Asking for an increase in commission, also known as a “bump,” can be difficult. There are many things that factor into whether or not you will get a bump, including traffic volume and your traffic’s quality. Here are a few tips as to how you can ask for a commission increase effectively.

What Will Give You Leverage

There are a few things that give you leverage when it comes to asking for a bump. First and foremost is whether you have alternatives. If the product is the only product your website can realistically promote, or if they are already the highest paying commission in the industry and switching would only lose you money, then it is difficult to negotiate.

On the other hand, if you are working with an affiliate network promoting an offer that is also on five other affiliate networks, the network will know that if they don’t give you competitive commissions, you can take your traffic elsewhere.

Another factor that gives you leverage is the volume of traffic you are sending. In general, the more traffic you send, the more you will be catered to. When sending a lot of traffic, asking for bumps becomes a lot easier.

Finally, the quality of your traffic also matters a lot, especially on CPA and CPL offers. If Match.com is paying you $4 a lead for a six-form submission and they are making $10 a lead from you, they will gladly give you a bump to $5.

On the other hand, if they are making only $6 a lead, after paying the affiliate network they most likely won’t have any room left to give you a bump.

Your Relationship with Your Affiliate Manager

How much your affiliate manager likes you also plays a large role in whether or not you will get a bump. You should always be on a telephone call basis with your affiliate manager. Affiliates who only interface by email will always get lesser treatment than those who take the time to introduce themselves by telephone.

When you ask for a bump, your affiliate manager is often the one who has to make your case to the actual network managers for a commission increase. How hard they will fight to get you a bump depends almost entirely on how much they like you.

Build a relationship with your affiliate managers. In fact, if they are going to a major affiliate conference, make it a point to meet them in person. Take them out for a drink or dinner if you can. Making friends with your affiliate managers can really pay off in the long run, both in bumps and in other advantages.

Know What is Normal

Always keep your finger on the pulse of what’s “normal” in your particular field. For example, if you are an Amazon.com affiliate, you have basically zero chance of getting a bump. That is just normal with Amazon.com, since they are a major company that can’t play favorites to certain affiliates.

On the other hand, ClickBank.com has a cap of 75 percent commission yet major affiliates sending more than $1,000 a day in traffic can often get their commissions up to 90 percent “under the table” by having the merchant send the extra 5-15 percent by PayPal.

Again, that is especially true if the traffic could just be directed to other offers. The merchant has every incentive to bump the affiliate’s payments, even up to 90 percent, and still be taking 10 percent on $30,000+ a month rather than lose out to another merchant who is willing to make that deal.

In CPA and CPL marketing, know what each network is paying and what kind of bumps other affiliates are receiving. This will give you leverage to negotiate with your affiliate manager.

Negotiating for increased commissions isn’t hard if you have all the pieces in place. Build a solid relationship with your affiliate managers, know your space and send lots of good traffic. Do this and your affiliate managers will respond favorably when you ask for a commission increase.

Generally, anyone making more than $10,000 per month through affiliate marketing can be considered a “super affiliate.” Here are a few tips on how you can go from beginner or intermediate to making five figures a month:

Attend Affiliate Conventions

ADTECH, Affiliate Summit West, Affiliate Summit East and many smaller conventions should be treated as mandatory events. Although you won’t necessarily learn much from the speakers, the main benefit of going to affiliate conferences is to meet other affiliates and super affiliates. Build relationships and ask questions, which might include:

* “What are your traffic sources?”
* “What kinds of offers have worked for you?”
* “What networks do you work with? How’s the service? Do they scrape (under-report leads)?”

Don’t expect affiliates to share their secrets with you until you have a good enough relationship with them. Until you are their friend, they won’t freely share their offers, traffic sources and tactics.

Experiment with Multiple Traffic Sources

Every affiliate has to go through a phase where they do some very heavy experimentation. Some affiliates find that the meticulous honing of AdWords CPCs, keywords, ad copy and landing pages to be their perfect match.

Others prefer the long-term brand building of search engine optimization (SEO). Others still prefer designing banner ads and creating graphical creatives, making money through the content network or through large media buys.

The sources of traffic are endless. In general, each affiliate will experiment with a variety of traffic sources and then land on one that really works for them. There’s no way to know which method will work for you without experimenting with a wide range of traffic sources.

Testing, Tracking and Scaling

No matter what kind of traffic source you end up using, you will still need to learn the skills of testing, tracking and scaling. Testing involves trying different versions of your headlines, websites, ad copy and offers. Even the same offer from different affiliate networks can test differently. That is why even if you are using a relatively static technique such a SEO, you still need to test offers, revenue sources and such.

Scaling is a whole other matter. Once you find something that works, how can you make the most of it? How do you turn one working campaign on AdWords into a working campaign on Yahoo, MSN, PPV, Facebook, SEO, banner ads and more?

