If there is any online industry in which trust is absolutely crucial to the process, the jewelry industry takes the cake. Here you have a buyer who in all likelihood is about to make the biggest decision of his life in getting married, and now he has to make one of the biggest purchases of his life as well, at least in terms of dollars per weight of product. Diamonds are among the most value-dense objects on Earth, and now he’s about to go to a website of people he doesn’t know and purchase something he hasn’t actually seen that’s so tiny, yet worth several of his paychecks. So how do you get him to:

A) find your link,
B) click it,
C) buy the ring?

Finding the Right Jewelry Affiliate Program

Luckily, optimizing the store itself isn’t your job. But you do have to pick a store to promote that is honest, has a reputation, ease of use and most importantly, stores real copies of its diamond certificates available for online viewing. No one is going to buy an engagement ring without a certificate they can see.

• The program itself should of course pay well.

You’ll usually see anywhere from 5-9% on jewelry, but what’s critical is that they pay commission for loose diamonds as well. Most programs do not, so make sure you know what they’re paying on loose stones before you start driving traffic. Zoara’s jewelry affiliate program, for example, starts at 3% commission for loose stones.

• The program should have at least a 60-day cookie, if not a permanent cookie.

The time between the initial search and the final purchase can take months.

• The program should allow for a direct link campaign so you won’t have tracking codes appearing at the end of your URL’s which look suspicious. It should be private, in house. When dealing with jewelry, you don’t want even 1 or 2% of your commission going to a network when you’re only getting 5-9% to begin with.

In review, a good jewelry affiliate program should provide the affiliate:

• Commission on loose stones
• Permanent cookies
• The option for a direct link campaign
• In house tracking software

Build Your Marketing Plan – Get into the Mind of a Jewelry Shopper

Once you find your jewelry affiliate program, get into the mind of an online jewelry shopper. What does he do? How does he behave? He’ll most likely begin by checking out the most visible stores. He’ll Google “engagement rings” as his first move just to get a feel for what’s out there. But on that first day, it’s almost guaranteed he won’t buy. Conclusion: Unlike the stores themselves, you don’t have to target primary terms like “engagement rings”. Don’t waste your marketing energy on climbing a mountain that need not be scaled.

When he’s finished with his initial search, he’ll go a little deeper. He’ll want to learn about diamonds, diamond quality, diamond prices, and information about gold, settings, platinum and the like. Learn about these things and target the best educational search terms. The educational pre-purchase phase is where you can catch him and stick a cookie in his browser.

In review:

• Ignore SEO on primary terms such as “wedding rings” and “engagement rings.” Those are for the stores themselves.
• Learn everything you can about the jewelry you’re promoting.
• Concentrate on secondary terms surrounding what you learn

Generate Trust with Your Audience

Once visible, your job as a webmaster if you want to make real serious sales is to make your audience trust you. Talk to them. Try your best to have a personal relationship with your traffic by reaching out to them. Then you can either refer them directly to a product in their range for what they need, or build your own store affiliate store with a datafeed and refer them to that.

If you’ve learned about the product, done the SEO, and built trust with your audience, you can make more than just a good living. There’s nothing more satisfying in affiliate marketing than making a big sale…except making a big sale that will be with a couple for the rest of their lives.

This guest post was written by the marketing manager of Zoara. Their jewelry affiliate program pays 8% first tier on jewelry and preset rings (9% on direct link campaigns), and 2% second tier on an average $2000 sale. Commission for loose stones starts at 3%.

I commonly hear from affiliates the same thing: that they need better payouts and more importantly, why they aren’t getting a better payout. In this industry affiliates have become damn smart and with that a little more demanding than say 12 years ago when I started in this industry.  Let me tell you a little secret then that many affiliate networks don’t want you to know: despite all their complaining about how their margins are very little, most of them are not completely honest and they have a lot more room for payouts than they are telling you. With that in mind, and armed with some knowledge about what other networks are paying, plus the following tips, you can approach affiliate networks and increase your payouts.

1)      Ask for Tiered Pricing. Most of the newer software platforms such as Cake Marketing have the ability to price the leads or sales based on quantity made.  If your affiliate manager is not giving you the best price, then ask them what they can do for more leads per month IF you hit that goal. While this can be a little risky, it shows the affiliate manager that you are interested in being a partner, producing more, not just asking for more money.

2)      Find where the Network is getting the offer. If you haven’t figured out by now, many networks just get offers from other networks. While its great to use stuff like OfferVault (yes, a little plug here) to find better pricing, it doesn’t always mean that you can get a better price. If you can find where  your current affiliate network is getting their offer from, you can often approach the other network with wanting to run the offer. Use HttpWatch http://www.httpwatch.com/ for tracking the clicks and seeing where it goes – it will show you ever jump from your click on an advertisement, to what network it is going to and then to the end advertiser. One of the great methods about this technique is that you can often approach networks, tell them that you are running “so many” leads for another network that they work with, and it’s more likely that you’ll be accepted into that network.

3)      Tell your Affiliate Manager that you will rotate similar offers from another network into the mix (and do it!). If you haven’t learned already about rotating similar offers to find what works better, then you need to learn about this. It’s also a very, very effective method of making networks pay you more money, causing them to bid for your best traffic.  Also there is a factor where for whatever reason (well, there are actually lots of reason) sometimes offers don’t always consistently perform and rotating offers gives time for the “other” offer to refresh and perform better.  Frankly, it’s also a good “don’t put your eggs in one basket” method, for the “just incase” times when an affiliate network might have an “issue” about not paying.

4)      Offer to test other offers. Don’t be a one-hit wonder, ever. Ask your AMs what is doing well, and then tell them that you’ll start testing that offer if they raise the other one. If you are an emailer especially, this is a very particular and great strategy. Many AMs know what offers will work on your email list, but it makes sense that you want incentivize to try something new. Many times an AM will give in a little if you give a little back.

5)      Ask for a Bonus from their Advertiser. This is similar to tiered pricing, but a slightly different method. I have found that many advertisers, when questioned about if they will bonus certain affiliates who hit goals will actually jump on the opportunity. Ask your AM to ask the advertising side of their business to see if they’ll give you a $2,500 AX gift card (tax free!) if you do so many leads in a month. One great thing about this  is that there is no way for the Affiliate Network to take a “cut” from this.

6)      Ask Networks about their “Discrepancy Account.” It’s called by many other networks other names, but it exists in almost every single ad network and is probably one of the biggest secrets that affiliates don’t know about and that Affiliate Networks don’t want you to know about. You know when they tell you that you are getting paid a certain amount per sale or lead? That is based on their numbers and almost half of the time, campaigns on their system will underreport compared to their advertisers. Instead of crediting it to their affiliates, many of the networks will keep that money. Ask your AM if there are any unreported leads and if they can give you a boost from that account.

7)      Be Nice. Seriously. Affiliate Managers would rather deal with a nice guy than a jerk. While there are a few people out there who might take the abuse, you’d be amazed how many networks and managers would rather turn off your account than deal with a total putz.  Do things like add your AMs to Facebook, send them cards on their birthdays, and in general keep in touch. Don’t depend on conferences for the only time that you really engage the AMs! AMs spend their entire time in front of a computer, often only getting up once in a while to drink shitloads of diet-coke and then return for hours at a time.  Asking them about their life and offers will make you a friend and a business partner.

This guest post was written by Pace Lattin, who has been working in the Interactive Advertising Industry for almost 15 years, having been involved with founding Winstar Interactive (fka Cybereps) to creating the publication ADOTAS.com. He is currently the owner of InsideOV at http://inside.offervault.com.