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How to Recruit Affiliates as Online Marketing PartnersYour affiliate program is only as successful as the quality of your affiliates. Many managers make the mistake of thinking quantity over quality. Think of it this way, you may have 100 affiliates from which about 5 are really good and give you lots of sales. About 85% of these affiliates came to you without any direct recruition efforts. Then envision a program of 25 affiliates that were hand selected by the affiliate program manager based upon their site quality and traffic. Would you rather have 5% of your affiliates producing or 50% + of your affiliates producing? Building a strong affiliate base takes a tremendous amount of time and effort, but done correctly and with determination, it can be extremely rewarding. Below are some proven methods for recruiting affiliates. Some are more direct that others. The best advice to recruit affiliates is to run the very best most ethical and affiliate success program that you can. Word travels quickly on the internet and you're reputation will bring you and your program further than you think.
Email is still the back bone of many recruiting campaigns. If you're recuiting any affiliates using email, the most effective emails will be those that are personally written by you directly to the affiliate. Mass emailing is good and easy, but much less effective. When you write a potential affiliate, address them by their first name if possible and indicate not only have you visited their site but point out something specific about their site to let them know that in fact you really have taken the time to visit their site. Let them know why you think they are a good fit for your program or product and suggest placement of your ads within your site. Also mention some of the benefits of your program and a direct way to contact you. There are several schools of thought on the length of the email. No matter the length of the email you generally you have about 2-3 seconds to capture a readers attention once they open the email so really put something in the first line that will make them want to read onward. Shorter emails tend to out perform longer emails when contacting someone for the first time. Make sure that there is a call to action some where near the top of the email. Do not leave Join Program to the very last line. If they never read past the first paragraph, they will never see this. Also, using bulleted statements tend to work well. People have a tendency to briefly skim over an email to pick out the important statements. Making them easy to find will help your reader quickly grasp the message you are trying to portray. When ever you send an email, always follow up with another email or call. Many times spam filters prevent emails from being delivered. Many affiliates will research programs that are of interest to them through search engines. The first process in setting up your pay per click campaigns is selecting your keywords. Tools such as WordTracker.com and the keyword tool on Overture.com are often helpful in creating your keyword lists. Focus not only on words that are related to affiliate marketing but also words related for your program. For example if you are selling widgets and you'll pay on a percent per sale basis, a term might be widget pay per sale program or widget affiliate program. Forums are an excellent way to not only interact with other affiliates and affiliate program managers, but also to get your name and your company's name out into the market. Respond to inquiries that are posted and be sure that your name and contact information are listed within your signature. Most forums are free to join and if you participate on a regular basis they can become a very useful recruiting tool. Here are a few recommended affiliate forums: Many affiliate forums such as ABestWeb.com and AffiliateBoards.com will allow a merchant to have their own private forum. Prices generally range from $500 to $2000 yearly. These forums allow you to post topics and promotional materials pertaining to your program that would not be acceptable to post within the general discussion area of the boards. Private forums not only provide your current affiliates and potential affiliates another method in which to contact you, but the forum also helps to keep them up to date on your program. Who else is involved in your industry but is not a direct competitor of yours? Do they have an affiliate program as well? Make friends with them and you can easily promote each others program to your affiliate base and begin to not only foster and grow your relationship with them, but also recruit from a proven base of active affiliates. For example, if you send a monthly affiliates newsletter, recommend their program to your affiliates and ask them to do the same in their newsletter. You could also place a link to their program on your site and ask them to return the favor. Generally most affiliate managers are happy to do this since it will help them out as well. Although this is sometimes a costly method of advertising, done in a very targeted manner, it can produce a high response rate. The typical response rate for a large direct mail campaign is about 1%, but if you do a smaller campaign to a highly targeted list, your response rate might be as high as 20%. The average cost to send a direct mail package ranges from $0.50-$2.00 per piece. Due to the cost of this marketing method, it is not widely used for recruiting affiliates. However, since it is uncommon, it may make your marketing package stand out more. In a world where emails are often lost in cyberspace or deleted, these direct mail packages have a much larger chance of getting the attention of the recipient. Just as with the direct mail method, actually picking up the phone to call someone these days has become quite rare. In the world of internet marketing, the easiest thing to do is simply send an email. But, how do you know that your email actually reaches the person? Even if you call and leave a message, you know that someone has to at the very least hear the beginning of your voicemail. The ability to actually chat with someone on the phone allows you to introduce yourself to the person, allows them to put a voice to a name or website, and makes the whole experience a little more personal for everyone involved. Paid advertising can range anywhere from getting a newsletter publisher to place your ad to a site owner to list your link within their website. Prices range greatly with this form of advertising. If you do choose to pursue this type of advertising be sure that you are able to track any affiliates that join your program so that you can calculate your roi. Using your existing affiliate base is a very easily way to help grow your membership. First let your affiliates know you have a 2 nd tier. Do not expect them to assume that you have one. Provide them with easily promotional materials to use for your program and explain to them the benefits of helping you recruit affiliates. Most programs will pay a particular sign up commission such as $10.00 per new affiliate or the most popular method, a percentage of the total sale or lead commission their referred affiliate earns. For example, a company that pays on a per lead basis might pay their first tier affiliates $6.00 per lead and $0.25 for each lead that is generated by the first tier's referred affiliate. Not only is this method an easily way for you to further grow your membership base, but it is also a very simple way for your affiliates to earn a little extra money. People will talk about your program both good and bad and your reputation will travel much further then you can envision. The best thing you can do is run the best darn program that you can. Make sure that it is run ethically, payments are made on time, that your commissions are as generous as they can be and that you sincerely make an effort to help your affiliates be successful. There are literally hundreds of affiliate directories available for affiliate managers to list their program with. Most directories have a range of description lengths that they will accept so you may want to create a list of varying description lengths before you begin submitting your program to these directories. To view a list of some of the top directories, please check out our recommended directories page (recommended/recommended_dirrectories). The majority of these directories are free to submit to and some also offer paid advertising within their newsletters so you may find that they are useful in multiple ways. Think of them somewhat like a head hunter. You have a need for a top affiliate. These recruiters have lots of experience with affiliate marketing and can easily recruit affiliates. However, not all recruiters are the same. Remember, quantity is not always everything. Make sure that if you do hire a 3 rd party recruiter, that they are bringing you new affiliates that actually generate business for you. Get references and review ways in which they help recruit for your program. Not only will you hopefully get some new affiliates but you just might learn something new yourself about how to recruit affiliates. If you have the resources to keep these recruiters on long term, they can be an extremely effective tool for your recruiting campaigns. However, if you are low on resources they can help give your program a little boost and get your name out there in the affiliate industry. Look for recruiters that are not only good at what they do but also for those who are well respected within the industry. If your program is being recommended by an affiliate marketing industry expert, that will take you much further than someone who is very new to the industry. Search Engine Optimization is a great way to get your site great exposure for free within the search engines. So long as you have a website you can either do the seo yourself or hire an outside company to optimize your site. Here is a great resource to research search engine optimization SEOChat.com. Sign up for a Free Traffic Partners Account Today!Click here to register your program with Traffic Partners and get started finding affiliate matches right away! To get started listing your affiliate program, register for your free Traffic Partners Account today!
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