It is time to run your business as a business rather than a hobby. You are making money, and have the merchants who trust you and are giving you the payouts that you deserve for traffic you send to them. It might be even time for you to start to bring on more employees. The money is based on “I have checks I must have money in the account” or using a simple accounting system to manage your books. There are fundamentals of business that must be followed to outlast the statistics of the business industry, which is 80% of businesses fail in the first year, 50% of the businesses that are left fail in the next five years, leaving only 10% to make it past five years. There are four parts of your company that need to be looked at to achieve success; the financials, the organization, the marketing, and the legal.
The Financials
I would recommend that you have someone in your company that one of their main responsibilities is to manage the books. If you are good at being the “programmer” then that is what is going to make you money, not doing the books. If you spend the time that is needed to run the books to project the future revenue, rather than balance a checkbook, you will not have the time that is needed to continue to be the programmer.
There are several software programs on the market that will allow you to have an accounting program in your office; all are very good and useful. I have created a simple document in Excel that will allow a company to plan, forecast, and manage the accounting system in a simple to use system. I would be happy to share this with anybody that might need it.
Making sure that your financials are in order will also allow you to grow your company at a reasonable rate, rather than going from a $1 company to a $1,000,000 company to a $30,000,000 company over night. Yes, it would be a great problem to have, financially. The other side of that is can your company handle the growth.
The Organization
When setting up your organization, one thing to keep in mind is not to become to top heavy or too many “chiefs and not enough Indians” to get the work done. You need to have a balance between the executive level and the workers. You also need to hire the correct people to fit the growth of your company. Your company should have a technical staff, sales, executive, marketing, and accounting. You have the sales, executive team, marketing and accounting; you have no idea how to do the technical side or your technical person left to go to another company, where can you turn. As I mentioned in part 1, there are affiliate marketing consulting companies that will pick up the pieces for you. LinkMo Business Services and other companies that work in the affiliate marketing consulting arena will be able to help with this.
The Marketing
One thing to remember is that you are in the marketing business. This means that every chance you get to tell someone about your company tell them and 10 other people they know. If your marketing budget is small and you still want a large impact, start with writing press releases about your company. This is a great way to get the exposure without spending tons of money.
Joining the local Chamber of Commerce or networking groups is a great way to get in front of other companies. This could work on both the gaining new merchants, and having more affiliates. In both areas, your business will grow.
If you budget is deeper, than Google ad words is a great place to start. There are others ways to market your company; trade shows, placing banners on other web sites, etc. Once you find a marketing avenue that is working, keep it going and always stay on the lookout for other ways to spread the word.
Legal
As mentioned in part one, fraud is an issue that all affiliates will have to face. The best way to stay on the legal side of the law is to always know your merchants and affiliates.
- Do your research on the company before you put them as a partner or an affiliate?
- Having all or your contracts in place and following the contracts will also keep you out of trouble.
I have over 25 years marketing and an MBA in Business Marketing, also have over 15 years in upper management experience, I can be contacted in the future if you need help with your company.
Jeffrey Sage
Director of Marketing
Burstabit Media, Inc.
www.burstabit.com/
e: jeff@burstabit.com
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