Category: Recruiting Affiliates

Another thing that the majority of affiliates are looking for in a program is one that pays on time and within a reasonable amount of time. To keep affiliates happy, be very clear on when you pay and how often, and then make sure to meet that timetable each and every time.

Offering the affiliates a way to track their sales on an ongoing basis is also a good way to garner loyalty and enthusiasm. Seeing the results only every two weeks or even every month is not the best way for them to see the immediate results of their sales techniques. Having a way to track the results daily will allow them to change the techniques that are not working and add on things that will. This also ends credibility to the vendor, allowing the affiliate to see the numbers and not simply to trust that they will be there when the payments are made. (more…)

This is Part 2 of “How to Delight Affiliates” in my series on Affiliate Recruiting.

Another way to offer this is to offer affiliates-only teleseminars. These can be useful for both getting free information to the affiliates and for creating a team atmosphere that generates loyalty. Teleseminars also personalize the vendor’s company in a way that emails can not. Teleseminars offer a face to virtual face meeting that may be the affiliate’s first look at a human being in charge of the product. If time is of the essence in your business, outsourcing this set up may be worth looking into. If you do not otherwise have a way of setting up a teleseminar or don’t have the time, there are several websites that provide this service and make it quick and easy to set up. (more…)

This is Part 1 of “How to Delight Affiliates” in my series on Affiliate Recruiting.

Those with effective affiliate networks know that in order to keep the network running smoothly and the sales coming in, it is important to keep the affiliates happy and willing to promote the product and makes sales. They should be made to feel that the product is worth promoting, as well as… (more…)

Always make use of search engines in your affiliate recruiting efforts. Using
search engines to find super affiliates makes it easier to find these ‘gems’ in
what is otherwise a pile of rocks. There are other search engines that you may
want to try in addition to Google, though Google is the one that the vast
majority of people use regularly. There are also search engines that compile
results from several different search engines. Ixquick is one of the compilers,
bringing in search results from many of the larger search engines other than
Google, which it does not compile from. Ixquick is a quick way to search rather
than searching five or more search engines yourself. Finding the results from
this search work in the same was as a Google search, and it may come up with
different sites to contact.

Google’s appeal in the hunting of super affiliates is not limited to just
searching for the top sites, however. There are other uses for Google that will
make finding even more top-ranking sites possible in less time. By using Google
Adwords, many potential keywords used for the product can be revealed. Google
Adwords has a specialized keyword tool that finds the best keywords related to
the product, and reports, free of charge, several different statistics related
to those search words.

The analysis provided includes the seasonal trends related to the searches as
well as the general search performance of the words globally. Entering keywords
and phrases into the keyword tool will generate search volume results for the
words. Changing the words and finding more popular variations will aid you in
finding keywords that are the most popular for your niche. Then, try these words
and phrases in the main Google search to find sites that you may not have found
otherwise, and find even more potential super affiliates.

If you are not certain about what related keywords would be the most
effective for your page, Google Adwords has a remedy. The tool can be used to
find the words for you. First, enter the specific URL into the keyword tool’s
search box. This will actually find keywords for you that are related to the
page that was typed in. These keywords will then be analyzed for the same
statistics for search performance and seasonality.

And, using these tools is not just helpful in finding super affiliates.
Finding the appropriate keywords for your site is a helpful thing to provide to
affiliates as an extra tool to help them with promoting. The most effective
words can be added into the pre-made ads given to affiliates as well as listed
separately for affiliates who want to write their own ads.

Once a high-profile affiliate is found, it is a matter of convincing them to
promote the product. Super affiliates are used to high profits, and they may not
be willing to take on products with a lower profit margin than the ones that
they are already selling. To snag one of the big players, it may be necessary to
negotiate your terms, and perhaps to offer them a higher commission rate than
you would ordinarily offer.

When approaching a potential super affiliate, be sure to make it clear to him
what will be in the deal for him. Offering extra affiliate tools, training, and
support may not be necessary for a super affiliate, but it will demonstrate your
level of commitment and your availability. And, even super affiliates can
benefit from the time savings of pre-made tools such as the pre-written ads you
offer. Make the process easy and offer good terms and support, and a super
affiliate may just be yours for the asking.

