Table of Contents
Introduction to Affiliate Infantry..................................................................................... 4
Centralizing Your Affiliate Program.............................................................................. 5
Building an Affiliate Mailing List................................................................................... 7
Contests for Product Launches..................................................................................... 9
Monetary Rewards....................................................................................................... 9
Non-Monetary Rewards............................................................................................ 10
Ongoing Contests for Motivation................................................................................ 11
Ongoing Bonuses..................................................................................................... 12
Attracting Affiliates......................................................................................................... 13
Quality, In-Demand Products.................................................................................. 13
Great Sales Copy....................................................................................................... 13
Beautiful Graphics..................................................................................................... 14
Affiliate Tools.............................................................................................................. 14
Final Words..................................................................................................................... 17
Get More Help!................................................................................................................ 18
Introduction to Affiliate Infantry
Anyone who has their
own products needs affiliates to promote those products. Trying to do it all on
your own is never going to get you the same level of results you could get if
you have a significant number of active affiliates promoting your products.
Even if you were a
super affiliate with a massive email list of your own, you still couldn’t possibly
hope to have the same reach as you would with other people promoting you. There
is no one in existence who has the ability to reach every potential customer in
the world completely on their own. It simply isn’t possible!
This report will teach
you the basics of building a huge army of affiliates to promote your products,
and how to motivate them and keep them motivated so they will continue to
promote your products on a regular basis.
You’ll also learn powerful
strategies to stay in contact with affiliates and to extract from them their
best possible efforts time and time again.
Following these
strategies, you will be able to skyrocket your product sales more than you ever
thought possible, and you’ll be glad you took the time and effort to build your
own army of affiliate infantry men and women!
Centralizing Your Affiliate Program
One of the most
important things you can do is to centralize your affiliate programs into one
location. That means you should consolidate all of your products into one,
easy-to-use location so people can find and promote many different products
rather than just one.
Here’s an example:
If you visit the site and click the
“PRODUCTS” link, you will see there are multiple products to promote. They are
easily found in this one central location, which means people can more easily
promote several products, whereas if they had to visit several sites for
individual products they wouldn’t be as likely to promote more than one.
There are many
benefits to a centralized affiliate program, such as:
- Easier for affiliates to find products to promote
- Most affiliates prefer promoting multiple products from a single, trusted source
- Easier for affiliates to find promotional material
- Easier for you to stay in touch with affiliates about product launches
- Easier to run contests and promotions
These are just a few
reasons why it makes sense to centralize your affiliate program. There are
many, many more. It just makes sense every way you look at it.
You may think that
because you use an affiliate network like Clickbank to manage your affiliate
programs, you don’t need to worry about this. After all, Clickbank is a centralized affiliate
program, right?
Well, yes. But it’s
not your centralized
affiliate program. Clickbank has a huge
variety of products from a huge number of vendors. It’s easy for yours to
become lost in the shuffle.
So even if you are
using an affiliate network to manage your affiliate program, you can still set
up a domain and include all of your products in one location. You can even include
the affiliate links they need directly on your site so they don’t even have to
go to Clickbank or whatever affiliate network you’re using to get a link. A
simple script will allow them to input their username and it will automatically
update affiliate links for them, so all they have to do it copy and paste.
Building an Affiliate Mailing List
Most people have a
mailing list for customers/buyers, or at least they know they should. However,
one thing many people overlook is the necessity of building a mailing list of
affiliates.
Having a list of
affiliates who are ready and waiting to promote anything you launch is
extremely beneficial. It’s beneficial for them, as well, because everyone wants
to be in on pre-launch promotions. People are actually more likely to sign up
to an affiliate mailing list than to a general mailing list, because they truly
want to be informed of upcoming
launches.
If your products are
of great quality, and you provide great promotional material, you won’t have
trouble keeping affiliates interested. However, finding those affiliates in the
first place can be a little tricky.
Perhaps the best way
to locate affiliates is by hanging out where affiliates hang out. In the
internet marketing world, that happens to be the various internet marketing
forums for the most part.
Sites like:
It might be a little
harder if you’re in another field, but there are forums in most major niches,
and you can also find affiliates who promote niche markets on any internet
marketing forum.
Here are a few other
ways to locate affiliates:
- Visit Facebook pages in the niche and ask if there are any affiliates interested in promoting a product in that niche.
- Ask for referrals. Many people wouldn’t think of referring people to your affiliate program. It wouldn’t even cross their mind. But reminding your current affiliates to do so may bring in some new affiliates.
- Find popular blogs and websites in the niche and contact the owners. You can try to find their contact information through WHOIS, but if it is private or you get no response, leave a comment on their blog or look for a contact form.
- Advertise in industry magazines, especially trade magazines. Even brick-and-mortar business owners might be able to promote your affiliate program through something like redirecting a domain and giving out the URL on flyers in their place of business.
Once you have a
mailing list built, even if it is only a handful of people, be sure to email
them regularly. Don’t spam, but keep in touch every week or two in order to
remind them of you and encourage them to continue promoting you.
