A question that arises when affiliates become successful, or even comfortable with affiliate marketing, is “What is the next step?” Do I branch out into more verticals or increase my advertising budget? Well here’s another thought, why not go international? Did you know that out of the 1,596,270,108 Internet users worldwide, only 15.7% reside in North America? That’s a huge market share that remains relatively untapped!
Let's take a closer look at some of the advantages of branching out into promoting international offers and examine a few key factors when choosing the right offer to promote.
In this section we'll look at two major advantages for promoting an international offer, the first one being “market share”. As we all know, affiliate marketing has taken off in the past few years which has led to traffic sources becoming saturated with affiliates competing against each other for valuable exposure. If one takes a step back and looks at the relatively small percentage of the worldwide Internet usage that is being taken advantage of, they will see that branching out into promoting international offers is a realistic option. Promoting to regions such as Europe and Asia, just to name a couple, is a viable and smart business move. One thing search affiliates will quickly notice when promoting through search engines targeting those regions, is that the cost per click (CPC) will be dramatically less when compared to similar US targeted keywords. Affiliates will also notice that not only will the cost to promote be less, but the positioning of ads in many cases will be higher.
Now lets look into what makes a good international offer.
- One of the first and most obvious ones (and also extremely important) is making sure that the offer you have selected allows traffic from that country. That information can usually be found in the details page or campaign description of the offer. I would also recommend taking the time to find a good proxy server to verify that the offer does indeed display correctly when opened using an IP address of the desired country. For those of you that may not be familiar with a proxy server, it allows you to view pages through different country IP addresses rather than the one that is assigned from your Internet provider. An example of a proxy that offers different country IP addresses would be worldproxy202.
- Now that the offer has been verified to display correctly, another factor to consider is what language will the offer's LP be displayed in. If you have selected a country where English is not the first language, it may be in your best interest to locate an offer that is country specific and displays the offer in the targeted countries' language. Offers that display in the native countries language will reassure the consumer, and in return, pass along higher conversion rates. If you do decide to promote an offer to a country where English is one of the main languages, then fewer issues will arise with the offer's LP.
Something to keep in mind with countries that speak English, for example the UK, is that their currency is different than ours. So instead of payment in dollars, they are used to making payments in pounds. Small details like these can have a great effect on your conversion rates.
The international market is there for the taking, with roughly 1.25 billion (yes billion!!) users outside North America, there is a huge opportunity. If you keep your eyes open to the key factors discussed in this article and take them into consideration when choosing the right international offer to promote, you’ll be on the right path to a successful international campaign.
* http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
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