How To Design An Affiliate Program That Attracts Hordes Of Affiliates

Building a web site is an important first step to having an online presence. But after that the real work starts in terms of promoting it. It’s a huge job in the vastness that is the Internet. You need some help. Get yourself a ton of affiliates and incentivize them to drive sales and traffic your way. There are many 3rd party affiliate management programs available that make it easy to set up a program. If you look around you will see that all of your competitors are using this valuable channel so you need to, too!

What motivates good partners? The most critical thing is they want to promote a product or service that sells. Why would they send you traffic if you can’t convert it into sales commissions for them? In addition to converting well, they’ll want a good size commission on each sale. It’s not worth their time if they’re only making a few pennies on each sale. Be generous. Their success is your success. They will need many different banners to promote your products. Give them dozens of banners in different sizes. And once they’ve produced some sales commissions be sure you pay them quickly. Pick a schedule and stick to it. Regular checks (even if tiny) make for satisfied partners. Delays in payment make for unhappy (read: no longer with you) affiliates. Keep them happy and they will keep you happy.

It’s possible to add a little multi-level marketing to your affiliate program by making it multi-tier. This gives your partners incentive to recruit additional partners under them. And then the referring partner gets a percent of whatever the partners they sign up for you get. For example, if affiliate Bob signs up affiliate John for your program then not only will John earn fees for business he brings you but Bob will get a % of what John earns. You can pay John in many ways: for each sale, for each lead, or a % of whatever the customers he brings you spend. It may sound like a lot to manage but it’s really easy with modern software. Use something like ShareASale or LinkShare and they handle all of the partner codes, affiliate sign up, and payments. Couldn’t be easier.

Be sure and treat your partners well. They are real people with spouses. Communicate with them via emails, pay them on time, and give them solid creatives (banners, text ads) they can use to sell your products. Make their job as easy as possible and pay them well — they will then go the extra mile to promote your product for you.

Using affiliates and an affiliate network to boost your sales online is standard practice these days. If you don’t do it then you are at a competitive disadvantage. It is the perfect use of the Internet: Get hundreds of people to promote your products and then have a standard way to reward them for that behavior. Affiliates should be a must-have part of any Internet marketing program.

Born To Sell’s affiliate program offers a product related to investing with stock options. To sign up for free, please take a look at the web site Born To Sell.