Affiliates are a source of traffic that is often forgotten about by most marketers. They see affiliates as people who sell their products and forget they are people who also send you traffic.
Affiliates can be an excellent source of traffic, with some marketers getting 75% or more of their traffic from affiliates.
In order to attract affiliates, you need to:
Pay a good commission
There are a lot of products out there demanding an affiliate attention. If you are paying a pittance as a commission then you will struggle to attract any good affiliates to promote your product.
The minimum you must offer is $10, and if you can offer more, then that is even better.
If your product is under $10 then you are going to struggle to offer a percentage of commission and attract good affiliates. In these situations, you are going to need to look at paying 100% commission and possibly even a commission on any one time offers.
The more you offer as a commission, the more motivated your affiliates will be. Think about it; what would you work harder to promote, a product that earns you $7 per sale or a product that earns you $50 per sale?
The latter, of course, but do not think that low value products are useless – they have a very good place in the market and used wisely can be a good source of income.
Provide resources
Affiliates have a lot of programs to choose from. Programs that offer pre-written emails, adverts, advertising banners, viral products and so on are going to attract many more affiliates than those that offer nothing.
The easier you make it to promote your product by providing affiliate resources, then the easier you make it for your affiliates to sell your products for you.
As a minimum you want to provide a half dozen or so graphic banners / adverts of various sizes, some promotional emails, and some Adwords adverts. If you can provide more resources, then you are going to help your affiliates even more.
Produce a product that sells
If your sales letter is not converting, then affiliates will not want to promote your product. If they do pick it up and start promoting it, they will drop it quickly when they realise that it isn’t selling.
It is up to you, as the product owner, to ensure that you have the best converting sales letter you can. If you can, advertise the conversion rate to your affiliates so they know what to expect.
Pay frequently
There was an affiliate program I joined and promoted the product that was great – it was a fantastic product and really worked, but … they only paid affiliate commissions 90 days after the sale was made!
Who wants to wait 90 days to get their money?
Would you be happy if your job paid you 90 days after you did the work?
Of course you wouldn’t. This is why instant commission promotions are very popular at the moment – there is no waiting to get paid.
Make sure your affiliates are paid frequently. Make it a minimum of monthly, ideally weekly, though if you can offer instant commissions then you will do even better.
Interact with your affiliates
Your affiliates should be treated like gold dust – the good ones can make you a fortune without you ever lifting a finger to generate traffic! If you can be at the forefront of their minds then they are always going to remember to promote your products.
This means you need to communicate with them regularly. Have regular training sessions or send out a regular newsletter to your affiliates. Give them notice of new products, get their input or even allow them to promote your products before they go live to the public to give them a real special advantage.
Communication is the key and if you can communicate with your affiliates and keep yourself in their mind then they will work harder to promote your products for you.
These are some of the best ways to work with your affiliates in order to get them to send you traffic. Done well, affiliates could count for 75% or more of your traffic. It’s worth spending your time to get this part right.