After learning of the success many online businesses have had
increasing their sales with an affiliate program, you decided to
follow suit. You hammered out a compensation plan both
encouraging to affiliates and profitable to your business.
You’ve got tracking software in place. You’ve turned the key in
the ignition of your marketing machine… and nothing’s happening.
Your army of affiliates can be viewed metaphorically as a tree.
Full grown, it will thrive in rain and sunshine. Strong changing
winds can shake its branches, but the tree will continue to
grow. In the early seed stage, however, special care is needed
if you want your tree to break through the surface.
You spent a great deal of time, energy, and likely at least a
little money creating your affiliate program. You need to
attract strong affiliates that can rapidly build your customer
base and return your investment. How can you bring these
powerful marketing dynamos into your camp, ideally without
drawing on your already diminished cash reserves?
1.) Submit to Online Directories The method that will show the
most immediate increase in new affiliates is listing your
program in online affiliate directories. These reference sites
are the first stop for hungry potential affiliates looking for
the income opportunity that is going to allow them to quit their
9 to 5 jobs. Many such directories exist, and obviously some
will bring you better results than others. Since submitting to
almost all of these directories is free, though, get listed on
as many as you can. Here are a few links to submission pages to
get you started, but by no means should you stop with just these
few:
http://www.becomeanaffiliate.com/cgi-bin/add.cgi
http://www.affiliatesoftware.info/joinaffiliatedirectory.php
http://www.affiliatescreen.com/suggest_program.php
http://www.affiliatematch.com/cgi-bin/links/add.cgi
http://www.2-tier.com/cgi-bin/add_url.cgi
http://www.affiliatesdirectory.com/links/add.cgi
http://www.earnfind.com/addprogram-howto.php2.) Advertise in Your Own Newsletter Hopefully you’ve been
collecting email addresses from your website and sending a
regular newsletter to your visitors. (If not, read this article:
http://www.zeromillion.com/ebiz/creating-an-email-newsletter.html
) Your newsletter subscribers are a precious handful of people
that have expressed direct interest in keeping abreast of the
latest developments with your product/service and company. Give
them what they want! You can kick off your affiliate program
with an article in your newsletter explaining the benefits and
encouraging your subscribers to participate. Your future
newsletters can contain short blurbs about the affiliate program
and how it’s progressing to inform new subscribers and remind
your original readers.
3.) Post to Affiliate Forums and Newsgroups Approach this method
with caution. No one will be impressed if you post a blatant
advertisement or a plea to join your affiliate program. If you
find a forum that contains such messages, don’t even bother
making a post there. The forum probably isn’t moderated, and
almost certainly isn’t read by many people. The place to include
information about your website and program is in your profile
(and in your signature line if other posters do so). A serious
forum, read by the type of people you want to have as
affiliates, will only contain posts with relevant and useful
content instead of advertising fluff messages.
How can you add relevant and useful content? The first step is
to read some of the existing posts and get a feel for the
general personality of the forum. At best, reading old posts
will spark questions that can be turned into relevant posts and
generate interested responses. At worst, you’ll see what’s been
talked about recently, so you don’t make the awkward mistake of
asking a question that was answered a few days ago.
If no topics come to mind after reading old posts, a possible
strategy is to ask for the advice of some experienced affiliates
in how you could improve your program. You’ll find different
ideas on what constitutes a solid compensation plan, tracking
system, or incentive program. Beyond getting attention for your
program, this is a great opportunity to improve your program by
picking the brains of people who’ve been in the game longer than
you.
This list is obviously not comprehensive, but it contains a few
forums worth investigating:
http://www.ablake.net/forum/
http://iwiz2.richdad.com/jive/application2/forum.jsp?forum=33
http://www.affiliatesdirectory.com/forum/gforum.cgi?forum=7
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