A super affiliate doesn’t just bring in sales for you and commissions for
himself- he also publicizes your product, bringing it increased recognition that
can translate into higher sales for all of the affiliates. Having one or two
heavy hitters in the network is also a powerful selling point when recruiting
other affiliates for your network. The higher profile your product is, the more
likely it is that potential affiliates have heard of it, and the more profit
will be found in selling the product. With one or more effective, high-profile
super affiliates in your network, you may not have to worry about affiliate
recruiting for long- they may start coming to you and asking to join in your
network.

Jim Musselwhite is an internet marketer with a wide array of diverse,
authoritative information sites including href='http://www.affiliatemanagementformula.com/'
target=_top>http://www.affiliatemanagementformula.com/ and href='http://www.youraffiliateteam.com/'
target=_top>http://www.youraffiliateteam.com/

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There are several companies such as Syntryx, AMWSO, and Commission Junction, which now offer affiliate recruiting as well as affiliate management services. Outsourced recruiting includes an analysis of the relevant markets, searching for sites that contain relevant material and high traffic areas in which to place your products. A recruiter will also contact potential affiliates about your product for you, providing marketing materials to potential affiliates to interest them in promoting the product. For interested affiliates, a recruiter will then enroll them into the network, making it easier for the affiliate and for the vendor.

And, outsourcing your recruiting tasks no longer has to involve simply recruiting. Some affiliate recruiting companies also take an authentic management role, helping to analyze your affiliate network and determine how to get more affiliates interested in selling your product. This may include adjusting the commission price that you are willing to pay affiliates, if the research shows that your commission rate is significantly lower than that of other similar companies. This may also include tweaking your marketing or your website to better attract and keep affiliates.

Outsourcing the recruiting is one way of finding super affiliates, as the higher the number of affiliates in the network, the better chance there is of landing one or more super affiliates. Also, many affiliate recruiting companies specialize in identifying the most effective affiliates. Syntryx, in addition to their recruiting services, also offers tools for the vender to find super affiliates. These include ways to identify top affiliates in different markets, as well as providing the appropriate contact information. There are even tools to identify affiliates for competing products and to contact them to promote your product.

To decide whether outsourcing your recruiting is a viable option for your business, keep a log of the time spent recruiting affiliates, and how many affiliates were signed up during that time. It is also helpful to keep records of how well the affiliates that you recruited have been selling. Having effective affiliates to promote the product can make or break a company. If a vendor spends most of their time looking for affiliates, and then the affiliates recruited have not been selling well, it may be time to hire someone else to do the recruiting.

If a vendor has signed many, many affiliates, but the other aspects of the business have been suffering from the time spent recruiting, that may also be a sign that the recruiting should be outsourced. Even if a vendor has had success in recruiting and already has an effective affiliate network, the vendor may simply be curious as to how much better a professional recruiter will be at finding high selling affiliates.

Having an effective network does not always mean that there are super affiliates in it. But, finding these high sellers is the goal of most recruiting companies. If you are actively recruiting affiliates and still the product is simply not selling, a recruiting company may be the only option to keeping the business afloat.

If the company budget does not allow outsourcing, or if you are just more interested in trying to find super affiliates for yourself, there are many tools available to help you hunt them down. By using simple search engines it is possible to discover where the super affiliates are hiding. To quickly find high-profile sites that are related to your product, simply use Google to look up similar product marketing. The first page or two of results are the ones ranked the most highly for the keywords that you searched. It may take a few searches of related keywords to find the top spots for different words related to your product. The top results are sites that generally understand the search engines and how to get the best placement. They are also the ones who will be getting the highest traffic, and the chances are good that they are run by super affiliates.

After discovering the top sites, take a good look at them. Note the site’s counters if they are available, what the content looks like, and what products are being sold there. If a highly-ranked site looks relevant to your product and seems like it would be effective at marketing your product, it would be a good idea to contact the webmaster and pitch your product and its affiliate program.

(to be concluded in Part 3)

Jim Musselwhite is an internet marketer with a wide array of diverse, authoritative information sites including http://www.affiliatemanagementformula.com/ and http://www.youraffiliateteam.com/

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Providing the tools and training for an affiliate to get started should be done in conjunction with giving the affiliate the information about the product that they will need to market it. Every affiliate should be familiar with the product or products. Give them all of the information they need in order to find their own ways of marketing, to write their own ad copy if they want to, and to answer questions that people may have about the product.

If the affiliate is familiar with the product, it may open up new promotion venues to them that they would not otherwise know were relevant. For example, if the product is an ebook, knowing the intimate details about the book’s contents will suggest to the affiliate other markets besides simply ebook sites. Is there a chapter about alternative health? There are countless alternative health forums and groups that may be interested in reading about it. Are there examples in the book about the income of fishermen? Fishermen gather around virtual water coolers just as other groups do, and may be interested in reading an ebook that outwardly shows no signs of being of interest to fishermen. The same can be said about software and the various applications in which it can be used.

