What is a Referral Program, and Should Your Resume Business Have One? (+7 Tools to Help)

What Is An Referral Program (aka Affiliate Program), and Should Your Resume Business Have One?

As a business owner, your focus will be pointed to answering this question: How can I generate a steady stream of customers without spending big money on advertising and other promotional activities?

In this post, we talk about why you should be using affiliate marketing in your business.

We’ll help you determine if your resume business should have this type of program.

And, we’ve included 10+ affiliate automation software that resume writing businesses as possible candidates to can get used to automate marketing activities while creating high converting sales.

Why You Should Have an Affiliate Program

An affiliate program allows you to expand your market reach and increase business revenue while providing you with an established network to help you survive lean revenue months.

The biggest benefit of an affiliate program is that you don’t need to pay out any fees until a sale is made.

This is very cost-effective for many resume writers who have more time than money.

3 Parties Involved in These Affiliate Relationships

Every affiliate program has 3 members: merchant, affiliate, and buyer.

The merchant would be you: a resume writer seeking new business, and willing to pay for it.

The affiliate could be anyone. A stay-at-home mom or dad, a large corporation, another small business owner (a resume writer, for example), or a mom-and-pop operation that is looking to promote your writing services for a profit.

The buyer is a customer. The ultimate goal for both the merchant and the affiliate.

Simply put, the affiliate provides the leads that the merchant (you) nurture through lead nurturing best practices, which include building trust, delivering value, engaging, and so on.

The merchant pays a fee to the affiliate for originating the lead and setting in motion the subsequent sale.

Typical Fees You Can Expect to Payout

Merchants pay a variety of referral fees because not all affiliates and prospect audiences are equal.

In general, affiliate programs for services like ours pay around 15%.

There are businesses outside the resume writing industry that pay upwards of 50% to affiliates. And, yes, there are outliers who pay more than that.

Beyond the obvious win-win for the merchant and the affiliate, the buyer also benefits because he/she was pointed in the direction of services being sought.

When would you want to pay affiliates beyond the typical 15%?

There are many reasons for having more than one payout structure for affiliates.

For example, paying a higher fee is appropriate for affiliates who deliver better pools of prospects.

Conversions also play a key role. At times, you’ll find select affiliates do a better job of “warming up” prospects so they buy easier and faster. For these affiliates, having a higher reward system in place keeps them happy, well-compensated, and referring.

Should Your Resume Business Have One?

As your business grows, expanding your reach using different marketing strategies will encourage continued growth.

The biggest caveat to setting up and managing a referral program is the commitment of time.

As the merchant, you’re required to provide affiliates with great content, banners, and email copy. Time is also needed to learn about additional topics that go along with affiliate marketing.

Other considerations for optimizing your affiliate program include:

Best practices for getting clicks
Writing eye-catching content
Choosing your marketing message
Deciding on calls-to-action
Creating landing pages that convert clicks to sales
Developing lead nurture campaigns

However, once the heavy lifting is done, refining your messaging and conducting maintenance to your program is all that’s required.

Advanced Affiliate/Referral Program

When setting up an affiliate program, you can go simple, using custom URLs with source tracking and sending prospects to a specific landing page that’s designated for a specific affiliate.

This isn’t the ideal program, however, as affiliates prefer promoting programs where sales can’t be lost by wandering prospects.

For example, let’s say a prospect goes from the affiliate’s website to your specific landing page you designed for the affiliate.

Who says the prospect is going to stay there, and not wander to other parts of your website, possibly buying from another page on your site?

The prospect could decide to call you, therefore completely bypassing the affiliate’s specially designed purchase page.

When not using cookies or more advanced tracking measures, the affiliate could lose potential sales.

Let’s Take a Look @ Affiliate Tracking Software

There are a few software options out there that can quickly [not necessarily cheaply] allow you to incorporate an affiliate program into your website.

Some options include:

AffiliateWP is actually a WordPress plug-in that enables you to add affiliate capacity to your WP-built site. Priced at $149 annually for 1 site and $199 for 3 sites, AffiliateWP is an affordable alternative.

AffiliateWP is a cost-effective alternative for resume businesses who need time setting up and leveraging an affiliate program into their businesses.

LeadDynamo is a hosted affiliate program that provides you with customizable pages that will have you up and running within no time.

Another affordable option, LeadDynamo is affordable at $49/month for websites with less than 3,000 unique visitors per month — and bumps to $59 or $79 per month for sites with larger traffic levels.

A turn-off to this software, in my opinion, is that as your business grows, your affiliate software costs grow. I prefer fixed-cost options for software such as this.

Higher-End Alternatives:

For a sophisticated service, one that provides advanced real-time tracking of clicks, leads, and purchases, consider cj.com.

Amenities with these services are phenomenal for merchants and affiliates (called advertisers).

Both services enable merchants to offer per-click and/or per-sale affiliate programs, which is highly attractive to some business owners.

Per-click models are favored by some affiliates who want cumulative profits from clicks, rather than waiting on one big sale, while others prefer only a pre-sale program.