How do you attract an keep quality affiliates?

akdiver

Jul 14th 2008, 12:05 am

Hi Guys,

Next month I will be launching a new site and I hope to have affiliate marketing as one of my major marketing strategies.

If you need any background info the site is a marketplace and takes a commision on sales. I am happy to offer affiliates up to 90% of any commisions earnt but I would prefer to keep the commision payout as low as possible. However I realised great affiliates deserve great rewards.

So my question is how do I find great affiliates. Should I use an affiliate service such as CJ or clickbank??

As affiliates what do you look for how would you get recruited?

Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

blogspot

Jul 14th 2008, 4:31 am

try adwords

narsticle

Jul 14th 2008, 6:56 am

I would prefer to keep the commision payout as low as possible.

This is not a good way to attract quality affiliates.

akdiver

Jul 15th 2008, 7:06 pm

This is not a good way to attract quality affiliates.
I realise that. But high commissions are not the only factor for quality affiliates. I think they want to know conversions etc.

Thier must be some quality affiliates who can tell me how they get recruited or choose the various affiliate programs.

BDazzler

Jul 15th 2008, 7:24 pm

What type of thing(s) are you selling on your site? 90% of what?

blogspot

Jul 16th 2008, 11:15 am

you can buy sigs to.

depotgang

Jul 16th 2008, 12:55 pm

You want affiliates. Make it interesting. You may have to bribe a few bigger names, they will only market worthy opportunities.

I would set up a two tier commission system...one for JV Partners and one for every other affiliate as well as customers. Butterfly Script or other like scripts are easy to use for this.

You need to make the commission rate AT least 50%. Raise your price if you have too.

Good luck

akdiver

Jul 16th 2008, 5:00 pm

Thanks for the advice.

I am taking commision from an online auction place. So they get a % of the commision we make.

So I can make the commision as high as needed since thier is no cost involved on my behalf.

@ depotgang, Whats a JV partner and how do i find the "bigger players" to bribe. I am very new to affiliate marketing and appreciate the help.

Do you recommend me using a affiliate manager? And if so do you recommend an affiliate manager?

Thanks for your help so far

ABC_Cel

Jul 17th 2008, 10:56 am

I've done affiliate managing for 5 years, and it really depends on what type of product your trying to get traffic for. If it's something exclusive, you'll definitely have a lot of takers. You're going to have to find contacts for the affiliates you want to go after. How are you planning on marketing, CPA, CPC, CPM? email, banners, search? This all makes a difference. I've done CPA managing for 3 years and it seemed that a lot of those affiliates wanted exclusive. I'm now doing Search/CPC and it's all about bid prices. So, really it depends on your market.

BDazzler

Jul 17th 2008, 11:16 am

Thanks for the advice.
...Whats a JV partner ..?

If I may , even though you didn't adress this to me ... JV Stands for "Joint Venture" it's someone you team up with for your mutual benefit.

For example, I had a JV With Mike Steup to promote JV Responder Pro. He has a big mailing list. I gave him a bigger commision and permission to discount the price, and the privilage of being "first to market" with this new product.

CPAEJoshT

Jul 17th 2008, 3:28 pm

It might make more sense for you to sign up as an Advertiser with an affiliate network rather than try to administer your own program. That way you don't have to worry about paying a ton of people and making sure they are all compliant with can-spam and all applicable laws.

Josh Todd
Affiliate Manager
jtodd at cpaempire dot com

xmcp123

Jul 17th 2008, 5:10 pm

There are a few things people look for. Some keep them coming, some get them to show up in the first place

Decent Payout - If I'm selling a $90 product I know only cost $10 to make, you can bet your ass I'm not dealing with a $5.00 commission.
Conversion Rates - Truly are the most important. Split test your landing pages like crazy on your own, and give us the result. I don't want to be your test dummy, and I dont want to promote a page that hasnt been tested properly
Don't Be Anal - Some places (like SinglesNet for example) are CONSTANTLY looking for a reason to not pay affiliates. Let us do our thing. None of this "you can't outbid or outrank me" crap.
Get on a Decent Network - Depending on the product type, you may want to go to different places. Large stores=CJ. EBook bullcrap=Clickbank. Individual products? Check out advaliant(they're awesome) then some of the larger directtrack neworks like copeac. From there it will get syndicated elsewhere.

tiger325

Jul 17th 2008, 8:45 pm

pay well and answer emails promptly. people will work harder for someone that they feel is really on their side and trying to help them make money. that way its a win win situation. help them = they help you

digimac

Jul 18th 2008, 7:47 am

if you are an auction site them really its all about the initial customer - try and structure your program so the affiliate benefits from repeat sales made on your site generated by their initial customer referal. remember you can scale these so it decreases over time or for volume of sales.

there are specific affiliate marketing forums and I would advise you to promote there.

can you work via an affiliate network as you will probably built up the momentum quicker.

akdiver

Jul 23rd 2008, 11:43 pm

Wow thanks for some of the great tip guys.

