For the most part, affiliate marketing programs are not regulated by strict set budgets. Being performance-based, generally, the more you are spending the more sales revenue you are receiving. So limiting that spend in turn limits the sales revenue you can receive.
If you do have to work on set budgets for your affiliate activity, it is vital that you review affiliate channel spend on a regular basis and forecast your monthly spend, at least weekly.
We do not recommend pausing your campaign or lowering the commission as a reaction to budget overspend.
Pausing campaigns with little notice can cost affiliates money too when you consider that an affiliate might have their own paid marketing activity running and featuring your brand as part of that. Also the resource it may take to remove an advertiser from their site at short notice. These types of actions negatively affect the relationship you have with your affiliates.
Some ways in which you can control spend include:
- Setting appropriate commission rates, which could encompass different rates for full and discounted priced items; different rates for categories with higher or lower profit margins etc.
- Daily or weekly spend forecasting
- Ensuring some backup budget to account for some level of overspend, particularly at key seasonal times of the year