You can email them
with information about upcoming product launches, discounts, coupon codes they
can offer their customers, and even when you add new promotional material.
Contests for Product Launches
One way to greatly increase the results you see from
affiliates is to offer contests for every new product launch. This is almost
guaranteed to bring more affiliates on board, because everyone likes to be
recognized for their efforts.
Monetary Rewards
If you don’t have a lot of money to purchase prizes, you can
be creative with your contest. Instead of choosing specific prizes for “top
sellers”, which is very general, and could end up being only a couple of sales
if you don’t get any big affiliates, increase your specificity.
For example, instead of saying the top affiliate gets an
iPad, state it this way:
“Out of all affiliates who earn at least $3,000 in commissions,
a drawing will be held to win a brand new 64 GB iPad!”
This way, you’re guaranteed to be able to afford to purchase
the prize, because even if you only have one affiliate, if they don’t earn at
least $3,000 in commissions, they won’t qualify. (Depending on the prize,
commission percentage, etc. you will need to adjust the minimum commissions
required to qualify to be certain you can afford the prize, obviously.)
Now, this will discourage smaller affiliates, so you’ll also
want to include special promotions just for those people. One way to do that is
by offering a bonus for every so many sales. For example:
“For every 5 sales an affiliate makes, he will receive an
extra bonus commission.”
In other words, if an affiliate earns $10 per sale, whenever
he makes $50 in commissions, he will actually earn $60.
You might also offer smaller prizes that you could afford no
matter what, like small denomination gift cards from Amazon, Best Buy, etc.
Non-Monetary Rewards
These kinds of bonuses keep affiliates motivated, but don’t
forget that sometimes non-monetary rewards can be just as effective as monetary
ones. This is especially true for affiliates that already make good money.
Sometimes just seeing one’s name on a list of top affiliates
can give one a sense of accomplishment. It feels good to be recognized. It
feels even better to be appreciated.
Offering a few non-monetary incentives like a list of top
performers is another very good way to motivate affiliates, and it won’t cost
you anything other than a little time to create the list.
Ongoing Contests for Motivation
In addition to contests for product launches, you should
also consider holding ongoing contests that will keep affiliates motivated to
promote your products in between launches.
One problem many product owners experience is the
“temporary” nature of product launches. They experience a huge rush of sales in
the beginning, and then the rush slows quickly to a mere trickle, or even
nothing at all.
Fortunately, you can help turn your products into perpetual
cash machines by offering ongoing contests that are designed to keep affiliates
interested so they’ll continue promoting your products long after the initial
launch.
Contests could be monetary or non-monetary. They could be
based on the top affiliates, or on random affiliates. These types of contests
motivate two entirely different types of affiliates.
Those that reward the top affiliates will motivate super
affiliates, because they will feel confident of their ability to win. They will
also tend to be more competitive, because they won’t want to be outdone by
their competition. After all, they have a reputation to maintain. The last
thing they will want is to be the #5 seller and have their competitors outsell
them.
However, those types of contests may actually de-motivate
smaller affiliates. They may feel jealous, or like you don’t appreciate their
efforts. They may actually stop promoting you altogether. You may not care
about one sale here and there, but remember… those sales add up. If you have
100 small affiliates selling a copy or two each week, it can be a lot of money
over time.
In order to motivate smaller affiliates, be sure to hold
contests that will include them. For example, you could offer a $50 Amazon or
iTunes gift card each week or month to a random person who sends at least one
sale during that timeframe.
This will motivate people to keep promoting you, because
they will know that as long as they send even one sale, they will have the
chance to win a prize. Sometimes, just knowing you have a chance at something
is a huge motivator.
Ongoing Bonuses
Bonuses are also great as ongoing incentives. You can offer
perpetual bonuses for sales, and you can also offer cumulative bonuses.
For example, you can offer the bonus mentioned in the
previous chapter (such as 1 bonus commission for each 5 sales). That would be
the perpetual bonus. Then you can offer a yearly bonus for your top earners.
Like companies often give Christmas bonuses, you could give
your top affiliates a Christmas bonus, as well. You might give them 10% of
their total yearly sales as a bonus the first week of December.
However, you must either save 10% of your earnings all year
to ensure you can cover this bonus, or just don’t tell anyone you’ll be doing
it until it’s time to do it. Imagine how disastrous it would be for your
reputation if you promised this and couldn’t afford to deliver!
Attracting Affiliates
Attracting affiliates isn’t as difficult as it may seem. The
only reason most people seem to think it’s difficult to get affiliates is
because they aren’t providing the things affiliates are looking for.
Quality, In-Demand Products
Perhaps the single most critical element of running an
affiliate program is to provide quality products that are in high demand. It
doesn’t matter what else you do, or how much you’re paying, if your products
are low quality or are not in high demand, affiliates aren’t going to promote
them.
It may be tempting to create products in small niches with
less competition, and that’s fine for the occasional product. Just keep in mind
that if a product is not in very high demand, the likelihood of anyone having
traffic or a list to promote that product is slim.
