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Virtual Interview with Paul Colligan of the Colligan.com Network:
Wednesday, July 17, 2002.
Interviewers present were Editors of AnyFrontPage Bytes Ezine:
Tiffany K Edmonds
Frances McColl Stewart
for
AnyFrontPage
Bytes
Q. What were
your original aims/goals when you started this project?
A. The whole goal here was to move this from a one man shop to an
"organization." What happens if I'm really sick for a week? What
happens,GASP, if I want to take a vacation?
What happens when my next child is born ("Heidi, hold tight, got a big order
I need to work on!")? I need to be able to take some time off.
I actually launched FrontPageTools, get this, on 9/11/2001. There wasn't a
day between then and 1/1/2003 when I didn't check in at least once a day to
make sure all was well.
What can I do? There are so many things that happen "behind the scenes" in
an e-commerce shop that need to be checked, at the very least daily:
Server up? What happens if it goes down? Who is getting it back up?
What about those 27 orders from 27 different Germans that all come from an
Cybercafe in Brazil - what the chances of that? Hmm, these 27 different
Germans are all ordering through an affiliate from, get this Brazil.
The story above is true, btw.
Hmm, fraud? Yes. Do I want to pay for 27 different chargebacks (at $50
each) and possibly get shut down by Visa?
No, I don't - so I used to check in at least once a day to make sure that
things were fine.
Obviously, 99 times out of a hundred they were. But, I couldn't afford to
be wrong that often.
So, I needed to be able to have others help me make this what it can be (and
we ain't even close yet!)
And, I wanted to focus on other things than trapping fraud and answering "so
what do you mean by double-click" questions, etc.
We also needed some new technologies for the affiliates. We needed to be
able to cross promote our sites and make sure our affiliates get credit
regardless of what product they sell. They brought us the sale – they
deserve the commission.
We also wanted to go to phone sales but needed a way to make sure the
affiliates were compensated for those as well.
I love affiliates.
Next step is a TOTAL Web-Site redesign across all the sites using the new
FrontPage and giving us a much needed upgrade for look and feel.
Q. What difficulties did you encounter?
A. Well, first of all, no one ever knows your business, products and
people
as well as you do. The learning curve for the support team was pretty
steep. I'm actually amazed at the job they've done. It hasn't been as easy
as I hoped it would be.
When we moved over the affiliate program something happened that I hadn't
thought about - and it hurt.
For the month of January I moved all "old system" sales over to the new
system giving people the month to move over to the new system. Fair is
fair.
Anyway, there was over $800 worth of commission that had one affiliate
listed under the "old system" and one under the "new system."
Where did they really come from? No way to tell.
What did I do? I counted it towards both affiliates. That was the only
fair thing to do. That little mistake cost me more than $800.00.
The other issue is that we initially thought we were going to purchase on
off-the-shelf trouble ticket system. We decided at the end that it didn't
have enough features and that we'd need to write out own.
Well, needless to say, the writing process is taking longer than we thought.
When it is done, it is going to be VERY cool however.
Q. What about the new site reorganization are
you proudest of?
A. I'm proud that it all works.
I had one affiliate who sent us someone to FrontPageTools. They purchased a
$15 template - the affiliate got the 30%. But that wasn't the story: the
support staff was handling an issue the customer had. After 4 notes back
and forth, the customer said "gosh, if you only had Dreamweaver templates -
that's what I'm using anyway." Customer bought $80 worth of Dreamweaver
templates and the affiliate got 30% of that order as well. How cool is
that?
I'm proud that others are going to be able to make a living off of
FrontPageTools/etc.
Obviously, since day 1 the template makers are doing very well but last
month I sent a check for $2500 to an affiliate and another to a tool maker.
I would love to have dozens making a living from this little engine. I
think it will happen.
And, phone sales - we are one of the few to do
this and I'm pretty proud of it. You'll notice at FrontPageTools that we now
have a "click here to buy by phone" option that tells people to mention
extension number "x" - x is your affiliate id. Now, when someone orders
by phone, or fax, or chat, our Associates get that credit as well.
I'm proudest of what this allows me to do.
I quit my day job a little over a year ago. I've spent more time with my
family in the last year than the three before that. I had breakfast with my
daughter this morning on this "work day" and just got back from playing with
her and her little friend (they're 2 years old) over here for a play date.
I work from home and can be the kind of husband and father I've always
wanted to be.
The Web sites are as high tech as they get. What they allow me to do is as
low tech as it gets.
And I love that.
Q. How does this cross-promotion that you’ve
built benefit users and
affiliates?
