How to Recruit Affiliates

Now that you know you want an affiliate program, you need to find affiliates. Finding affiliates is a combination of simply asking people and letting interested parties know about your program. In addition, you can encourage people to be an affiliate by offering excellent products, top-notch customer service, and a by offering generous commission.

• Direct Contact – Find competitors and others who market to your audience who do not offer exact products or services as you and approach them directly. Work first to build relationships with these people in online groups, via joint ventures, events, and more and you’ll be certain to get a percentage of these people to sign up for your affiliate program and promote your products and services.

• Customers – Your best affiliates can come from people who have purchased from you. Definitely, run an email series for your customers to encourage them to earn money by recommending your products to their friends and family. This is a great way to end up with a true fan as an affiliate.

• Colleagues – Even if you work from home, you are likely part of a group of like-minded individuals online and / or offline. Ensure that you let these people know that you have an affiliate program so that they can choose to join if they want to. You can also if you’ve used the right type of software, give special commission amounts to people you know.

• Movers & Shakers – You’ve seen them on Twitter, Facebook groups, and probably on numerous webinars and other places. These big earners shake things up. Work toward building a relationship with them, then make it super simple for them to promote by giving them a free copy, graphics, and more. Offer to set it all up for them so that all they have to do is collect the money when they make sales.

• Conferences – You can also meet potential affiliates at live events and conferences. Whether you’re a speaker or an attendee, you may meet people who need to offer your products to their audience. Make it worth their while to promote you, by also promoting them.

• Print Publications – You can place ads in relevant print publicans such as work at home magazines and other magazines devoted to people who are interested in this type of income opportunity.

• Social Media – If you join groups and friend people online, ensure that you also connect with potential affiliates. Take the time to get to know them. When it’s appropriate, let them know about your affiliate program. You can use social media also to talk about how excited you are about your affiliate program. The more enthusiastic you are about the program, the more they will want to join to earn money.

• Blogging – Use your blog part of the time, to speak to potential affiliates. Your blog provides your audience with solutions to their problems. But, once you have an affiliate program, you can also mention how you want to help as many people as possible and your readers can help by becoming an affiliate.

• Forums/Groups – Any groups you’re part of, online or offline, can be great places to find affiliates. The best thing to do is to build relationships with people you think would like and promote your products. Offer to do things for them, make your program so inviting that they can’t resist.

• Online Ads – Another way to attract affiliates is to advertise the program and its benefits. You can use Facebook, Twitter, or even Ad Words to market the program. This works very well, if you have a good product funnel, offer excellent commissions, and a wide range of products for your niche.

• Your Website – Don’t forget that your website is the hub of your business. Keep reminder info and an affiliate program link in a prominent place on your site. This can be short and link to further information about the program details.

• Word-of-Mouth – People like to talk, so if you do a good job taking care of your affiliates plus offering really great products then super affiliates will notice you and talk about you. Plus, when they start promoting your products, other people in their circle will notice and join too.

• Cold Calls – If you know people already that promote other people’s products and you’re sure that your product fits in with their niche, go ahead and drop them an email, or even get them on the phone. Be ready to explain what is so great about your product and how it benefits their audience. Plus, explain how you’re going to make it super easy for them to be part of your program.

• Hire an Affiliate Manager – Even if you’re just starting your program, hiring an affiliate manager can help you grow your affiliate program faster. Hire someone who is familiar with your niche, who has connections to promote to super affiliates and who understands the software you use.

• Directories – There are directories, such as affilitesseeking.com, where you can list your affiliate program. They do require a link back, but it’s free. More than likely, you won’t find as many affiliates this way since building relationships is very important. However, it does help direct potential affiliates to your opportunity.

• Affiliate Networks – Another great way to find affiliates is to list your products in affiliate networks such as Clickbank.com or JVZOO.com. Marketers who are looking for a product to promote often go there to search for products. Make sure you offer a great program, and a lucrative commission. Include tools to make promoting easy. These could articles, graphics, emails, etc.

Finding and recruiting affiliates is only part of starting an affiliate program. Now you need to make your affiliate offer worthy, appealing and timely. Plus, the more unique your offer is, the more affiliates you’ll recruit.

Making Affiliate Worthy Offers

If you really want to get the best affiliates then you need to make affiliate worthy offers. Make smart affiliates want to promote everything you have because they know that you provide a great product, good customer service, and amazing creatives for them to use to market your programs.

In order to attract the right affiliates, it’s important to share certain types of stats with them so that they know what to expect with your program. Keep in mind, you will not have any stats to show, but as time progresses, you will. As soon as you have this information, start sharing it.

Important Stats, Information & Figures to Share

Some statistics are more important to share than others. If you just consider what’s important to you about your affiliate program it’ll be easy to see what you need to share.

• Conversion Rate: They like to know how often a visitor to the sales page converts to a buyer.
• Commissions: They want to know how much they’ll make per product and whether or not there is potential to make more due to your deep funnel.
• Upsell: Let them know if you offer an upsell or not and what the commission is on that as well as the conversion rate for that too.
• Recurring Commissions: If any of your products offer
• Incentives: Let them know what type of enticements you offer for successful sales.
• Product Reviews: Do you allow affiliates to review your product free? Hint: Once you have stand out affiliates it’ll pay off to let them have a free copy.
• Visitor Value: Let them know the target market for the product and the value it offers.
• Training: While affiliates aren’t your employees and aren’t on your staff, you can still offer a lot of training to help them make more money promoting your products.
• Collateral: Ensure that you have plenty of professional graphics, copy, and information that enable your affiliates to promote your product.
• Program Description: Ensure that you’re very succinct and inclusive in the description for your program.

Anything you can let them know at a glance is important to share. You can offer more in-depth information as well but the information right up front should include what they need to know to figure out if your product is what they want to promote to their audience.