate marketers, they can provide you with many benefits. For example, selling subscription products can:
- Maximize profit per customer. Attracting new customers can be difficult. However, with subscriptions, you can turn a healthy profit while spending less time on customer acquisition.
- Enhance customer value. Subscription products give you the opportunity to offer your customers more in terms of quality and value.
- Create a sustainable business model. Subscription products make it possible to earn consistent money through your existing offerings. Managing them is also easier (and cheaper) than creating fresh products to sell.
Overall, the recurring income is likely going to be the most attractive selling point of a subscription business model, although the benefits are far-reaching.
3 Tips for Selling Subscription Products on Your Affiliate Site
We won't lie – selling subscription products on your affiliate site is not easy. However, it is possible. Here are three tips to get you (and your affiliates) started!
1. Improve Your Affiliate Sales by Offering Recurring Commissions
Just as they sound, recurring commissions are a type of payment that your affiliates receive on a regular basis. Instead of getting a one-time payout for the sale of a subscription, they’ll receive a small percentage each month as long as the subscription continues.
Recurring commissions help to indirectly sell subscription products, as they motivate your affiliates. The more subscriptions they sell, the more they can make in the long run.
While the idea of setting up recurring commissions can be daunting, it’s actually simple with the help of Easy Affiliate. Simply go to Easy Affiliate > Settings on your WordPress dashboard, and select Commission Settings from the Settings page:
You have two options for Subscription Commissions: Pay Commission on First Sale Only or Pay Commission on All Sales. Check the Pay Commission on First Sale Only button if you’d like affiliates to receive a one-time payment. Or, click the Pay Commission on All Sales button if you'd like to pay affiliates each time a subscription is renewed.
Also in your Commission Settings, you can assign a Minimum Payout, requiring your affiliates to earn a certain dollar amount before they could collect their commissions:
When you are finished, be sure to click the blue Update Options button at the bottom of the page.
2. Increase Affiliate Numbers Using Tiered Commissions
When one of your affiliates brings on a new recruit, it’s a good idea to reward them. You can do this with tiered commissions. They work by giving the “parent” affiliate a cut of commission from the “child” affiliate.
Tiered commissions give affiliates the chance to earn more without any additional work. That makes them an effective way to motivate current affiliates to recruit others (which can then improve your business’ sales).
Fortunately, tiered commissions are something you can easily implement with Easy Affiliate. Go to Easy Affiliate > Settings > Commission just as you did when setting up recurring commissions.
The default for Easy Affiliate is just one level. However, you can add as many levels as you’d like to your program, creating tiers:
This works by giving your parent affiliate a commission based on their recruit's performance. For example, Affiliate A recruits Affiliate B. When Affiliate B makes a sale, they receive 10%. However, Affiliate A will also receive a commission, albeit smaller (5%).
By clicking Add Level, you can implement a second tier, which you'll enter a new commission rate for. This will typically be lower than that of Level 1 (the parent affiliate), so adjust accordingly. Of course, you can adjust these further down the line once you've assessed the impact.
3. Enhance Customer Support by Educating Your Affiliates
As a marketer, customer support can seem like a full-time job. By educating your affiliates on your subscription products and services, they can assist in supporting your customers’ needs.
The more support your customers receive, the more likely they’ll be to purchase from you. Taking the time to educate your affiliates can significantly improve your business's bottom line.
To begin, we recommend setting up a resource hub. This is an area on your website that contains vital information. The Affiliate Dashboard is an excellent place to post important business updates and provide your affiliates with necessary marketing material, such as links and banners.
To create your resource hub, go to Easy Affiliate > Settings > Affiliates > Dashboard:
Here you can add a personalized Welcome Message, along with links to Additional Dashboard Navigation Pages – such as a WordPress page solely dedicated to being a resource hub.
Conclusion
In short, subscription products make it possible to improve your program’s sales while also offering your customers more value. This will be beneficial for your business – and your affiliates – in the long run.
In this post, we’ve discussed the benefits of becoming a subscription affiliate, as well as offered three tips for doing so. To recap:
- Improve your affiliate sales by offering recurring commissions.
- Increase affiliate numbers using tiered commissions.
- Enhance customer support by educating your affiliates.
Do you have any questions about selling subscription products, or how Easy Affiliate can help? Let us know in the comments section below!
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