After 5 months of pushing the product to the community I have only reached 77 affiliates with 39 of them being active. I even went all out and gave the affiliates 30% commission that is recurring each month for the life time of the customer, and it will plant a cookie for one year. So all they have to do is get the customer to the website and if they don’t get them sold now, they will be paid for it down the road if they come back. IMO the 39 active affiliates are doing really good with the average of 5.95% signup, and a smaller group of around 7 affiliates are getting 50-94% signup rate. Last month the affiliates made themselves a combined total of $6,000. I have setup extended tracking, channels, banners, videos, etc. I have recommended to them to post links, write reviews, add it to their forum sig, and even put the link in their comments they post on other blogs(the url field), as well as, ran some deals for free signups, and discounts so they can really try to market it with limit time offers, etc. I even added a bonus one month. This has gotten very frustrating. Getting affiliates in the door that convert or not, has become a bigger problem to my marketing plans. At this point I’m about to start offering a pyramid payout for just referring affiliates to the service. Do any experienced affiliates companies have any advice on getting more affiliates. The service is for webmasters, so the same users that buy the product are also able to use the affiliate program.
If you have a steady traffic,it should be an organic process, your affiliate base should grow day by day. Doesn't this happen? Do you have a lot of returning customers on your websites, customers that are already aware of your program but not interested?
Yes we have steady traffic, just not steady rate of new affiliates. 56% of the incoming traffic are new customers. Most my customers do not always join the affiliate program, and they just give out the link to their friends as a recommended service, which is fine in that event, but Im trying to find ways to tap into users that may not always use the service, but would like to make money by dropping the link around some places.
You could try PPC to advertising your program. Search (searchengines) for good affiliate type candidate sites with your relevent keywords, and just reach out to the site owners with personalized messages. Put a link to a page with your affiliate program information in your sig file. Join a network...one of the main reasons for getting into an affiliate network is access to the affiliate base. Shareasale is excellent for SMEs. Have you considered hiring an OPM (outsourced program management firm) to manage and grow your program? Dave
Thanks for the ideas Dave. I was just talking to a friend about joining a network, as well as hunting down some people to pay to add the link to their sig in the forums, and do some PR, since I don't spend time on any forums. Maybe get me a combo and have them do the sig and forum post along with digging around the SE's. Ill check into shareasale as well, they look good.
Go out and recruit your own affiliates, don't just wait for publishers to find you. Surf the type of websites you want to have in your program and simply invite them to sign up.