Instead, stick mostly to products in very popular niches.
Competition doesn’t matter so much when you have a large number of super
affiliates promoting the product. And if you create a very high quality product
and follow the other tips in this chapter, you will!
Great Sales Copy
Another very important element of successfully finding
affiliates is to be sure your products have killer sales copy. If the copy on
your sales page isn’t up to snuff, affiliates can smell it a mile away and they
aren’t likely to promote the product.
Do yourself a favor and hire a good copywriter to create
your sales letter. If you can’t afford one, read some books on writing sales
copy and save up to hire one as soon as possible!
If you’re low on funds, it is recommended that you pay for
really great sales copy for one product and promote the heck out of it rather
than trying to create a bunch of products with poor to mediocre copy.
Beautiful Graphics
Beautiful graphics aren’t absolutely critical, but they
certainly help. People do judge a book by its cover, and they will judge a
website by its graphics, as well. It’s unfortunate, but it happens.
If you don’t want to pay to get great graphics, you may want
to use no graphics at all and just use a standard CSS or HTML template with
sales copy. Some people say this works better than fancy graphics, anyway,
because sometimes the graphics can detract from the actual sales letter.
Affiliate Tools
If you want to attract the best affiliates, then you need to
provide them with the best tools. Not only will this attract affiliates to
promote your products, but it will make it much easier for them to do so.
It is appalling that in today’s world, there are still
affiliate programs that don’t provide promotional materials. They give you an
affiliate link and then expect you to do everything else on your own. Shocking!
It’s important to provide a wide variety of tools to
affiliates, because affiliates promote products in many different ways. Some
use blogs or websites, some use email marketing, and still others have
additional methods.
Here are some ideas for types of promo material to offer:
- Banners – Banners are the most common type of promotional
material. They’re great for blogs, websites, ads inside apps, and other
similar uses. Make sure to provide both static and animated banners, and
provide them in all of the most common sizes.
Some common banner sizes include 468x60, 468x80, 728x90, 336x280, 300x250, 250x250, 160x600, 120x600, 120x240, 240x400, 234x60, 125x125, 120x60 and 88x31
- Articles – PLR articles are excellent promotional material.
Bloggers and website owners love them, and sometimes even email marketers
will use them as content.
- Reviews – Reviews are especially helpful, because they give
people a starting point of ideas for crafting their own. People are more
likely to buy something through a product review than just about any other
type of promotional material, so they can be incredibly powerful as an
affiliate tool.
- Emails – Emails are always in demand. One of the most
difficult things for most email marketers is figuring out what to say, especially
about a product they haven’t personally used. Emails give affiliates a
quick and easy way to promote your product.
- Videos – Video marketing is becoming increasingly popular, and it still doesn’t show any signs of slowing down. There’s no question that video is huge, so providing a few videos for marketers to use for this just makes sense. Be sure they aren’t solely promotional, or no one is likely to watch them. Make them interesting, funny, useful, informative, etc. The more interesting they are, the better they have a chance of going viral.
- Tweets – Twitter (and other social media outlets) are very
popular promotion methods, so providing a few short messages is very
beneficial to people who use social media for promotion. Remember to keep
them under 140 characters, which is the max length for Twitter. And keep
in mind that must also include the affiliate link! Thus, you might want to
aim for 60-90 characters to leave room for a (shortened) link.
- Reports – Reports are excellent for promotion. They can help
affiliates build their list while also promoting their affiliate links
directly within the reports.
- Autoresponders – Autoresponder messages in groups of 3, 5 or 7
are also excellent. They make superb companions to reports, because people
who opt-in to a list to receive a report about a topic like to see those
follow-up emails afterward. A multi-part course that lasts a few days is
one great format for autoresponders.
- Info Graphics – Info graphics are the newest rage. Pinterest has turned the info graphic into a cultural phenomenon.
As always, be sure your promotional materials are of the
highest possible quality. People aren’t going to give away 3-page reports, nor
are they going to use PLR articles full of grammatical errors or banners that look
like they were made with MS PAINT in 1998.
Final Words
Creating products is relatively simple. Setting up an
affiliate program is not particularly difficult. However, getting affiliates can
be tricky if you don’t already have an established name.
Using the tools outlined in this report, you should be well
on your way to creating your own army of affiliate soldiers to promote your
products time and time again. Remember to treat your affiliates well, and they
will keep coming back for more.
If you’re hesitant to try some of these things because you
are new or don’t have a reputation yet, just remember that every product owner
started somewhere. By building a list of affiliates who promote your products,
experience good service, and get good conversions, you will begin to build that
reputation, and the referrals that go along with it.
The sooner you get started, the sooner you will begin to
build that reputation, so don’t waste time. Most of these strategies don’t cost
anything, or require little or no money upfront.
So get started right away, and build your own affiliate army
now!
Get More Help!
If you’re looking for some great
products to promote, or just some really great ideas to make your own affiliate
program better, take a look at:
Are you an affiliate
looking for get better results for your efforts? Then check out the Affiliate
Survival Guide!
