

Ask HN: What's a reasonable affiliate marketer charge? - retube

We will shortly be launching a b2b service, basically a subscription webapp.<p>We plan initially to market via a) our investor's high traffic website, and  b) with various affiliate networks.<p>So we can begin negotiating I'm trying to get a feel of what a typical cut (revenue share) might be. For the investor's site we'll do CPA, and I guess the same/equivalent for the affiliates.<p>The complicating aspect here is that we do not intend to have fixed length subscription contracts. It'll be recurring billing monthly until the customer cancels. At this point we have no idea what the typical length of subscription might be.<p>Any thoughts on both appropriate deal structures and rev shares much appreciated.<p>Thanks
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Ataraxy
The revenue share model is going to be your best bet until you are capable of
determining your lifetime value for a user.

It is rather impossible to speculate without knowing the niche and the price
point for someone to subscribe. Even then things such as conversion rates,
landing page sign up process, and website copy all have influence on whether a
campaign is going to be profitable (read: worth the time) of a proper
affiliate marketer.

It can be somewhat tenuous going down this route before ever even doing in
house testing so my advice would be to start there first before approaching
affiliates/networks if you are serious about going down this route and
succeeding.

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Jsarokin
I'm guessing the problem is that since you dont know how long users will stay
on the monthly contract for, you dont know how much each user , on avg, will
make you ergo don't know what to pay affiliates for commission?

Easy solution. Have your commission be a recurring commissions. Basically they
get X% of each recurring payment. That way the marketers are trying to target
users who will stay on board for a long time (ie. make them more commission).

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retube
Yes I think we'll have to do something like this. We can certainly do this for
our investor's website, but not sure how things are set up with third-party
affiliates and whether this is even possible.

Any idea what a typical cut might be? Or is this like the length of string?

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Jsarokin
Yeah, its definitely possible (I own an affiliate network). Depending on how
robust the tracking software your using is, you should have that option
available.

Typical cut is a tougher question. What price are you thinking for as monthly
subscription?

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retube
probably around £50 - £100 / month

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Jsarokin
I'd say do something like this.

Flat rate on initial signup + % of every recurring payment after (this way you
can get away with giving them a smaller percent than if you just did straight
%)

$20 on Initial signup and payment + 15% of recurring payments.