I was thinking of going with clixgalore so that they could promote the program to thier affiliates as well as cover paying affiliates etc.

Joint venture sounds promising but I think finding affiliates that would be worthy of making a special deal with.

I plan to pay per conversions (sales) and have a repeat commision on the users activities for X years or forever.

What about affiliate managers? Has anyone had any good experiences with using them?

Thanks for your help guys

ShamsiOwnz

Jul 24th 2008, 10:18 pm

post o webmaster forums,its filled with affiliates wanting jobs!

akdiver

Jul 24th 2008, 11:48 pm

BDazzler

Jul 25th 2008, 6:09 am

Really I assume any affiliate having success would not be looking for a job in a webmaster forum. Anyone else agree with me or do you thinnk that webmaster forums may have quality affiliates looking for opportunities?

I don't necessarily agree with that. Affiliate programs go up and down. I used to make a ton of money from mortgage leads, but the competition went up and the payout went down and it was no longer profitable.

So, I had to move on ...

Any affiliate making money knows that the program will eventually change, so they're always looking for a good "new thing".

I posted a thread a while back ... got some good feedback, not a lot, but what I got was good ..

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=934644

Lasvegaspi

Jul 25th 2008, 7:49 am

Do you have a list of webmaster forums that might have good affiliates?
I have a great niche program http://www.emailrevealer.com/affiliate.php and if I met the right affiliates I'd be willing to increse the commissions on some of my more popular services.

AMFM

Jul 25th 2008, 7:53 am

Really I assume any affiliate having success would not be looking for a job in a webmaster forum. Anyone else agree with me or do you thinnk that webmaster forums may have quality affiliates looking for opportunities?

I disagree. Although you may not find many candidates for affiliates in webmaster forums the ones that you do find I think will be good. The key to running a good affiliate program is to have good affiliates, and a good webmaster should always be on the lookout for opportunities that would be a good fit for their site.

akdiver

Jul 25th 2008, 11:32 pm

Well I will definately promote heavily in webmaster forums when I start up my affiliate program and see if I can catch a few good affiliates in transition. Just have to make it an attractive package now :).

hellobbs

Jul 26th 2008, 11:01 am

akdiver

Jul 26th 2008, 6:18 pm

Depends on your product. However I suggest you get an affiliate manager if you are not familiar with affiliate program promotion. I'll suggest you to get in some affiliate network such as cj and shareasale. By this way you can get quite a lot of affiliates easily. Not all of them are quality, but if your program is good enough quality affiliates will stay with you.

I was leaning towards an affiliate manager but I have concerns

1. Where do you find one
2. Do they have afiliates they work with or do they just promote on my behalf?

vanquishdesign

Jul 26th 2008, 6:42 pm

If you are any good, Super Affiliates will find you. Most of them know each other or keep tabs on each other.

When we first joined the program we are promoting now, we brought in 40 super affiliates under us in the first 2 days.

Like I said, if your product is good and sells, Super Affiliates will find you soon enough.

bobkat

Jul 26th 2008, 7:11 pm

it depends what are you selling.
I like click bank.

xmcp123

Jul 26th 2008, 10:29 pm

ABC_Cel

Jul 29th 2008, 10:09 am

Regarding bringing on an affiliate manager, you're definitely going to want to hire someone who has been in the business for awhile. This way, they will have connections to a lot of affiliates and know how to find new affiliates at the same time.

buzzerhutdotcom

Jul 30th 2008, 4:52 am

inhouse program and adwords it should work

vanquishdesign

Jul 31st 2008, 1:42 pm

No one calling themselves a super affiliate should ever be taken seriously.

I wasn't talking about "Gurus" who sell awful ebooks, I was talking about real super affiliates.

i.e. People who make more than $50,000 per month.

vanquishdesign

Jul 31st 2008, 3:30 pm

Don't Be Anal - Some places (like SinglesNet for example) are CONSTANTLY looking for a reason to not pay affiliates. Let us do our thing. None of this "you can't outbid or outrank me" crap.

That happened to us a few times with other programs.:mad:

So we actually contacted the program we are promoting now and said:

"hey, we may start outranking you in the search engines on alot of keywords, do you mind?"

They said they don't mind at all. They even said: "why should we? You are promoting our website". :D

That's the attitude we like.