Today the majority of affiliates are looking for compensation when your customers call in their orders by phone. One of the first things they will look for when thinking about joining your affiliate program is to see if you have an order phone number on your site. If you do not offer phone commissions you are most likely losing out on affiliates.

"But I slightly increased my commission rate to make up for not giving phone commissions..."

Who cares? I know I wouldn't. If I referred 5 customers to Merchant X and all 5 of them called in their orders I get a whopping $0 commission. But if Merchant X paid for phone commissions I would be getting my commissions that I deserve. The bottom line is that affiliates want all of their commissions that they earn, not just some of it.

There really is no excuse for not tracking phone sales other than the fact that you just don't want to pay affiliates for all of their sales. Setting your site up to track phone sales is not that difficult and shouldn't take more than a little bit of time.

Here are the simple steps it takes to set up phone tracking:

Make sure you place the phone sale tracking code next to your phone number on every page that shows your number. Do not just put it on the index page. Customers may get your phone number from any page.

Then train your sales reps or employees that answer the phones to ask for the "reference code" when taking phone orders. The reference code is the affiliate ID number that referred the customer to you. Have them write it down or enter it into the computer so you can manually credit sales to the appropriate affiliates.

Good luck and I hope you decided to track phone sales for your affiliates. They will love you for it. Hey, it is just like getting a raise! :=)

Chet Brzezinski has been in the affiliate marketing and affiliate management industry since 1997.