Ask Shawn Collins: What’s a VIP commission?

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Recruiting good affiliates will be essential to our success, and we’d love to reward steady producers. What’s a VIP commission and is that something you manage through your affiliate network?

The technical definition for a VIP commission is that it’s a necessary evil. Basically, it’s a level of commission above the public offer to affiliates that is paid to the top performers.

This can take the form of a set increase by percentage or dollar amount, or it can come in tiers.

The topic of the VIP commission is a stumbling block for many affiliate programs. The reason is that they simply do not know it exists.

So they set about to project the costs of an affiliate program strictly on commission payouts at the base commission.

The result is that either you will have difficulty recruiting the big players (if you do not offer VIP commissions) or you will have thinner margins (if you didn’t bake the VIP commissions into your original numbers.

As far as expectations from affiliates, last year I asked over 140 affiliates, “Have you successfully requested an increase in commission from an affiliate manager?”

The result was that 40% said yes, they have gotten a raise in commission from an affiliate manager.

And now that the other 60% know it’s possible, you can count on them to start asking, too.

If you’d like a copy of the AffStat 2005 Special Report, which covers a variety of data points from my affiliate surveys, as well as candid opinions and suggestions from affiliates on how to improve affiliate programs, you can get a free copy when you opt-in to the Affiliate Summit Real Deal newsletter at http://www.affiliatesummit.com/questions.shtml.