Affiliate programs are the way the internet is doing business.
Affiliate networks are growing at an exponential rate as more website owners realize the potential for business growth and word of mouth publicity for their websites.
Affiliates use their site’s traffic to increase their own revenue as well as increasing the sales for the site they are affiliated with.
The affiliate’s website will have a link or ad that can be clicked through to the website offering the items or services.
The affiliate is paid either per click through or by a percentage of the sales made by the people who clicked through.
This win-win situation can be cultivated with the right affiliate recruiting methods. Recruiting is the process of finding quality affiliates who will bring traffic to your website and spread your company’s name.
To find affiliates who have traffic of their own and will drive the right kind of traffic to your website, the key is the recruiting process used to find the affiliates.
Recruiting affiliates is not a simple matter of chance and it is not something that should be done in the simplest possible method to attract the maximum number of responses.
Having a poor quality of affiliates can negatively affect your site’s reputation, as well as wasting your time and energy.
Affiliate Recruiting Secrets
An effective affiliate program vastly increases the amount of publicity the website receives, increasing page views and building a name for the site and its goods or services.
Affiliates will go on to recruit other affiliates, further spreading the word about the website and the items it sells.
Affiliates who are recruited in a questionable manner may then recruit others in a questionable manner, rendering the publicity that the program generates a negative publicity.
And, negative recruiting methods can cause problems that go beyond just a matter of the site’s reputation.
Affiliate recruiting is something that should be done legitimately, through legal means. This means avoiding spam, unlawful telemarketing, filling up irrelevant message boards with your information, etc.
There are many legitimate ways to recruit affiliates that will not be seen as harassment or as an annoyance and will garner a better reputation for your site.
A site with a good reputation is more likely to attract quality affiliates.
Email is currently one of the most popular methods of recruiting affiliates. But, this can be both positive and negative both for the website and for the site’s owner.
If the email is sent out in a random fashion, it may not be compliant with the recent CAN-SPAM laws, making the site’s owner vulnerable to lawsuits and legal action.
In addition, because many site owners rely on their network of affiliates to further recruit affiliates, those affiliates may recruit through email
Affiliate Recruiting Secrets that is not CAN-SPAM complaint, further causing potential trouble for the site owner.
The site owner is legally responsible for their affiliate network’s recruiting tactics and can be prosecuted by the FTC for any violations that their affiliates commit.
There are many other ways of recruiting affiliates than sending mass emails or allowing the affiliate network to do so.
Emails are a good way to recruit affiliates, but they must be used deliberately- targeting specific people with a legitimate offer to join the affiliate network.
Contacting webmasters of websites that have a similar content to your site is a good first step to finding affiliates.
The emails should contain all of the information that an affiliate needs to make the decision to visit the site and join the network.
Sketchy details in an email will read like spam and not the legitimate opportunity with your network that it really is.
When sending recruiting email, think about questions you would ask if you were learning about your network, and answer all of those questions. Include contact information to further separate yourself from the spammers.
Effective affiliate recruiting can also be done through targeted telephone calls.
Directly calling those who may be interested in an affiliate relationship is likely to be just as effective as or even more so than mass emails, as they are not filtered out as spam and it is possible to speak directly to the potential affiliate.
A strong business relationship can be made from speaking directly over the phone in a way that is more difficult to establish through email alone.
A business relationship that begins with phone contact is more akin to a business relationship in the real world, rather than something only conducted through email. People do respond to a personal touch.
Direct mail is currently not used by very many business owners to recruit affiliates, and its under use is cutting out a potentially effective way to attract and retain quality affiliates.
Direct mail has the advantage of being a hard copy that can be read anywhere, not just at the computer. It can also contain a lot of information in a small space.
A postcard is a small piece of mail and is very inexpensive to send, but it will hold a good deal of ad copy for your network.
Having effective copy written for your direct mail will ensure that the information needed by a potential affiliate is included, and increases the chances that the terms will interest the potential affiliate.
When writing direct mail, it may be a good idea to hire a copywriter to make the most of the potential of the medium.
Online forums are another good way to find interested affiliates. Online forums are so numerous that forums devoted to the retail niche being served will be easy to find. There are also many forums devoted to affiliate programs.