An affiliate that is familiar with the product can also add something to their marketing that they otherwise would not. Their personal endorsement. A positive personal endorsement, based on the real product and their opinion on it, feels genuine and is a better marketing tool than a more hollow “it’s great- buy it.” This is not something that can be handed to an affiliate- they must know enough about the product to be able to add their own words about the product, and to tailor their endorsement to the different promotional venues they use. Ad copy mixing several of these components- the personal endorsement, the third party review, and the testimonials make for some seriously persuading copy.

Providing tools and training doesn’t have to be time consuming, and it doesn’t have to be done on a one-on-one basis. If you have a large affiliate network, consider a newsletter that gives the information to everyone in the network. This can also be done on a subscription basis so that the affiliates who don’t want it will not feel like they are being spammed. Also consider having one or more pages on your website, or having a second site for this purpose, that details these tools and how to use them.

If affiliates have problems using the tools provided to them, or don’t understand some of them, be available through email to answer questions. Not promoting the product may come down to simply one or two questions that the affiliate had about either the promotional tools or the product itself. Being available for questions goes a long way toward building a network where affiliates truly desire to participate.

It seems as though everyone with a product is using affiliates these days, and let’s face it, most of them are. Make your product stand out to affiliates and potential affiliates by not simply telling them a little bit about the product and hoping they sell it, but by offering them the tools that will give them an easier time of promoting it. This will make affiliates more prepared to carry out your promotions, and more willing to actually do it. This can only result in more sales for you and more cash for the affiliates. Being an affiliate and finding new ways to promote sales can be fun when the right tools and training have been provided and the affiliate sees the cash rolling in.

Jim Musselwhite is an internet marketer with a wide array of diverse, authoritative information sites including http://www.affiliatemanagementformula.com/

and http://www.youraffiliateteam.com

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Every vendor with a product and a serious interest in affiliate recruiting must look for super affiliates - those affiliates who are high profile and will promote your product well, resulting in high sales and profits. The real task is finding the affiliates who will end up being super affiliates for your product. Everyone with a product wants super affiliates, so how does a vendor find them?

There is no one perfect way of finding super affiliates. There is a lot of searching that may go into finding them, and then there is the recruitment process to convince them to join the affiliate network for the product. But, for the most part, the super affiliates are hiding in plain sight. The reason that super affiliates are so super is that they market themselves. They use high profile sites, having websites that rank high in search engines. They also have plenty of ads and links that lead to their sites. They go to related forums to keep updated on new developments in the field and to find new sites that have promising affiliate networks to join. The super affiliates are all around you, you just need to know how to find the ones who will be right for your product and who will be willing to join your network.

Because super affiliates stay in touch with the industry, one way to find them is by looking through relevant forums for users who are already seasoned affiliates and are seem to know how to effectively promote products and bring in sales. Suitable forums may include those related to business and marketing topics, and forums that are specifically for affiliate discussions. Suitable affiliates may not even be posting in forums, but reading them regularly. For this reason, it is more effective to actually post in forums and speak to potential affiliates than to simply read posts and try to find one who sounds like a super affiliate. Get the word out - you need effective, loyal affiliates who are interested in high profits to join you in promoting your product.

Joint venture networks may also have successful affiliates who are waiting for a new opportunity to join a network. Because the sites involved in joint networks as the endorser are generally high-profile sites with a wide audience and a wide network of customers, they are idea potential super affiliates as well as joint venture partners.

Among the many ways to find affiliates, some businesses have found that hiring others to recruit their affiliates for them is more practical for them than spending the time to hunt for affiliates on their own. There are now companies that will do the affiliate hunting for you; freeing you up to complete other tasks to build your business. Outsourcing your affiliate recruiting may, at first, seem more expensive than hunting on your own, but it may make financial sense if you are having difficulty finding affiliates and your time could better be spent elsewhere. Affiliate recruiters will very likely have better luck in finding the super affiliates than you would on your own.

