How to Attract Affiliates

One of the biggest fears new Affiliate managers have is in finding new affiliates. This fear is a stumbling block that stops many site owners from getting started with affiliate marketing. Interestingly, with a proper marketing strategy, getting affiliates is not very difficult. Given below are some tips that will help in attracting new affiliates.

Find complimentary sites - "Complementary" sites are sites that sell products or services that compliment your offerings. If you sell "gardening tools", a site that sells books on "gardening tips" would be a perfect affiliate. If you sell software, try looking for sites that sell computers or computer parts. Finding sites that already attract your target market and can benefit from recommending your product or service to their visitors is the goal.

Find content sites – There are many sites that do not sell any kind of product or service but are mainly content-oriented sites. Such sites promote an idea, concept, study or belief. Content sites that are used as a resource for your target market are ideal affiliates.

Finally, there are several sites on the Internet dedicated to listing affiliate programs. Get your program listed in these directories.

Classifying Affiliates for Better Management

The hardest part of administrating an affiliate program is deciding what your affiliates need to help make the sale. But by carefully categorizing your affiliates, you can easily determine what their needs are and how to accurately meet them. The plan given below helps in categorizing affiliates in order to manage your affiliate program better.

The first step is to pick at least three types of affiliates. Take a look at your affiliates and try to determine one outstanding characteristic that can easily be compared across the board. Here are some examples:

Level of Sales - You may find that your affiliates are so completely different that it's hard to find something to classify them by. Try classifying them by the level of sales they've reached with you. You'll most likely find that you have a few forerunners that lead the pack with a number of sales, quite a few affiliates that have sporadically made a sale or two and some that have yet to make a sale. This will help you classify them based on sales.

Products - If you sell a wide variety of products for specific interests/needs you may be able to classify your affiliates by product. For instance, a financial site could classify types like Personal Finance, Small Business Finance, and Corporate Finance.

Industry - If you market commodities like office supplies, health and beauty products, house-wares and so on, you may find that your affiliates come from a wide variety of industries. You can most likely classify your affiliates according to their industry.

The second step is to determine the needs of each type. Each of your affiliate types will have different needs; some of their needs will overlap, but you should find a distinct difference in many of their needs. If you find that all of them have the same needs, go back to step one and re-think your types.

Here are some basic things to look for:- 142 -

Linking Methods - Different types of affiliates will need different linking methods. Let's use the example above where we had different groups based on sales. Your low-sales group may be satisfied with a banner or two to place on their site. Your medium-sales type may be interested in an article or two for added content on their site. Your high-sales group will probably pass up banners for articles, email ads and signature files.

Capturing visitors is what you want. In order to do so -- you have to know what they want. Visit your affiliates' sites to see what visitors are looking at and looking for. Ask yourself, "How does my product relate to what I am seeing?"

Different types of affiliates may expect different commissions. You'll have some affiliates that have joined your program "on the side" and others that plan on earning a substantial income from the program. Determine what effort they are putting into advertising, how much other programs in your industry are paying, and the amount of time they devote to your program.

The third step involves the process of creating and compiling linking methods for each group of affiliates. Based on the needs you identified in Step Two, create and compile linking methods for each type. Here are a few linking methods to think about:- 143 -

 Banners - Though they aren't as effective as other linking methods, banners are still widely used and expected. Make banners in a variety of sizes to fit tops of pages, bottoms, toolbars, sidebars and other miscellaneous areas.

 Articles - These are great for affiliates that need content for their websites and newsletters. Be sure that your articles are articles and not ads.

 Email Ads - Your active affiliates may be interested in placing ads in e-zines or their own newsletters. Try writing a few ads in different lengths.

 Signature Files - Dedicated affiliates may even add your tag to their signature line. Give them a few witty lines to choose from.

 Guestbooks: - Let your affiliates help you build your opt-in email lists with guestbooks. Offer them a commission for each email address they send you, or each resulting sale from the subscribers they send you.

 Product Images - Give your affiliates images that show and link directly to specific products. They'll be able to choose an image specific to their site, or choose several images to display.

Review each affiliate type and match them up with your new linking methods. You may have some linking methods that overlap types -- this is okay. Just be sure you are concentrating on the affiliates' needs.

The fourth step is to decide commission levels. Your first decision will be to determine whether you want to pay a flat rate or percentage of each sale. Based on the needs you identified above for each of the affiliate types, decide on a commission amount for each type. If you have a two-tier program, consider the possibility of different second tier rates as well.

The fifth step is to devise promotions for affiliate groups. Give them special incentives to sell more during a certain time frame, move seasonal products, or increase business during your slow months. Offer them additional commissions or even bonuses for reaching a specific amount of sales.

A Few Avoidable Errors

Many affiliate marketers make a huge mistake of posting their ads on forums. Forums can be used to promote your affiliate programs and your website but in a proper manner like using your forum sig file for advertising your wares and making valuable contributions to forum discussions in progress. Posting blatant ads in most forums is considered spamming and will easily upset the forum administrators and possibly get you banned.

Always do your research before promoting your affiliate program to a potential customer. Do not offer affiliate programs to visitors who are not at all interested in the products associated with the program. This is a futile endeavor.

If you promote affiliate programs offered by other merchants, try developing some of your own advertising copy. Many websites commit a common mistake of using the same advertising copy as used by the merchant themselves. You will usually experience greater success recommending other company’s products in your own voice rather than the voice of the company whose products you are promoting.

Avoid copyright infringement in all cases. Always use original content or ask permission to use graphic images or text found on other websites.

Avoid using ALL CAPS on your web page or email ad. Using caps is symbolic to shouting, which will turn off many potential customers. A few words may be written in capital text to give them additional emphasis. However, such practice should be limited.

Always respond to all queries sent by visitors as soon as possible. A slight delay in your response could easily result in losing the sale.

Do not host your website on a free server or use free email accounts. This gives a negative impression to visitors. Using free hosts and email accounts looks cheesy and loses sales.

Many websites do not have an opt-in list. Create an opt-in and opt-out list for your visitors. Without these, there is no way of following-up with potential customers. Visitors should be allowed to opt-in at any time as well as opt-out at any time.

Most sites have a poor tracking mechanism. It is essential that you track all business activities. Accurate record keeping is crucial. There are several software tools discussed earlier in this chapter that can automate your record-keeping process with minimal error.

A “mall” site is best used as a central hub to send visitors to your other domains. As a main or only site, unfocused mall sites don't get traffic from the engines, and they don't convert well to sales. Highly focused theme sites attract traffic and sales.

Offline advertising may not be effective. A lot of money and effort should not be wasted on offline advertising. Most people rarely check websites that are advertised in local magazines or newspapers. Of course, this depends on your product. If you are promoting a direct response sales website, there are times that offline advertising will work very well. The key, of course, is to test and track your ads.

Avoid focus on animated banner ads. These simply use up bandwidth, thus making web pages load slower.

When advertising, do not degrade other competitors. It is recommended that you highlight your products’ uniqueness and superiority but never mortify other products.

Banners or text links that expire are guaranteed to eventually send your visitor to a broken link or show a broken graphic on your page. Time-sensitive advertising is best used only in email campaigns.

Be cautious about putting affiliate links prominently on your home page. Instead, give your visitors a chance to browse first, sign up for your newsletter and decide that they'd like to come back to your website before introducing them to your affiliates.

Technology changes with amazing speed. To keep up with this rapidly evolving industry, you must invest time and money in research. Remember, the investment is a tax write-off, and will pay you back many times over in additional revenue.

Finally, persist with your plan. It might take you time to get established even if you have a solid marketing plan. Persistence is the single most important factor in determining success online or off.

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