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Recruiting and
Motivating
Most companies make a huge mistake
when they launch their affiliate programs. They may hire brilliant
copywriters and the best attorneys, they might contract with affiliate
networks to manage their programs and then they just let the program
swim or sink with the affiliates.
There are thousands of affiliate
programs out there. You do the math - is your program good enough
to sell all by itself? Or will you be willing to put ongoing time
and effort into finding, recruiting, motivating and managing your
affiliates?
There are several ways to sign
affiliates. Your company can become the client of an affiliate
network. This will allow your program to be introduced to their
affiliates. Here are some affiliate networks:
You can list your program with
affiliate directories. Here's where to find some of them:
My favorite way to recruit affiliates,
though, is very labor intensive. Think about all of the ways you
would look for your products. List the keywords. Then go to the
top search engines and use those keywords. Anyone who is not a
direct competitor of yours is a potential affiliate. And you already
know that they rank well in the search engines and should get
a lot of traffic. Recruit them directly.
You can also check for the links
to sites that you would find interesting for your clients. One
of the best ways to do that is by going to Altavista ( http://www.altavista.com/
) and type in the search space "link:" followed by the
domain whose links you'd like to see. It'll give you a listing
of which sites link into the site you're examining.
Suppose you determine weather.com
is a good target. In the AltaVista search bar, type "link:weather.com."
The result is a listing of hundreds of sites that link to weather.com.
A bit of surfing and you can quickly compile a list of sites to
email about joining your wind and rain program.
Of course, you'll need to decide
what you'll pay your affiliates and how often you'll pay them.
There are other ways to motivate them. The best is personal contact.
Get in touch with them, show interest in their sites. Provide
them with training, perhaps offer them content for their sites
as well. Look at contests to reward them.
Now that you've got your affiliates,
you need to develop a regular routine to take care of them. The
first step is to regularly review your site statistics. Where
are your visitors coming from? Where are your purchasers coming
from? Look at the affiliates who send you the highest quality
referrals and examine their sites. Talk with them, see if they
have any insights on what would help them earn more commissions
(and would sell more product for you!) Set up an ongoing email
program to stay in touch with them and to share information on
what works for your other top affiliates. Continue to recruit
new affiliates regularly. Check your directory listings once a
month, keep them updated and accurate and add to new programs.
Do not leave your offerings static. Experiment with them. If you
have a number of affiliate sites, you can experiment with special
offerings and see what works best, continually improving your
response - and their earnings.
-Cindy
Nemeth-Johannes
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