Jim Musselwhite is an internet marketer with a wide array of diverse, authoritative information sites including http://www.affiliatemanagementformula.com/ and http://www.youraffiliateteam.com/

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Banner ads are a popular tool used by affiliates, but they can be complicated to create and to utilize. Creating pre-made banner ads that affiliates can use on their own websites is an easy way to provide something helpful for affiliates. The banner ads can simply be copied from a page on your site and pasted onto the affiliates’ site. Make sure to provide some instruction about to how to set up the banner ad and how banner ads can bring in targeted traffic for the product. Banner ads can of course be placed on other sites, and instruction on how to go about using them as paid advertising should be offered. You might also offer customized tools to affiliates that ask for them such as different banner sizes.

One way that is even easier for an affiliate to interest people in your product is to use simple signature files. Putting a signature file in all outgoing emails increases the amount of people who will see information about the product. A signature file can even be a variation of the email ads or classified ads that you have already provided. There will be affiliates who are already well-versed in signature files for promotion, but there will also be some who have never thought of it as a promotional tool as well as those who simply don’t know how to set one up.

Offering the information about how to set up an email signature file makes it even easier for an affiliate to utilize this as an advertising source. This information should of course be provided with a warning about using it for illegal spam, but there are many, many ways that it can be used legitimately and still be sent to hundreds of potential customers, if not more. Most people send email daily, so as simply a numbers game there is a possibility that some of the people receiving legitimate emails from the affiliate will then purchase the product. This may even be a fun way for an affiliate to market the product, as it is easy to set up and is a simple way to get the promotion started.

Once an affiliate is underway in their promotion of the product, it is helpful to have some content that they can put on their website, blog, or in email or direct mail to promote the product. One type of content that will be welcomed by affiliates is positive reviews of the product. Getting a glowing third party review is a powerful selling point for any product, and if there are reviews available, providing them to affiliates for their use is a great way to give them something that you already know will be an effective promotional tool.

Supplying interviews are another way to do the same thing-provide some content that will be useful to affiliates, and garner a little control over the quality of the promotion. This may be interviews conducted of you, providing the vendor’s perspective of the product. This may also be interviews with people who have used, or read in the case of ebooks, the product.

In the case of ebooks, it is also a good idea for affiliates to have access to an interview with the author. Interviews are easy to read and are useful in web promotions. Having interviews available is slightly different from testimonials, and provides quotations that are useful in many types of promotions. Anyone writing a press release about your product would be interested in having the interview format to provide the needed quotations. Interviews, reviews and testimonials are all effective ad staples, and will give affiliates a way to advertise right away instead of enduring a wait time to come up with their own copy.

In addition to the training provided for the affiliate to use web tools such as pay per click sites, providing training in the use of the other promotional materials may be just as helpful. Putting together some materials about ad copy, how to use it, where to use it, etc., will make it more likely that an affiliate actually will use it. It may also cut down on the use of spam by affiliates, as they will see other avenues in which the provided materials can be used. Providing training is going the extra mile- showing the affiliates that they are part of your network and truly work with you, not just for you.

Jim Musselwhite is an internet marketer with a wide array of diverse, authoritative information sites including http://www.affiliatemanagementformula.com/ and Affiliate Tools

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Though the affiliates are the ones who go out and promote your product, you still have a significant part to play in that promotion. In order to keep affiliates willing and able to promote the product, it is important to make that as easy as possible for those affiliates. This means providing them with the proper affiliate tools they need for the successful promotion of sales. And the quicker the sales come for an affiliate, the more the affiliate will be willing to promote your product, creating more profit for both of you.

There are many tools that can be provided to affiliates in order to make their task easier. There are many things that a vendor can create themselves, taking relatively little time, but will be welcomed by an affiliate. One way to assist affiliates is by creating specific email ads that cater to your prospective clientele, and sending them to the affiliates as a promotional tool. This is a quick way to offer affiliates an easy way to promote the product. And, even if an affiliate is an excellent affiliate with effective promotional skills, the affiliate may not have a talent for ad creation, graphics or for copywriting. Giving them this tool not only saves them time, but makes them feel like a valued part of your network.

An affiliate who has not yet sold a product for a vendor may have a problem in knowing how to getting started, and perhaps even sees little hope of making sales with this limited knowledge. Giving the affiliate ready-made tools to make sales may just tip the scales toward the affiliate being an active marketer for the product.

Tools that can be provided to an affiliate may include classified ads that a vendor can write and offer to affiliates for their own use. There are many different ways this can be utilized by affiliates, including the many free sites that post classified ads. Compiling a list of free sites, as well as low cost effective sites, on which the ads can be posted is an extra service that would give the affiliates an added arsenal of advertising opportunities, making it much easier to get the product sold and their commission earned. Some instructions on how to submit classified ads and how to retool the ad copy for their own use to target specific markets are all ways to make using the ads even easier for an affiliate.

