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It's well known that for any business, if your potential customers don't know you exist, they won't magically appear. Getting the word out about your shop and your pets is instrumental at building and maintaining a customer base.

So how do you go about it? Affiliating with other shops is a common choice.

Choosing a Banner Design
First thing you will need to get affiliating is a banner. Don't short time on this step, it's probably the most important. If you're not well versed in making banners, hire someone to do the work for you. Ideally, a good banner should be easy to read, representative of your shop, and attractive to look at.

Easy to Read
Choose a font, font color, and size that is easy to read. Show your prospective banner to friends or other people in the shop and ask them if they can clearly make out the words. If for some reason an interested person sees this banner and the link is missing or broken, all they will have to rely on to look up your shop is the lettering. Make it easy on them!

Representative of your Shop
This means a few things. Thematically and color wise, it should go with your shop's existing banners and colors. This helps give your shop an easily recognizable identity. If at all possible, get a pet or some part of your pet on that banner - people are drawn by good art. Even more importantly, make sure your banner matches your pets - if you have a cat themed shop, a dragon themed shop, or a forest animal themed shop, show it. Pick the most iconic or main pet for your banner if you have more than one species. People get confused if your shop features, say, butterflies, but you put the ladybug familiar on the banner, because they'll come in expecting a ladybug shop.

Attractive To Look At
It should go without saying, don't make your banner ugly. Avoid if possible, things that flash or are otherwise animated, glaringly bright colors, harsh contrast or too much text. Your banner is your calling card, make it something that invites people to click on it, not scare them off.

Choosing a banner size is an important consideration. Ideally, offer several sizes so that different shops can match their own preferred size more easily. Two of the standards are 88x31 (a small button) and 200x40 (the guild banner size). While they're not the only size you might like (most shops choose bigger banners on the pretense that a larger one will attract more customers) it's worth considering at least a 200x40 banner, since you'll need one for your guild anyways.


Linking the Right Way
What do you mean, link the right way? There's only one way that works, isn't there? Well, not entirely. For one, you can shorten your URL's to make them easier to use. www.tinyurl.com is probably the most often used service, but there are more out there easily found with a simple search. Now, I'm going to recommend you *do not* tinyURL your shop link, only the image link. Why? Well, the image link is usually the longer of the two, and the shop link can actually be shortened very easily. Doing so also skips the Redirect page, which means people land in your shop that much faster.


Here's a normal shop URL. Really long hm? The good part is you can take out all of this:


leaving you with just this:

and it will work perfectly. wink Make sure you have /forum/ in there, then your t.####### (that's your Topic Number).

Put your entire URL and IMG inside CODE tags, for easy use in the post you're using for your Affiliates, with the same thing above, without the CODE tags, so people can see what your banner looks like. You might also like to indicate the size next to it. Check you code! Make sure it actually works before posting it.

(200x40px)


Setting up your Affiliates List
Choose a post (usually on your first page, near the bottom) for your affiliate banners. Put your own code+banner in there for people to grab and easy reference, and put down your rules as well.
•Do you take I/T's?
•Only banners of a certain size?
•Only certain types of shops?
•Do you cull dead links and banners?
•Do you accept animated banners?
•What about giant banners? Do they become text links?

Decide if you will accept only a certain banner size, a range of sizes (200x40 or smaller, or 40-50 px high, etc) or any banner at all. Also make it clear if you are or are not accepting affiliates, and how a prospective shop should request affiliation - by PM, in thread, or both?

Composing your Letter
Most Affiliate requests are going to be "cold PM's" - that is, you'll be talking to someone you likely don't know, about something they were not expressly expecting. It's well worth your time to compose a nice form letter that you can use for affiliate requests. You might even want a custom header or footer image to give your PM the ultimate professional appearance.

More important is the content of your letter. Compare the two below.





Thanks for your time,
Zerokie Zoo Staff

Checklist:
• Avoid excessive smilies and shorthand.
• Name the shop you're affilating with. It's more personal and helps keep track of things.
• Check the spelling! Both your "regular" words and the shop's name.
• Give your affiliate a *LITTLE* bit of information about your shop.
• Shop Owners are busy people, so make your point clear.
• Provide an easy Copy/Paste CODE
• Make sure you've already added their banner to your list.

Sending out Requests

So you've got a banner, an Affiliate list, and a letter, now we go spam every shop on Gaia with it right? Wrong.

Target your PM's. There's a delay between being able to send them out, so take the time to do a little reading up on your prospective shop. Combing the first page of the B/C forum is a good way to see who's active - you can also go through another shop's affiliate list and "shop hop". Things to look for:

• An Affiliate section, with banners that meet your requirements
• Something stating the shop is accepting affiliates (or at least not "closed" to affiliation.)
• Clean, organized thread
• Nice banners and an easy to navigate layout
• Actual content, not "Coming Soon"
• Nicely presented pets/artwork
• An active thread - are there posts from three months ago on the last page?

Page numbers should be a lesser consideration - more important to figure out is how active the shop is. Have they had recent sales in the last couple of months? Is there evidence of regular conversation or is it nothing but one or two people bumping/ paid bumping? Are staff in evidence?

Remember to put up the other shop's banner in your Affiliates section! Many shops will simply delete you offer if they don't see their banner already up. A "holding" area (something as simple as a text divider "~~~~~~" works) with banners for shops you have made an offer to but have not gotten a reply from is highly recommended. If you don't get a response after a few weeks you can try PM'ing them again, posting (politely!) in their thread unless they specifically say not to, or simply delete them.

Don't overdo affiliation. While a good selection of affiliates will enhance your shop, if you put up a banner for every single shop in the B/C not only will your page load slowly but it end up looking like a wall of ads.

Go through your affiliates section every few months, removing inactive/dead shops and update links to keep your list relevant.

How to turn Down Affiliates and Why
Chances are you will get some no-replies on some of your affiliate offers. It's possible the shop is simply inactive and no one's on the mule, or they're not interested in affiliating with you. This too, is a fact of life - don't feel bad, just keep looking. If you're getting an overwhelming number of rejections, try reviewing the notes under Sending out Requests but looking at your own shop. Is it appealing? Organized? Active and full of content? If it's not, clean house. You can't expect that the most popular shops will accept your offer if your own thread is a disaster area.

Let's put the shoe on the other foot. You've got a great little shop going, and you get an affiliate request from a shop that's very unappealing to you. What to do? Some shops simply ignore/delete the PM, but it's more courteous to give a polite rejection. If you're rejecting based on one of your rules (such as, you don't take I/T's and the submitted shop was an I/T, or their banner size didn't meet your requirements) then state that expressly in your PM - they might be willing to rectify the situation and try again.

If you simply don't think the shop has any potential and you really dislike it, BE POLITE. I cannot state this enough. Reject kindly. Don't be an a** and rub their faces in the dirt - "Oh, your art is terrible, I'd never affiliate with you." All you'll end up with is a reputation for being a stuck up snob. Think of how you feel when declined.

A much better rejection: "Thank you for the affilation offer, but at this time we're not interested in swapping banners with X_SHOP.

Best wishes,
STAFF