A. We just entered into an agreement to add Visibooks to the
Colligan.com
Network allowing them to sell their products through our affiliates and
provide the cross-promotion options that they didn't have before.
I mean, you just bought a FrontPage manual - how perfect is it that we can
link you right to FrontPage templates as well?
I love this stuff.
Q. What were
the major technical problems that you encountered in the website
re-organization?
A. Really, it went a lot more smoothly than even I expected. I
wouldn't say it was flawless, but I will say I was surprised.
This is the magic of FrontPage. We're not stuck with 400 pages like some
writer with a hard drive of content they've written over the year - we have a
Web site (ok we have a bunch of them) that we can quickly find and replace
across and get the work done quickly.
Now, I'm huge on the ounce of prevention pound of cure thing. I spent 3
months planning this and 1 month implementing it. If I would have spent 1
month planning, I'd probably still be implementing.
The big issues were finding all of the "missing links." I've often gone into
the site on a whim and placed things in there without thinking. That came
back to haunt me.
Classic example, we just started selling Web Position Gold
(http://www.colligan.com/webpositiongold - and yes, it is part of the
affiliate program and pays 1% more than their program does) and a few days
later got a message that 4 people bought WPG through my affiliate link to
them.
Here I was selling it (with a higher profit margin than the affiliate
program) and I loss a good chunk of money by not taking down that one
affiliate link.
Oh well.
Q. Would you have any words of wisdom about set-up
for someone just beginning an affiliate program of their own?
A. Well there are two types of people in this category:
1. People just starting to generate revenue through affiliate programs.
This one is simple: Do your homework, run the numbers, prove yourself and
communicate.
A. Do your homework.
There might be 4 affiliate programs that all pay $10 for selling a similar
widget but the terms of their affiliate program, cookie lengths, conversion
issues, etc. they might perform completely different. For example, I served
10000 ads each for 2 different hosting companies at FrontPageWorld – their
payouts, etc. were so similar that I honestly wondered if they stole each
others copy. At the end, I made $162 off of one company and $0 off of the
other. Do your homework.
B. Run the numbers. I hit
on that above but it goes further than that. You might be running 4 different
programs at your site. How well are they performing for you? Maybe your
audience wants more training than hosting - possibly more templates than
tools. Run the numbers and test your audience.
C. Prove yourself. The
right affiliate managers in it to make sales and want to partner with those
who can make it happen. That's why they went through the trouble of setting
up an affiliate program. Once you have proven that you know what you
are doing, contact the affiliate manager and see what you can do for each
other. It never hurts to ask and you'll be surprised with the results.
D. Communicate.
Communicate with the director. Tell him what works / what doesn't work. Ask
for things to make you be able to sell better. If there are things that a
good manager can do to up your sales, you can bet he/she would do them in a
heartbeat. You know your audience, they don't.
2. People who want to expand their sales force with an affiliate program:
First figure out what kind of program you want to run. Are your affiliates
there for the long run or the short one? Who owns the customers after you got
them? How often do you want to pay them? How hard is it going to be to pay
them?
Q. Many of our readers are affiliates of yours,
Paul. How will your changes affect them?
A. 1. You are part of one of the few
affiliate programs out there built
and run by someone who understands what it is like to be on the other side. I
can promise you, that is the exception to the rule.
2.
I built my whole e-commerce strategy on the simple realization that
I am going to spend money on advertising. A chunk of EVERY sale is spent on
advertising, be that the affiliate or the banner ad. My affiliates really can
decide how much money they want to make and act accordingly.
3.
I'm gonna market for my affiliates. If someone sends me a customer
and am going to do all I can to make them a repeat / lifetime customer.
Everytime they buy, the affiliate is going to see revenue from that. Not bad
at all, eh?
4.
The cross promotion aspects are really going to be big for the
affiliates. We have so much content, so many products (we like to think we
have something for everyone) and the affiliate program works ACROSS all of
the sites. Very few people do that. If you are an eBay affiliate and the user
ends up at Half.com (and eBay company) you don't get credit for that. If
someone leaves FrontPage tools for HTMLWebTemplates.com, you get credit for
that.
5.
I think phone sales are going to be big. You can now tell your
readers that they can actually CALL AND TALK TO A HUMAN about our products
and you still get the credit for the sale. Ever tried to order on the phone
from Amazon or eBay or Microsoft? Heck, ever tried to buy a template over the
phone?
Thank you, Paul. It has been a pleasure to talk to you about your
re-organization.
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Current Issue | Archives | Contributing
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Please note: AnyFrontPage Bytes only publishes the FrontPage News and FrontPage links AFP Site - The
complete issue is available to subscribers only in the Yahoo! Archives.
