Today we want to share with you one statistic which can answer perhaps number one question for product sellers joining Click2Sell. Their question is like "How many sales can I expect from affiliates".

Such question is very difficult to be answered, because every product and its website are unique, they have different niches, different level of provided promotional materials, etc., etc., etc. So instead of trying to guess how many sales affiliates can bring to you, we will just reveal that more than 60% of total sales in Click2Sell system are referred by affiliates (in September 2009 – April 2010).

Of course, it does not mean that sales of new Click2Sell merchant will improve by exactly 60%. There are a lot of merchants who have vastly different ratio of affiliate sales. It mainly happens due to two reasons:

• there are sellers who simply make their products unavailable for affiliates and sell their products themselves. Their products are not listed in Click2Sell marketplace, they do not seek for affiliates, thus naturally their ratio of affiliate sales is just 0. Oh thank you for reducing total affiliate sales ratio in Click2Sell to "just" 60%
   
• there are products which are almost 100% affiliate driven which means that the products’ sellers do not do anything in order to promote their products and all of their sales come from affiliates’ campaigns.

But as I have already mentioned before, if we just divide total number of affiliates sales by the total number of all all sales in Click2Sell, then we get 60%. I guess that you are more likely to be the one who would want to belong to the second group I mentioned above. If yes, then please listen carefully.

There is one thing that you have to avoid, if you want to have many affiliate sales: do not just place your product in Click2Sell and leave it. Click2Sell affiliates can find out a lot about products listed in Click2Sell (we do not want them to pick products for promotions blindly), so if some product has just zeros in its statistics (0.00% conversion ratio, 0 popularity), then naturally affiliates will be reluctant to pick such product for promotions. Make sure that your own sales come through Click2Sell or actively search for affiliates yourself (announce about your product’s affiliate program in related forums, blogs, etc.; look for affiliate brokers). Put a bit of efforts to make the first step towards affiliates. Do not just put your product and forget it. After all, if you do not care about your products, then potential affiliates will not be either.

In recent years we wrote some articles about how to gather and maintain your group of affiliates. Sellers who have 80% ratio of affiliate sales use techniques and tips outlines in these articles. So we suggest you to check them out:
Top Merchants Have Many Affiliates. WHY? Learn Their Techniques To Increase Your Legion of Affiliates
10 Ways to Make Affiliates Loyal and Active
7 Tips How to Manage Affiliates Successfully

So basically speaking, just make sure that your product has appealing affiliate commission percentage (minimum 50%), as much promotional materials as possible, some sales to make sure your statistics are not full of zeros, respect your affiliates and then you will have way more than our average 60% ratio of affiliate sales.