These are three skills that every super affiliate has to master in order to succeed. In fact, many super affiliates succeed precisely because they are so meticulous about testing and scaling.

These three tips–to meet other successful affiliates, to test and find your ideal traffic source and to split test and scale meticulously–will take you very far if you follow them consistently.

Once you have an affiliate website up and running, you need to determine how to drive traffic, and effective methods of bringing qualified traffic, both online and offline. Here are a few methods, for both beginners and more experienced marketers.

Online Marketing

What is great about online marketing is how trackable it is and how fast it can work. In just days after launching an online campaign, you can know exactly how well it is working, and what is effective and what is not. Here is a partial list of where you can get traffic from online:

* Google AdWords
* Google Content Network
* Banner ad buys
* Other Search PPC: Yahoo, MSN, etc.
* Third-tier networks: AdBrite, 7 Search, etc.
* SEO
* Article marketing
* Co-registration
* Third-party Pay-Per-Click: Facebook PPC, MySpace PPC, etc.

The list goes on and on. Start testing which traffic sources work for your business, at first on a small scale and then expand it as you get more traffic.

Offline Marketing Methods

While online marketing is extremely competitive among affiliates, offline is still relatively untouched. At the most basic level, you can get traffic offline by getting cheap exposure to your website. In fact, one of the most profitable dating affiliates did this using a very simple, very affordable method.

He put signs all over a city saying “Single? Go to SanMateoDating.com” (where San Mateo is the city). He started by buying domains of his local cities and sticking his own lawn signs all over town. Once it was clear that the business was a success, he then expanded his business and bought hundreds of domains and outsourced thousands of signs. Today, his business earns hundreds of thousands of dollars a month.

This is just one example of how a very simple advertising method expanded and scaled can earn some very serious money. Here are a few places to look into to generate traffic offline:

* Classified ads
* Radio ads
* Magazine ads
* Newspaper ads
* Direct mail
* Flyer advertising

Classified ads are a great place to start because they are so cheap and scalable. If you find something that works, you can buy classifieds all over the world. If you are buying magazine or newspaper ads, consider doing a direct mail postcard campaign first. Often your buy-in will be less and you will be able to gauge whether or not a specific audience will convert for less money.

When you are buying any kind of “media,” i.e. television, radio, magazine, be sure to negotiate hard. The rate card price is quite overpriced; in fact you can get a 15 percent discount by asking for the “in-house agency discount.” In general, you should be paying about 30 percent less than the rate card price.

We have just covered several different ways to drive traffic, both online and off. Choose one of these methods and test it out for yourself. If you have a great website, then you almost definitely have one or more converting traffic sources out there just waiting to be found.

If you are starting a new venture and need sales quickly, then use one of the following techniques to give your business a jump-start:

Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising

PPC advertising is perhaps the most direct possible method for jump-starting your sales. Begin with your most targeted keywords, which should include your product name and the most direct keywords someone in your market might enter into their browser. For example, if you’re selling a pair of V-Mod Bose headphones, you might bid on keywords like:

* V-Mod Bose
* Bose headphones
* Best Bose headphones
* Best bass headphones (what V-mod is known for)

Start with a low daily limit and work your way up.

Direct Advertising with Related Websites

If there are a few websites in your industry that are very closely related to your website, try advertising with them directly. Contact their site owners and ask for their advertising rates. You could even try asking them if they would be interested in testing out a revenue split.

This type of deal can often bring you a lot of targeted traffic quickly. Depending on the website, the traffic could convert even better than PPC traffic because people already trust the site they are coming from.

Content Network to Direct

An extension on the above technique is to find direct advertisers using the Google content network. Bid on a wide net of sites and keywords. Let your ads run on a multitude of sites and track where your conversions come from. If you lose money on this test, that is okay.

Once you know where your conversions originate, contact those websites directly and arrange for a direct advertising deal. You might be able to cut your costs by as much as 20-40 percent, since Google takes an estimated 50 percent cut from AdSense bids. This is a great way of finding advertising spots that you would never find just by browsing the Internet on your own.

Get On an Affiliate Network

Affiliate networks like Azoogle, Neverblue, Affiliate.com and Commission Junction are all great places to locate affiliates.Getting into most of these networks is quite difficult. For a network like Azoogle or Neverblue, you will usually have to pay a deposit of at least $10,000.

However, if you want to really jump-start your sales, getting on the radar of super affiliates is the way to do it. These are the affiliates that can drive tens of thousands of dollars in business to your website every day.

The key to working with affiliate networks is ensuring you can handle the traffic and that your back end works out profitably. Often times you will have to pay out more than you actually earn; for a $30 profit product, you might have to pay out $40. You need to know that you will make money before taking on that kind of deal.

These are a few powerful ways of jump-starting your sales quickly. The first three techniques work great if you have limited capital and are just getting started. The fourth technique can send an enormous amount of traffic to your website if it has the bandwidth and capacity to handle it.