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Great post, but I wish startups,as well as this article, devoted more attention to SEO and paid advertising like PPC/Social. In many industries, paid traffic wi

by il 16y ago

Great post, but I wish startups,as well as this article, devoted more attention to SEO and paid advertising like PPC/Social. In many industries, paid traffic will be the primary driver of signups and sales, and it's a mistake to think you can replace a large scale media buy campaign with a few blog posts or tweets. Groupon and Zynga are excellent examples of this. Also, don't underestimate the power of affiliate programs. As an affiliate I have the unique perspective of promoting Zynga, Groupon, Zoosk, and other "viral" competitors, and I can tell you that they had one thing in common: one of the main drivers of their early growth and traction was a well-managed affiliate program, with numerous affiliates pushing thousands of signups a day to them. This requires a budget and strong understanding of the affiliate space, but it can be a tremendously powerful shortcut to success. I think if you're a funded startup with a clear path to profitability, you should absolutely devote a significant chunk of your budget to paid advertising(assuming you or someone you hire knows how to optimize and manage the campaign so you don't lose money).

brianbreslin 16y ago
I'd venture to guess that most startups don't know how to start an affiliate program. There aren't many simple solutions that they can integrate easily (via an api or something) and aren't super costly up front (not all startups have $5k to dump into CJ). Jason's company is touching on this for SaaS sites, but there is definitely a big hole in the market there.
- klous 16y ago
  http://zferral.com/ http://zferral.com/ (not affiliated) has a pretty decent, simple build-your-own affiliate / referral program.
  - jeffepp 16y ago
    Klous, thank you for the comment, appreciate it. For some reason many startups do not consider an affiliate program a 'must-have' but it really is an efficient way to scale.
    - il 16y ago
      Zferral looks great, but the reason companies pay thousands for networks like CJ or tracking like DirectTrack or Linktrust is because these companies invest heavily in infrastructure, stability, and fraud protection to ensure that every valid action gets tracked and paid for, and invalid ones do not. At first glance, Zferral does not inspire the same confidence. If you just throw up an affiliate script or service without any experience with the industry, you will get destroyed with fraud and traffic quality issues very quickly. If you take this route for your startup, be sure to hire or at least consult with someone with affiliate experience to design your program correctly. I see new advertisers come up unprepared expecting a flood of customers with zero risk and quickly crash and burn in this industry every day. I don't want to turn this into a critique of zferral, but as a quick comment, the pricing model is all wrong. If you're a hosted affiliate tracking service, you need to charge per click, like an adserver, and provide the proper SLA. If you're a network, take a percentage of payouts.
      - jeffepp 16y ago
        thanks for your input. I am sure that 1999 is inspired by your site. Also, there are no "payouts" when setting up a referral program (non-monetary rewards), hence the monthly structure.
        il 16y ago
        "I am sure that 1999 is inspired by your site."- I'm not sure what you're talking about there. I think I'm confused about what your service does, it looks like the service levels are delimited by number of affiliates and payout amount(to each affiliate? or total to all affiliates?). If you're doing that, it might make sense to be more flexible with pricing and scale costs linearly with clicks/payments. Anyway, we're veering way off topic here, feel free to shoot me an email if have any questions about attracting people running affiliate programs, I keep in touch with a lot of the major players in the affiliate space.
        jeffepp 16y ago
- jasonlbaptiste 16y ago
  HUGE market for it outside of SaaS. The things out there are either too complex or just all around garbage.

by il 16y ago

brianbreslin 16y ago

I'd venture to guess that most startups don't know how to start an affiliate program. There aren't many simple solutions that they can integrate easily (via an api or something) and aren't super costly up front (not all startups have $5k to dump into CJ). Jason's company is touching on this for SaaS sites, but there is definitely a big hole in the market there.

klous 16y ago
http://zferral.com/ http://zferral.com/ (not affiliated) has a pretty decent, simple build-your-own affiliate / referral program.
- jeffepp 16y ago
  Klous, thank you for the comment, appreciate it. For some reason many startups do not consider an affiliate program a 'must-have' but it really is an efficient way to scale.
  - il 16y ago
    Zferral looks great, but the reason companies pay thousands for networks like CJ or tracking like DirectTrack or Linktrust is because these companies invest heavily in infrastructure, stability, and fraud protection to ensure that every valid action gets tracked and paid for, and invalid ones do not. At first glance, Zferral does not inspire the same confidence. If you just throw up an affiliate script or service without any experience with the industry, you will get destroyed with fraud and traffic quality issues very quickly. If you take this route for your startup, be sure to hire or at least consult with someone with affiliate experience to design your program correctly. I see new advertisers come up unprepared expecting a flood of customers with zero risk and quickly crash and burn in this industry every day. I don't want to turn this into a critique of zferral, but as a quick comment, the pricing model is all wrong. If you're a hosted affiliate tracking service, you need to charge per click, like an adserver, and provide the proper SLA. If you're a network, take a percentage of payouts.
    - jeffepp 16y ago
      thanks for your input. I am sure that 1999 is inspired by your site. Also, there are no "payouts" when setting up a referral program (non-monetary rewards), hence the monthly structure.
      - il 16y ago
        "I am sure that 1999 is inspired by your site."- I'm not sure what you're talking about there. I think I'm confused about what your service does, it looks like the service levels are delimited by number of affiliates and payout amount(to each affiliate? or total to all affiliates?). If you're doing that, it might make sense to be more flexible with pricing and scale costs linearly with clicks/payments. Anyway, we're veering way off topic here, feel free to shoot me an email if have any questions about attracting people running affiliate programs, I keep in touch with a lot of the major players in the affiliate space.
        jeffepp 16y ago
jasonlbaptiste 16y ago
HUGE market for it outside of SaaS. The things out there are either too complex or just all around garbage.