How to Make Product Creators BEG You to Be Their Affiliate

When you’re an affiliate, in the beginning, you’re the one out there trying to scrounge up a good product to promote. You know you want certain things – like a sales page that converts, a good commission percentage, and low refund rates.

It’s usually the affiliate who is hoping to get accepted by the product creator as a viable candidate to promote their products – and in fact, sometimes you have to pass approval, even sharing your promotion strategies.

But you can turn the tables and become one of the affiliates who has to fend off offers where product creators are begging you to promote their products, providing you with generous perks along the way.

Carve Out Authority Figure Status in Your Niche

You’re not going to have product creators knocking down your door until you prove you have something to show for your efforts online. That means working on a plan to boost yourself as the go to person (or one of them) in your niche.

You don’t have to have your own products to achieve this legendary status. All you have to do is be committed to leading the target audience to the products they need.

Create frequent blog posts. This type of strategy shows that you are constantly at the forefront of the news in your niche. You want to keep your blog updated with fresh content on a regular basis.

This will help your site rank in Google and other search engines. When you rank for niche keywords, chances are you’re going to be ranking for the product review if you choose to review the seller’s product.

One powerful thing you can do is create a series when you conduct an affiliate review of an info product. Make it a multi-part series showing you analyze every bit of the product.

When sellers see you ranking for other people’s products, they’re going to put you on their list of hopeful affiliates. One other thing you have to do is have a specific slant or stance in your niche.

If you’re generic, then it may not be enough to help the seller find you. For example, if your blog is a broad topic like “relationships,” then you might have a harder time ranking than someone specifically going after the “Get Your Ex Back” niche.

Refuse to Censor Yourself in Reviews

You might be thinking you need to tiptoe carefully through your product reviews as an affiliate. After all, you wouldn’t want to risk offending a product creator, would you?

Of course you would!

Or at the very least, you shouldn’t be worried about it. The affiliates who do the best with conversions are those who have a fiercely loyal fan base of followers – because they don’t beat around the bush.

You don’t want to be one of those yaw-inducing affiliates whose reviews all sound the same. Those are the ones where the products all end up being worthy, and the only thing wrong with them is that you wished it kept going!

Phony promotions don’t get sellers onboard. They have a million of those. They don’t convert well and to be honest, it doesn’t make the seller fear you. It sounds wrong, but you want them to be on eggshells with you to some degree.

You never want to take it too far by doing anything unethical like leveraging the power of your site to threaten a seller with a bad review. But you can be okay with people wanting to pamper you because they know you don’t mess around.

It’s not all like this. The people who will be after you as an affiliate are confident in their offers. You won’t have people contacting you who know they’re selling rubbish because they’ll know your reviews will slay them if they bring you onboard.

This works in your favor because you don’t want people with shoddy products contacting you to get you to be an affiliate. You want good conversions because you’re an affiliate, so this honest approach helps you weed out people with poor products.

Because you’re someone who doesn’t pull the wool over peoples’ eyes, it means your endorsement will be MORE valuable to the seller if their product lives up to its hype and get a thumbs up from you.

While you want to stay unafraid of sharing what’s bad about a product, you don’t want to force negative things into your review just to make it look more authentic, either.

Just give your true thoughts about what you’re seeing unfold and it will cause many product owners to forth at the mouth for a review to see how their product stacks up with you.

Create a Feeding Frenzy With Your List Building Efforts

The larger your list grows, the more sellers you’ll attract who start begging you to take a look at their product. You can be vocal about how big your list is, but volume isn’t all that matters.

You can promote the fact that your conversion rates are higher than your competition. If you have competitors who have the standard 3-6{495e61a8be0728ba5e4172c16a68a1b05f8df91b32cf783b0a6ac5a97f0ba813} conversion rate, and yours is at 20-30{495e61a8be0728ba5e4172c16a68a1b05f8df91b32cf783b0a6ac5a97f0ba813}, that’s worth bragging about.

The higher your conversion rate, the less it will matter about the numbers game when it comes to sellers wanting you onboard to promote their products. But of course the more people you can convert, the better.

Make sure that sellers see you making an effort to build your list. Have opt in forms everywhere. Below each blog post, you should have an opt in form. Position it on a squeeze page, and send out viral reports with a link back to your website where you’re delivering very helpful information to prove how valuable and worthy your advice is.

Have a Facebook Fan page and a Twitter account that show how many people follow you. Don’t worry if it starts out small – it has to start somewhere, and it will grow over time.

You want to work the social networking sites feverishly, too. Being visible online in forums, on Twitter, on Facebook, and on Google Plus can help you dominate over other affiliates.

Having a list isn’t all that you need to do. You have to build a great relationship with those subscribers. Email regularly. Part of the reason why you want to connect with your followers is that they will spread word of mouth that you’re the person to listen to when it comes to product advice.

