Get Thousands Of People To Promote You

Do you sell a service? Do you sell a product? Do you have a sales force driving sales 24 hours a day for you? NO? Then let me ask you this…. Do you have a screw lose? My friend, you’re missing out on the most powerful marketing technique available to you today.  If you have never thought to start an affiliate program of your own, then listen up. You’re going to learn exactly how you can get one started today and have thousands of people driving thousands of visitors to your site every day.

When it comes to setting up an affiliate program, you have a couple of options available to you.

1.) Set one up in house
2.) Use a third party solution

I only have experience setting up successful affiliate programs using 3rd party solutions so I don’t think I should be giving any advice on running your own in house program. What I can tell you is why I never opted to run one in-house.

Reason 1:

I don’t want more on my plate. Why worry about tracking and paying out affiliates/partners when I can leave that work to someone else. Cutting checks, tracking, etc. is better left to someone else while I can focus on building relationships with my affiliate partners and marketing my business.

Reason #2

Affiliate partners trust smaller companies more when they work with reputable third party affiliate program networks. They are almost always guaranteed to get paid. There is no guarantee that an affiliate will get paid when they promote an offer that is run in house. Sad I know, but it happens. So by running a program using a trusted third party, you open the doors to recruiting some of the larger super affiliates.

Reason #3

Affiliate networks already have a large base of affiliates that you can tap into. When you run a program in house, you don’t get this advantage

Reason #4

I’m not a programmer, and I don’t want to play around with affiliate software. It’s so much easier to just plug in some code and be up and running in minutes.

Those are the main reasons why I chose to run my programs using a third party solution but don’t let that stop you from running your own in house program. The one big negative to running an affiliate program using a third party is that you don’t have full control. Your affiliates are tied in through the third party. Imagine if you ever waned to leave that solution to start one in house. It could be a big mission to convince every one of your partners to switch later.  Second negative is that the third party solutions take a nice % of the profits that you could be using to pay your affiliates more commission (and really motivating them). Either way, both options have there pros and cons and you should research which option suits your needs best.

So what does it take to run a successful affiliate program?

1.) A product or service that actually converts. You better be damn sure your product or service converts well. The last thing you want is to lose those good affiliate partners because you can’t convert visitors into sales. Once you lose your affiliate partner, good luck getting him to coming back. Even worse, he will usually share this info with his buddies and it won’t be long before word gets out that your offer just plain out sucks!

2.) High payout. Unless your offer converts like crazy at a low price point, you have to offer at least 40% and even as much as 60% commission.

3.) Long tracking periods. Don’t be a fool and only offer to track referrals for 30 days. Your affiliates put in the time and hard work to bring you those sales. At the very minimum, track those referrals for 90 days…and that’s the bare minimum.  I always have cookies set to never expire. This way my partners get paid their commissions even if the referral purchases 1 year down the road.

4.) No leakage. Your affiliate partners don’t want to send you traffic if you have adsense plastered on your site. They are not working their asses off to send you traffic so that you can send it somewhere else. Other ways you might leak traffic away without even realizing it is by having to many links to other websites or recommended resources.  Put a stop on the leakage.

5.) Proper tracking. If I’m promoting an offer, I want detailed up to date stats. Show me I’m making money with you, show me the stats. If I like what I see, I’ll promote you even harder.

6.) Build a relationship with your affiliate partners. Coach them, give them tools that will help them promote you.  Run a contest and reward your top affiliates.

7.) Tools, Tools & More Tools.  Provide your affiliates with tools to help them make more sales. Design high converting banners, sales letters that convert like crazy, articles they can use to email to their lists…etc. etc.  Help your affiliate partners make money and in turn they will make you money.

8.) Having  a 2 tiered program. This way your affiliate partners can earn commission on sales generated from affiliates they recruit into your program.

Third Party Affiliate Tracking Solutions

Next, you need to decide who you’re going to use as your third party affiliate program solution provider.  There are many choices available, but the two I have personally used and had great success with are…

ClickBank.com – They are actually a third party payment processor that have a built in affiliate program. A very popular solution with webmasters selling digital downloads. With a network of hundreds of thousands of affiliates promoting clickbank products, you should definitely check them out.

ShareAsale.com – Very reputable company, been around for years and really easy to implement with all the major payment processors. Highly Recommended and they also have thousands of affiliate who search their listing every day for products to promote.

If you have any experience using other providers, please leave a comment and share your experiences with us.

So how do you find and recruit affiliates?

Well for starters Einstein, put up an affiliate page on your site outlining all the benefits and details of  your offer.  Next I would turn to all your past customers. What better affiliate partners then those people who have already used your products or services? Moving on from there, here is a list of other ways I have successfully recruited partners

• PPC – bidding on keywords using ppc. Example: If you have a dating offer, then you would bid on terms like “Dating affiliate program”
• Affiliate Program Directories – Submit your affiliate program and get it listed in the top affiliate program directories.
• Webmaster forums – Most have a marketplace where you can advertise your offers
• Abestweb.com – Worth mentioning on its own. This top affiliate marketing forum has great advertising packages for you to announce your affiliate  program
• 2 Tier – If you listened to my advice, you will have set-up a 2 tier program. Encourage and reward affiliates who recruit others into your program
• Purchase Ads – Blog reviews are a great way to get some attention. Every webmaster forum and make money online blog is also where potential affiliate partners hang out.
• Track Them Down – Do some research and find out who’s promoting your competition. Contact these affiliates and make them an offer they can’t refuse.

And so there you have it. Everything you need to know about how to set-up your own successful affiliate program. Now get off your ass and take action. There are thousands of people just waiting for an offer like yours to promote.

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