Get Started and Making Money in the Online Pharmacy Niche

No matter what industry or market you are to promote offers in, when it comes to finding out what’s working and how to create the best campaigns and ROI, it’s best to go to the source. Many times this would be the top brands, agencies or ad networks that have the experience and history of building successful ad campaigns not only for themselves, but also for their affiliates and partners as well.

Rx Paymaster is one of those networks that has had a lot of success in the online pharmaceuticals market. The medical niche is a very competitive niche, but it’s also one that had plenty of room for growth along with a never ending supply of demand. I recently had the opportunity to talk with Erik who works as one of the affiliate managers over at RxPaymaster and wanted to share an insider’s view of the industry and share some useful tips on how to get started in the online prescriptions and medicine niche.

Hey Erik, can you tell us a little about yourself and what RxProfits.com is all about?

Sure. I work as an affiliate manager over at RxPaymaster, which is an Rx RevShare & CPA affiliate network. Our programs are supported by a large network of pharmacy sites that offer genuine, popular medications, both generic and branded at discount prices.

When it comes to promoting pharma offers, what’s the best way to get started and what are some of the best traffic / lead generation methods?

Well, from our program experience, we usually advise our new affiliates to start by redirecting their traffic to our online pharmacies. That’s because for newbies, the easiest way to start generating sales is by sending their incoming traffic to online venues that have already taken care of every possible issue concerning online shoppers (updated product inventory, on-site assistance, multi-currency and more). This is sort of the easy way to start.

Once affiliates become more experienced, we encourage them to explore other promotion methods such as using site templates, mailers, banners and coupons, and so on. We also offer private labels to high performing affiliates.

What is the minimum an affiliate marketer should look to invest when starting a new pharma based ad campaign?

We usually see the regular investments, i.e. for the more experienced affiliates, buying and hosting a domain, perhaps only outsourcing content (since we provide designed and optimized graphic templates) to make it unique for SEO purposes. If we’re talking numbers, I would say $20-$30 for hosting and domain and then some amount on content, which is absolutely up to the affiliate. Nowadays, you can range between using services like Fiverr or Odesk and on the other end of the scale there are professional copy-writers on every SEO/marketing forum willing to lend an experienced hand. To maximize the benefit of any such investment I highly encourage doing some research and actually reading the texts you recieve and optimizing them towards your own goals.

Any other helpful tips to get affiliates started with pharma offers, that already might have had success in different areas?

Well, I guess the first tip would be more of a heads-up notice; the online pharmacy affiliate industry can be extremely competitive, much more so than in other fields, which means that if you’re an affiliate who wants to make it in online Rx, you’re going to have to put in the time and work.

Other than that, I think a little bit of pharma research is always a good strategy. By research I mean both marketwise (learn the products, trends, etc.) and competition. Visit your competitors sites and online pharmacies and learn from their mistakes as well as their strong points. Knowledge is always power. Personally, from the success of sites like Yelp, you can really see the benefit of social proofing, I am always pro-people, e.g. get a real review from your customers, in form of video, text, anything to help your customers realize they aren’t being sold to, but step into an environment where they can buy whatever they want, whenever they want, in comfort.

How is promoting pharma offers through RxPaymaster.com different, safer and more effective than promoting other rebill related offers on other ad networks?

Rebill offers are often for products we are new to and never heard of before – getting a free sample and sometimes inadvertently signing onto a re-order service.

We’re absolutely against this.

On the customer side, any offer an affiliate’s customer picks up is a product they’re already familiar with and perhaps already using, in any quantity and at whatever reorder intervals they choose, because we don’t automatically send more products they haven’t agreed to. It’s a store; you buy whatever you want, at the comfort of your own home and save a lot of money, because you a: know how much it costs in retail, b: want to get the product and are looking for it actively.

On the affiliate side, RxPaymaster program features are built to protect earning affiliates; aside from 50% RevShare or $100 CPA, affiliates never lose commissions as a result of customer refunds or charge backs. Plus, the program hands out payouts on a weekly basis, and offers a tried and true collection of marketing tools. I guess one of the biggest advantages of RxProfits is that it’s a dead-serious program that insists on having its developers, designers, affiliate managers and management all in-house and under one roof. What other program is that dedicated?

Because RxPaymaster was founded by former Rx affiliate managers who have decades of hands-on experience in the industry, they know what affiliates are looking for, and what online pharmacy shoppers want and need.

Where do you see the future of pharmacy offers going in the next six to 12 months? What should affiliates be working on now and getting ready for in the coming months?

I guess the most important thing to keep in mind as we head forward with the Rx market is that over time, online shoppers become smarter and more skeptical when it comes to online marketing. That’s why I think one of the biggest challenges Rx affiliates will face in the next year or two would be to lure in more shoppers and being clever as well as decent about it. Already today you see way too many affiliates choosing to trick and lie to their visitors in the hopes of squeezing out more sales.

The smart affiliate will think ahead and see every incoming shopper as a valuable customer that needs to be nurtured and cared for, if that affiliate wants to see re-orders.

Any last words of advice for someone who has thought about promoting pharmacy offers but never actually made the plunge or didn’t know where to start?

Take a dive and start swimming. Online marketing and Affiliate Marketing in general is a trial and error sort of profession, but new affiliates can always rely on our program’s support and guidance. Once you get the hang of it, there are many earnings to be made and it’s relatively easy to keep it up if you know what you’re doing.

We like to encourage our affiliate managers to be hands-on, actively helping new affiliates grow with our program. We’ve all been there, struggling to get the hang of it, so just saying SEO or try blogging won’t cut it for anyone. We all have our strengths as marketers which we’re more than happy to share with our affiliates, for mutual benefit.

I’d like to thank Erik for taking the time to share an affiliate manager’s view of the online pharmacy niche and answering all of our questions. If you have any other questions, feel free to post them in the comments area and Erik will be sure to answer them for you. Be sure to join RxPaymaster.com if you would like to learn more about making money in the online pharmacy niche.