How to attract affiliates

One of the biggest fears new Affiliate managers have is in finding new affiliates. This fear is a obstacle that stops many webmasters from getting started with internet affiliate marketing. Interestingly, with a proper marketing strategy, getting affiliates may not be very hard. Given below are some tips that may help in attracting new affiliates.

Find complementary sites

Complementary sites are a sites that sell products or services that compliment your offerings. If you sell gardening tools, a site that sells books on gardening tips will be a perfect affiliate. If you sell software, try looking for sites that sell computers or computer parts. Finding sites that already attract your target audience, and can take advantage of recommending your product or service to their visitors, is the goal.

Find content sites

There are many sites that don’t sell any type of product or service but are mainly content-oriented sites. Such sites promote an idea, concept, study or belief. Content sites that are utilized as a resource for your target market are ideal affiliates.

Finally, there are many sites on the Internet dedicated to listing affiliate Programs. Get your program listed in these directories.

Classifying Affiliates for better management

The hardest part of administrating an Affiliate Program is deciding what your affiliates need to help make the sale. But, by carefully categorizing your affiliates, you can easily know what their needs are and the way to accurately meet them. The master plan given below helps in categorizing affiliates in order to handle your affiliate program better.

The First Step would be to pick at least three kinds of affiliates. Take a look at your affiliates and try to determine one outstanding characteristic that can easily be compared across the board and choose a minimum of three kinds of the characteristic. Here are some examples:

• Degree of Sales – You might find that your affiliates are so different that it’s difficult to find something to classify them by. Try classifying them by the level of sales they’ve reached along with you. You will probably find that you have a few forerunners that lead the pack with a quantity of sales, a number of affiliates that have sporadically designed a sale or two and some that have yet to make sales. This can help you classify them based on sales.
• Products – If you sell a multitude of products for specific interests/needs you might be in a position to classify your affiliates by product. For example, an economic site could classify types like Personal Finance, Small Business Finance, and Corporate Finance.
• Industry – If you market commodities like office supplies, beauty and health products, house-wares and so forth, you may find that your affiliates come from a wide variety of industries. You can most likely classify your affiliates based on their industry.

The Second Step is to determine the needs of each type. Each of your affiliate types may have different needs; a few of their needs will overlap, however, you should find a distinct difference in a lot of their needs. If you find that them all have a similar needs, go back to step one and re-think your types.

Here are a few basic things to look for:

Linking Methods – Various kinds of affiliates will need different linking methods. Let’s make use of the example above where we’d different groups based on sales. Your low sales group may be satisfied with a banner or two to place on their site. Your medium sales type may be interested in an article or two for additional content on their site. Your huge sales group will probably pass up banners for articles, guestbooks, email ads and signature files.

Capturing visitors is what you want. In order to do so you need to know what they want. Visit your affiliates’ sites to see what readers are taking a look at looking for. Think about, How does my product relate to things i am seeing?

Different types of affiliates may expect different commissions. You will have some [[Affiliates]] that have joined your program on the side and others that plan on earning a considerable income from the program. Determine what effort they’re putting into advertising, how much other programs in your industry are paying, and the amount of time they dedicate to your program.

The Third Step involves the process of creating and compiling linking means of each number of affiliates. Based on the needs you identified in Step two, create and compile linking methods for each type. Here are a few linking methods to consider.

• Banners – Though they aren’t as effective as other linking methods, banners are still widely used and expected. Make banners in a variety of sizes to suit tops of pages, bottoms, toolbars, sidebars along with other miscellaneous areas.
• Articles – They are great for affiliates that need content for his or her websites and newsletters. Make sure that your articles are articles and never ads.
• Email Ads – Your active affiliates may be interested in placing ads in e-zines or their own newsletters. Try writing several ads in different lengths.
• Signature Files – Dedicated affiliates might even add your tag to their signature line. Give them several witty lines to select from.
• Guestbooks – Let your affiliates help you build your Opt-In mailing lists with guest books. Offer them a commission for each email address they give you, or each resulting sale in the subscribers they give you.
• Product Images – Give your affiliates images that show and link directly to specific products. They will be able to choose a picture specific to their site, or choose several images to display.

Review each affiliate

Type and match them up with your new linking methods. You may have some linking methods that overlap. This is okay. Just be sure you are concentrating on the affiliates’ needs.

The Fourth Step is to decide commission levels. Your first decision is to determine whether you want to pay a set rate or percentage of each sale. Based on the needs you identified above for each from the affiliate types, decide on a commission amount for each Type. If you have a two-tier program, think about the possibility of different second tier rates as well.

The Fifth Step would be to devise promotions on affiliate groups. Once you’ve your affiliates properly categorized and your system under control, consider developing promotions for your affiliate groups. Provide them with special incentives to sell more throughout a certain time frame, move seasonal products, or increase business during your slow months. Offer them additional commissions, as well as bonuses for reaching a particular quantity of sales.