Ads to be used by the affiliate for pay per click advertising are another useful tool. PPC ads are one of the biggest ways that affiliates use to advertise, but having the ads may not be enough for beginning affiliates. Providing some training on how to use pay per click services, as well as information about the major sites to use the ads with are extremely helpful with getting affiliates to use all of the resources that the web has to offer.

One of the problems that affiliates run into, even if they are excited about the product and want to promote it to their best ability, is not having the knowledge to know where effective promotion can be found and how to use it. Training given to affiliates may include overviews about how affiliates can earn higher revenues through effective advertising, as well as how to navigate Google Adwords and Yahoo Overture and other affiliate tools. Understanding the systems will not only make an affiliate more inclined to use the resources that are now available to him, but may also garner some loyalty to the vendor who taught him the ropes.

(article to be continued in part 2)

Jim Musselwhite is an internet marketer with a wide array of diverse, authoritative information sites including http://www.affiliatemanagementformula.com/ and http://www.youraffiliateteam.com/

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Joint ventures are a profitable and powerful way to market a product, but affiliate networks are very profitable as well. Clickbank has 100,000 affiliates waiting for products to promote and sell, making it the ideal place to go if you have a product to sell. The system in place makes it easy for vendors with an account and a product to connect with affiliates and conduct highly effective affiliate recruiting.

Affiliates can sign on to sell a product without your having to pitch it to them or convince them to sell it. All of the sales made through affiliates are tracked and accessible through your control panel. It will even take care of the banking hassles that small businesses have to deal with when selling items. Clickbank processes the orders for the product and approves the customers’ payment. It also takes care of the bank inquiries that may be necessary, as well as questions from customers.

Opening an account with Clickbank is free, but there are other fees. Contact information must be given to the site by the vendor so that checks can be sent from Clickbank. When the time comes to sell a product, there is an activation fee required of $49.95. This is a one-time fee and opens the door to a lifetime of sales. When an item is sold, Clickbank also charges a fee based on the selling price. There is a $1 charge plus 1.5 percent of the sale. This is deducted directly from the sale and the vendor and the affiliate are sent the rest of the sales price.

When signing on to sell a product through Clickbank, you must specify the price that will be charged for your product. Then, decide what your commission rate for affiliates will be, with the maximum amount of commission allowed being 75 percent. Clickbank will then show the vendor a page where potential customers can find out how to purchase the product. A customer will click on an order link to buy the product, and is then shown a window with the price. Customers enter their credit card information which must be approved by Clickbank before the sale goes through. Upon approval, the commission is deducted from the price and sent to the affiliate and the rest of the price, minus Clickbank’s fees, is sent to the vendor. The entire system is automated and the vendor has to do very little besides signing up and deciding a price and commission rate. Affiliate recruitment efforts are now underway in a highly automated fashion. The rest of the time may be spent looking for profitable joint venture partners.

There are more than 10,000 web businesses using Clickbank for its ease and effectiveness, which draws more affiliates than any other site of its kind. Clickbank works only with digital products, such as software and ebooks. These are items that are simple to sell online and don’t need a complicated shipping process.

And by using Clickbank to set up your joint ventures, potential partners know that with the automated system they will be paid their commission as agreed. This takes a great deal of the risk out of a joint venture enterprise and may help garner the trust of potential partners. The sheer number of affiliates and potential partners also means that there is a very good chance that some of them will have products similar to your niche item, no matter how specialized it may be. Make sure to find a partner with a very similar item to use their customer list to its full advantage.

One downside to the Clickbank affiliate system is that you do not personally choose your affiliates. Affiliates are free to sign up with products they want to promote, so your influence is minimal. But, vendors do choose their joint venture partners, which gives an element of control over the businesses that will be endorsing your product. Joint ventures tend to be slightly more personal deals, with more interaction between the vendor and the partner than a vendor with an affiliate.

With joint ventures, getting your product out in the virtual marketplace and in front of interested customers has never been easier. Affiliate networks and joint ventures have the potential to help your business earn a steadily growing income with much less effort on your part. Your affiliate recruiting process is now in large part on autopilot.

Jim Musselwhite is an internet marketer with a wide array of diverse, authoritative information sites including http://www.affiliatemanagementformula.com/ and http://www.youraffiliateteam.com/

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