These sites will already have people there waiting for the right affiliate programs to come along. Prospective affiliates can be contacted directly on the forum and presented with information about the affiliate program.
A webmaster may also want to have a page on their site dedicated to their affiliate program, and post the page on several different forums that may have interested forum users, allowing forum members to read the details from your site at their leisure.
In addition to contacting potential affiliates and directing them to the site, it is possible through advertising to bring affiliates directly to the site and have them contact the webmaster to sign up to the program.
These include the ever- present banner ads, which can and do work. Banner ads are relatively inexpensive compared to other forms of advertising, and can be selectively paced on sites with the potential to be seen by those interested and experienced with affiliate programs.
Sites with content concerning affiliate sites are an obvious choice, but there are many other types that may serve the affiliate program just as well.
Choosing sites that concern website building is a good choice for banner ad placement, as those building websites may be wondering how to make money using their new site.
Sites with content about your specific retail niche are very good prospects for banner ads or other advertising.
Viewers come to the site with some knowledge and interest in the items, and some of them may have web sites devoted to something similar.
These sites will have a better click through rate than sites that have completely unrelated content, giving you a higher chance of making sales.
Choosing a popular website with thousands or even millions of unique views per day will be more expensive than smaller sites, but it may be worth it for the exposure it brings.
A popular site’s traffic can ensure that your ad gets the click throughs it needs to make finding the right affiliates possible. It also brings attention to the site itself, bringing in potential customers as well as potential affiliates.
All of these methods can garner affiliate hopefuls for you, but the next step is finding affiliates who are a good fit and will continue to generate sales for you.
Affiliates who are responsible in their recruiting methods and generate sales are valuable business partners and must be treated fairly and with respect in order to keep them within your network.
Affiliates will expect a fair compensation for the business they bring in, and they should be paid honestly and on time.
Keeping successful affiliates long term creates an income stream that can last years, if not for a lifetime, so it is worth the extra time needed to nurture the relationship.
Reliable and experienced potential affiliates will want to know more about the affiliate program you are offering than just the potential revenue share.
They may want details about how the business is run, the company’s reputation, about the quality of the items or services being sold, how accurate the tracking is, and to know that they can contact you with any questions or concerns they may have.
A potential affiliate wanting this type of information is a good sign and the information should be rendered with honesty.
A seasoned affiliate will know if the revenue potential or the company’s reputation is being dishonestly portrayed, and will want nothing to do with the network. Treat affiliates the way you would treat a business associate in real life and they will wantto stay.
Another reason to keep affiliates long term is their potential for recruiting other affiliates. It is time saving and profitable to have your network do the bulk of the recruiting for you, as well as opening up new channels of advertising and word of mouth from the network.
Treating affiliates poorly may actually create the kind of reputation that makes it difficult to get anyone to join your network. Affiliates talk, so make sure it is what you want said about your business.
Because of the rapidly increasing rate of affiliate networks, there are now businesses that can be hired to recruit affiliates for you. Outsourcing the recruiting is relatively new and is not something that everyone is interested in.
Hiring a recruiter cuts the site owner out of the process and leaves them with affiliates that they themselves might not have chosen.
It is a time saver, however, for businesses that are expanding and have little time to recruit. For websites that are just getting an affiliate network started, it may be an effective jump start to get the word out about the affiliate opportunity. But the jump start must be weighed against the added expense that is incurred by outsourcing.
However you decide will be the most effective way for you to recruit affiliates, treating them well is the key to keeping the system a well-oiled machine that will be bringing in a steady stream of income. To keep affiliates, they will have to have a steady stream as well.
The amount you pay your affiliates is entirely up to you, and there is a wide variation in the amounts that affiliates receive. But, the best word of mouth publicity will be garnered with a high rate of pay as compared with similar sites.
A higher than average rate will make the site desirable to affiliates and likely they will be more motivated to spread the word.
Second tier affiliate systems are the motivation behind the affiliates move to recruit more affiliates to the network. The first set of affiliates will earn a percentage of what their recruits are making.
This is an excellent incentive for expanding your network indefinitely and creating that passive income that most website owners so desire.
While you are growing your business, your network will be hard at work selling your items for you, creating an unlimited income that can last a lifetime.
Your business name and its reputation get out there too, bringing in more affiliates as well as more sales.
