"Remember its not Affiliate Management, it is Affiliate Leadership." - Geno Prussakov There are numerous blogs and forums, Facebook and Linkedin groups, and other online communities upon which affiliates hang out. Check YouTube, and look for alive affiliates or include those with well liked video channels in your niche. Search is going social, so you want fresh affiliates with video presence and or social media skills going into 2012 and beyond. Join all of the ones you find of interest and relevance, but again, do not spam some of them! If you 're on a forum, play by forum's rules. Do not start off by blatantly marketing and advertising your affiliate program. Most forums will ban you. Likewise, your comments can be banned and taken out of blogs and social network groups. The mystery of successful social media usage is simple : you can not take more than you yourself have given in the first place. If and when you are of genuine help to the community, blog or forum, you will be warmly accepted. DONT SHOUT it all out in caps. Go easy on the exclamation marks and hype assure untold riches for no work in just One week and your listing is heading for that recycle bin again... Digging Around The Search Engine. Its oftentimes pretty easy to realise what affiliate marketers are marketing to your industry. Make a note of the paid advertisers, the bloggers, web sites, and the communities that show up in the top 20 results. Once youve distinguished a few key affiliate marketers by using simple keywords and scoping out paid advertisement, get hold of them personally by doing a WHOIS or Contact them where you find them, and while the conversation is hot if you can. If you find them on Twitter, enter the conversation there or send them a DM (direct message). If you find their blog, contact them through their contact form at the blog. If they offer a number, pick up the phone and call. Get to know them before you shoot off a message. Address them by name. Include something personal, such as their great post on ABW. Offer them something extra : 2nd tier, an exclusive interview, first dibs at a new viral report, a coupon code to share, higher commission rate, etc.. Anything that gives them an angle and an edge. Hurray They Joined, Now What? ? Affiliates want a person they can talk to and work with directly. Someone who has the power to pull strings, make changes, and get things done. You want to get the point across that youll be available and that you are interested in working with them personally. That youll take super good care of them as well as any referrals they send your way. You have a very limited space in which to get your message either read or deleted. And if your message gets read, you want to make sure it elicits a response. Of course, every affiliate is different.
There are no magic tricks to get webmasters to work with you and I don't believe you can do so in 15 minutes. Contacting marketers through their site can be very time-consuming and non effective... If your company is not worth it, it doesn't matter how hard you try, you might get some logs in but most of the time, those are not the partners you want to have Building a good reputation for your company is the key, just follow some simple rules: Be straight with your partners, remember they are not working for you but working together. Pay on time and fair commissions Have a good product and conversion Help them with marketing tools and effective support Be on top of any possible glitch and let them know asap Working this way, you don't need to "recruit" them... they will come to you, make money and stay.
I like your simple advice. It's very constructive. Also, going along with what Vicky is saying, I just wanted to emphasize the importance of catering to your affiliates. Like Vicky says, providing them with good marketing tools and support is essential to fostering a good relationship with your affiliates. Rather than "recruiting" affiliates, I'd say it's better to "attract" affiliates. Great information!
Thank you! this post is to educate peoples in recruiting affiliates in 15 minutes. I hope that is enough time to read through! Although your efforts on recruiting will take time and I highly suggest signing up with as affiliate network to take care of most the grunt work for you. Before starting your affiliate program I recommend that you have most bugs worked out on your site, your product obviously needs to appeal to a certain group of people and you should have already spent time and money advertising your site yourself to get an idea of what your conversion rates are. As mentioned above^ "Building a good reputation for your company is the key, just follow some simple rules: Be straight with your partners, remember they are not working for you but working together. Pay on time and fair commissions Help them with marketing tools and effective support" These all need to be taken care of, as in having them ready to go. Joining up with an affiliate network would take care of paying affiliates on time. If you have built a bad reputation with your company, you need to look elsewhere for employment. You don't belong in business management what so ever. As for tools for your affiliates, you want to help them succeed. Where do you start? Give them personal banners / links ect. Our team created a landing page for our affiliates. It converts very well and is SEO optimized. here is a link.. sort of whatsyourprice.com/dating whatsyourprice.com/dating/sugardaddy whatsyourprice.com/dating/firstdate All of these landing pages are very similar but different for the type of text / keywords we used. It is a very popular tool for our affiliates and they love it!
Great post, but let me elaborate just a little bit. Affiliate recruiting takes a lot more than 15 minutes, if you are trying to pull in any type of player to promote your program. The first thing that any big player is going to look at is you as the owner of the program. Most big marketers do not just jump in with someone they have never heard of because they have built up a brand, and that brand is worth millions of dollars to them online so they will be reluctant to just "join up". You will need to show them physical proof that your program or product does exactly as you proclaim it to do. I would not recommend that the first time you contact a player, that you are preaching to them about how your program will produce thousands of dollars for them and hype them. When you do this, you are actually making yourself seem very small. It's ok to let them know how your product functions and what it can do, but constantly hyping your product to them will actually turn them off. Players like only 3 things. They like programs that produce results, is easy to market and pull in tons of people, and generates income very quickly. In other words your program needs to convert really well for them to continue to promote it. Either offer them a percentage of your income or create an affiliate program for your program and allow them to earn at least a 50% - 60% commission. Most big-time marketers will not settle for less. There really are a lot of things to consider when it comes to pulling in a big marketer into your program. It's not a 15 minute job, it could take several days to even a week before they decide to join your program if they feel it's something that they can promote that won't hurt their branding. Regards, Jaye Pause
It really depends on the product you are marketing. Some products allow big % some others doesn't. It's important though, that you are offering competitive commissions in your field and good conversion.