In this series, we’ve already covered gambling and crypto. The column is meant to help people just starting to build their own affiliate networks get their heads around the finer points and quirks of running such a peculiar business in different verticals. Nutra is a seriously interesting beast, and an affiliate network in it plays by its own special rules too. I think even the folks with experience will pick up a few useful takeaways and ideas from today’s piece.
Finding Advertisers
Nutra is a very rich vertical, both in advertisers and in affiliates. And in money, obviously. So where do you get advertisers, and how do you work with them so you come out ahead?
The same product gets sold by dozens of companies. Each has its own call center and its own logistics hub. So one company might be doing great on confirmed orders but terrible on buyout rate. Another, the other way around: the call center is on its last legs, but logistics runs like clockwork, the goods get delivered fast, and the buyout rate is good. Most of them, though, are bad at everything.
That’s why the boldest, richest, and most successful ones run an interesting scheme:
- Sign up more-or-less sane advertisers with a range of products.
- Collect data on which products sell well in which regions.
- Call up their advertisers’ call centers to lift their sales scripts.
- Set up their own call center or outsource someone else’s.
- Stock up on the popular products.
- Put small warehouses in the regions with the best buyout rate.
- Become their own advertiser.
- Route traffic to themselves only in the most profitable regions, leaving the other regions to the old advertisers.
- Profit.
The scheme is relatively simple, but it takes energy and a bit of money to pull off. In return, you end up cornering all the best offers and the best regions for yourself. After that, you can bump up payouts to pull in more affiliates, or go pick out a G-Wagon. Your call.
By the way, you don’t have to spend anything on software for your own advertiser. A call center with an auto-dialer, warehouse accounting, and delivery services are all there in AlterCPA Moe — it’s the same CRM that’s built into my platform, just without the affiliate module and without tech support, but free and with no limits. And an affiliate network on AlterCPA Pro hooks up to it with a single ready-made integration template.
There’s one more interesting option. For those who aren’t squeamish about shaving. I don’t recommend it myself, but I’m obliged to mention it. You take an offer from another affiliate network for resale and set a shave of, say, 5%. That’s your network’s pure profit right there. A lot of people do exactly this, by the way. And on how to shave the right way, I’ve got a little article.
How to Attract Affiliates
For nutra networks — and really in any vertical — the classic methods of promoting a B2B business work just fine. The sanest, most effective, most scalable, and most time-tested option is content marketing. I’ve already written about it in detail over here. Don’t forget to read up on it if you need affiliates.
In short: reviews, case studies, native ads, interviews, and all that kind of stuff, through which people can learn about your network while getting something useful out of it. If your support team is strong, you can also run targeted ads. Wading through newbies who have no idea what a prelander is takes forever and frays your nerves. So: either level up your support, or work with quality traffic through content marketing.
The Main Problem with Nutra Networks
Nutra is swimming in fraud. This vertical has probably seen more fraud schemes than any other. So it’s important for the network to have a whole analytics department. How many warm bodies you need depends on the volume of traffic you take in.
Every affiliate needs to be watched in real time. Buyout rate is bad — we close the offer for that affiliate, and maybe all of our offers. No need to figure out whether they’re committing fraud or just running junk traffic — either way, they don’t pay off. The advertiser has no spare money for people like that, which means the affiliate network doesn’t have it either. And sooner or later, the affiliate is going to ask for their payout.
Same thing if the approval rate is too high. For starters, you can pause the affiliate and wait for the buyout numbers. But usually in these cases, there’s just one explanation: the media buyer posted a gig on a microtask marketplace — “confirm the order when they call.” A ton of parcels will ship out, and the buyout rate will be zero. I’ve also covered how to catch a fraudster.
The Tech Side
Nutra runs on technically complicated stuff. Lead statuses, statuses coming back from call centers, managing and rotating landers. And on the affiliate’s side there are also prelanders, cloaking, and postbacks, which drive affiliates to mass suicide every Friday.
So you’re going to need:
- A strong affiliate network engine geared toward nutra. On top of that, you need a CRM and a tracker. Let me drop a subtle hint that all of that is in my affiliate network solution, AlterCPA, which was originally built for nutra and handles the job so well that plenty of competitors are left panting hungrily behind it. Built for nutra in the most literal sense: back in 2013 we were the advertiser ourselves, and AlterCPA started life as a CRM I knocked together to handle calls, shipping labels, and parcel statuses.
- Techies on the support team who’ll save affiliates from suicide over unfamiliar macros in a postback. Plus, downloading a prelander is a skill in its own right, and not every media buyer can manage it. It’s a whole two buttons to press, after all.
Conclusion
So, what does a nutra network need to succeed:
- Take over the advertiser’s role for the best products and regions.
- Attract high-quality affiliates. I strongly recommend content marketing.
- Build an analytics department to cut off fraudsters and those running low-quality traffic in time.
- Integrate strong technical solutions, so offers actually open and servers don’t go down. And a proper CRM — without one you’ll want to hang yourself.
- Put techies on support who’ll help affiliates get up and running properly.
If all five are in place, the odds of such an affiliate network surviving and turning a solid profit are extremely high!