If you are communicating with startups through your business, your blog, or both… there are certain products that every single startup needs. And you can be the one to refer them to the right source – while earning referral revenue in the process.
There are certain new business essentials and foundational products to get a business started off on the right foot. Not all of new business owners will follow the correct path or timing in order to get those startup products, and they will – most often – regret having not done it the right way in the first place.
Imagine, if you could, that you could help these new businesses avoid some costly mistakes, and generate additional revenue along the way.
Well, affiliate marketing has been reading your diary, and they have a way that you can do just that!
The Key Mistakes New Startups Often Make
There are a lot of reasons startups don’t always follow the correct path.
Sometimes, they simply don’t know what they don’t know.
Other times, they don’t have the money available and try to make do with what they have.
And fairly often, they don’t want to invest too much in the business until they are more confident that it has a future.
Or they are just in too much of a hurry to get started that they leap in with both feet without making sure that the foundation is there to catch them.
For example, logo design is one of the basic startup products every new business needs, but a lot of new business owners think that they can ‘get by’ with something less-than-perfect until their business gets off the ground.
Previously in my career, I work for a company that offered logo design services. Very often (and I mean very, very, very often) a client would come to us to update their “temporary” business logo a few years into their business growth.
It had been created by a friend or family member who had a little bit of graphic design experience. It was good enough to get started – or so they thought.
However, now that they’ve realized that it’s time to update their logo design, they have also realize that there are a LOT of places that they’ve used that logo. This means that will take them a lot of time, effort, and a significant amount of expense to update all of those old logos.
It also means that they will likely end up with a refresh of their current logo instead of a brand new design for fear that their clients won’t recognize them anymore. That severely limits the creative options that are available for their new logo.
If they had spent a few hundred dollars on a professionally designed logo right from the very beginning, they would have saved themselves a lot of headache down the road.
Plus, you avoid the danger of becoming the newest addition to the list of the Worst Logo Designs Ever!! Nobody wants to be on that particular list.
7 Things Every Startup Should Have Before They Launch
- A PROFESSIONALLY DESIGNED LOGO – I might as well start here, since I just called this out specifically. If their budgets are tight, they can use one of the professionally designed templates available through a DIY logo design tool such as LogoMaker.
If they have a bit of budget available (around $200 – $500) they can hire a professional logo designer to create a custom logo for them.
- A WELL-DESIGNED WEBSITE – With web hosting costing as little as $2.75/month from Hostgator, there is really no excuse for not having a well-designed website.
If the budget allows, they can access professional e-commerce design services to help them create a digital storefront.
- A DOMAIN NAME – Even they are not planning on launching a website right away, they should register a domain name now.
That way, they don’t run the risk of not being able to to find one later (or – even worse – that their competition ends up buying their domain).
- BUSINESS REGISTRATION – All business owners should protect their personal liability by establishing the right level of legal business registration.
That can range from full incorporation or a limited liability corporation and many places in between. These legal services can also help with other legal business needs such as trademark registration, annual reports, and more.
- BUSINESS CHECKS – Whether a business is looking for classic paper checks or an electronic payment method, they need some way to pay their business bills.
Plus, it’s important to use a proper business checking account rather than mingling personal and business funds. Paying a supplier from your personal checking account sends all sorts of “this isn’t a real business” signals that you don’t want.
- EMAIL MARKETING ESSENTIALS – You don’t have to go overboard with email marketing in the first 6 months of business.
But – at the very least – you should create the framework to capture email leads, and the automated customer flow to respond to potential customers who have given you permission to market to them.
- A BUSINESS PLAN – A well crafted business plan will help you avoid some “shiny objects” that can distract you from reaching your goals. It will also help provide the basic requirements to help fund and grow your business.
How You Can Capitalize On Those Business Startup Needs
Now, here’s the best part. As you may have noticed, a lot of the startup products and services that I mentioned above included affiliate links to a supplier of that kind of product or service.
That means that every time a reader clicks on one of those links and purchases one of those startup products or services, I receive a small referral fee from the merchant at absolutely no cost to them.
There is absolutely no reason why you can’t do the exact same thing!
And there is absolutely nothing wrong with being compensated for your hard work creating content or services that help business understand their critical startup needs and get their business off the ground the right way.
What are the Top B2B Affiliate Programs?
Obviously, the best programs will be the ones that best match for the content on your site or the services that you offer.
If your focus is mainly on business marketing, you’ll probably focus more on digital products such as web hosting, email marketing, and logo design.
If your focus is mainly on business management, then you might be more likely to focus on operational products such as payroll, business checks, or incorporation services.
I do like to find partners that offer a wide variety of products and services that can support a new business, such as the Deluxe Affiliate Program. Because Deluxe offers so many products and services that hit almost all of those categories, and they offer all of their programs on ShareaSale, it saves me from having to bounce around from affiliate platform to affiliate platform to find the links that I need to add to my site.
But, if you’re looking for some other great opportunities to help startups – and help yourself – checkout my other article which outlines 16 of the Best B2B Affiliate Programs!