Treat your list like gold – never abuse the fact that they’re signed up with you. If you promote anything and everything, then your word will mean nothing to them and product sellers want that exclusivity you have to offer.

Top Super Affiliates don’t promote everything – they’re picky and rarely have room on their schedule to add random promotions into the mix. You want your list to be like the VIP room in a club – and you have a velvet rope of demands they need to meet before they can become part of your clique.

Be Shameless in Getting Increased Commissions

Commissions are one area where the product seller has a bit of leeway in attracting you. Aside from creating a good product that will help you convert, he or she can up the ante when it comes to what they’re willing to pay you per sale.

Some sellers are very cheap with their commissions. They might offer under 50{495e61a8be0728ba5e4172c16a68a1b05f8df91b32cf783b0a6ac5a97f0ba813}. This isn’t something you should even consider as an affiliate. The minute you start promoting for peanuts, you’ll lose the leverage you have.

Ideally, you want sellers to come to you offering an enormous increase. Instead of 50{495e61a8be0728ba5e4172c16a68a1b05f8df91b32cf783b0a6ac5a97f0ba813}, many of them will raise the commission to 75{495e61a8be0728ba5e4172c16a68a1b05f8df91b32cf783b0a6ac5a97f0ba813} – or in some incredible cases, 100{495e61a8be0728ba5e4172c16a68a1b05f8df91b32cf783b0a6ac5a97f0ba813} of the sale!

Why would they do this? Increased commission of 75{495e61a8be0728ba5e4172c16a68a1b05f8df91b32cf783b0a6ac5a97f0ba813} works well when they want to make a profit and they know that you have a large, loyal list to promote it to.

The 100{495e61a8be0728ba5e4172c16a68a1b05f8df91b32cf783b0a6ac5a97f0ba813} commission is usually something that other marketers offer affiliates when they’re looking to build their own list. With you getting 100{495e61a8be0728ba5e4172c16a68a1b05f8df91b32cf783b0a6ac5a97f0ba813}, you are more likely to promote the offer – and they get to capture the names and emails of your subscribers whenever a sale is made.

Sometimes sellers will simply send you an email asking you to promote their product. As you gain a reputation for being a top affiliate, you can ask them what commission rate they’re offering.

If they come back with anything less than what you want, you can politely inform them that you have a packed schedule and that you don’t review products for under 75{495e61a8be0728ba5e4172c16a68a1b05f8df91b32cf783b0a6ac5a97f0ba813} (or whatever number you’re shooting for).

Because this is a digital product, and any sales are better than fewer sales, the product owner will likely meet your demands and give you a bump up in commission.

Don’t underestimate the power of behind the scenes talk, too. You will have other marketers coming to you knowing that they’ll have to offer a higher commission rate – because people talk behind the scenes and they’ll know your reputation for getting higher payouts.

Higher commissions aren’t something you want to openly brag about to the public. That can cause bad feelings among the seller’s affiliates who aren’t getting as much. Instead, let this be a discussion between you and each individual seller.

Trump the Competition With Perks Other Affiliates Don’t Get

You know how rock stars have a concert rider that spells out what they want specifically done for them? Van Halen wanted a bowl of M&Ms – with all of the brown ones removed.

You might not get quite so picky, but when you start demanding certain things, it elevates you to rockstar status in the affiliate marketing world. And that’s what you want.

Get advanced release links when you consider promoting for people. Usually, product sellers will contact you before the launch of their product. They’re trying to get you onboard early.

Let them know that you’d appreciate a jump on the competition. Have them allow you to pre-launch to your list a week ahead of your competition. Most sellers will allow this – or at the very least, they’ll have a small ground of affiliates who get this perk compared to the general public.

Get specialized sales copy just for you. This is a very common thing that’s done for special affiliates. You want the sales copy to convert for your audience. Nobody knows your readers better than you do.

If the sales copy isn’t what you want, ask the seller to put up a special page separately so you can send your list to it. Sometimes, they’ll personalize it for “friends of (your name)” so it looks like an offer that was put together just for your subscribers.

You know whether your customers prefer video or text sales copy, for example. If the seller has a 45 minute sales video with no pause button, and you know your subscribers will hate that, ask them to set up a sales page with copy. They can even give your customers an option.

Or maybe you want the tone of the sales copy changed. Maybe it’s too hyped up – or not enough! You can ask for them to tweak it – or if you want to – tweak it yourself and have them upload the file.

Get additional graphics packs for promotions. If you use banner ads on your blog or site, or if you don’t like the look of the ones they’re using – you can ask them to create some that work better for you. Maybe they are colored to match your site, for example, or you want the animation removed.

Have the sellers meet your needs and don’t be afraid to begin formulating a certain level of service you expect from the sellers if they hope to have you brought on as an affiliate.