by, Lesa Seibert, President, Xstreme Media

So you have onlilne e-commerce and now you need to promote it.  E-commerce sales tacits are any business strategy, technological tool or operational procedure that is implemented to generate sales conversions.  Exploring new sales tactics and evaluating the ones you have in place somtimes get overlooked but should be frequent part of your overall plan.  Over the next five weeks, we are going to look at five tactics that are worth a look and how you can make each one work for your e-commerce business.

Affiliate Programs

Participating in affiliate marketing can seem very daunting, especially when you consider its depth.  There are different types of affiliate networks:
  • affiliate networks that will offer to do the legwork, such as Share-a-Sale, Commission Junction, LinkShare and Google Affiliate Network
  • affiliate directories to help you find partners, like Affiliate Scout, Associate Programs, Affiliates Directory and Affiliate Showcase
  • and affiliate software designed to manage the process, such as iDevDirect, Has Offers, Post Affiliate Pro and Direct Track
Affiliate marketing has become a vast industry with unlimited resources, but many e-commerce merchants don't know where to begin.  A case sutdy is Peter Novell, owner of TheOldWestGallery.com, a vintage western clothing retailer.  According to Peter, he gets more than 10 percent of his sales through affiliate programs.  As good or better is what the added links to my site did for my search results.  You can't pay for that kind of traffic.  It is the bet $500 I have ever spent for my business.  Novell reaps the rewards of hundreds of partners with links to his site, and he wishes he had done it years earlier.

If this is not in your plans right now, at least review the directories and software listed above , which contain some valuable resources. 

Next week we will look at loyalty and rewards programs.