I know I’ve covered some really deep information over the past few days, it’s because it really is as important as I keep saying. In fact, in case I still haven’t managed to convince you, I want to finish with one more example of a high ticket item. Let’s say you’ve created a guide, on a subject you find interesting, and sold it for $1000 including audio, video, consultations, and DVDs. You make fifteen sales from joint ventures yourself in the first month, and make $15,000. Now with 150 affiliates, just ten percent of them making two sales each at 50% commissions. You’ve just netted yourself an extra… I’ll let you do the math on that one so it really sinks in how powerful this is and gets the juices flowing.

Alright, before we move off the subject of affiliates, I just want to re-iterate. Affiliate growth is exponential. It’s slow at the start, and gets faster, depending on your joint ventures, list size and the number of affiliates you have. Every product, every single piece of software or information you release relating to your business should have this in mind.

Don’t worry if when you first start building affiliates they don’t quite make you as much as you hoped. This is totally normal. What you’ll find is, in every twenty, thirty, fifty, or even 100 affiliates, there are a couple of real gems there that make you (and them) a whole lot of cash. Take it from me, take your affiliate building as seriously as everyone’s been telling us to take our list building and direct sales recently, and you’ll see some amazing results.

Summary

● Ok, we’ve had a look previously at some of the statistic based aspects of selecting percentages and commission levels for your affiliate system. You should already have a good idea of what works and what doesn’t allowing you to select the right numbers for your business.

● Let’s move on now from percentages and look at some important ways to get your affiliates promoting, and keep them promoting while touching on some of the biggest mistakes people make when setting up and managing their affiliates from the start. Lets finish creating a solid foundation for your business.

● First and foremost, something that also applies to list building, something that many marketers do for one reason or another, that’s starting again, but this time instead of straight up deleting important resources, they’re doing something even worse.

● Here’s what you’ll see from a lot of marketers out there. They create a product, gather their resources including affiliates, and when they’re done and move on to their next product they don’t take their affiliates with them.

● Why not? They worked hard to get them, they’re just as important as any other resources, if not more important, yet they’re throwing them away. Even if your affiliate system doesn’t support multiple products and multiple domains, it’s a simple case of exporting and importing, and firing out a special higher commission for people who have promoted for you before. There are no excuses for not utilizing this powerful tool, after all, we’ve already talked about how the hardest and most expensive part of marketing is getting new customers, new affiliates, and new subscribers. Don’t throw them away when you begin to get them. You earned these resources, you deserve to keep them, and keep making money from them, as they make money from your products too.

● Next up, lets move onto a fundamental of business, not just for affiliate programs. That’s give your customers a path to follow, and a call to action. I’ve seen sites that have great sales letters, or great products and at the end of it, when I come to order there’s just a dead end. No order link, nothing, and I have on several occasions had to search for the order link, even from well known sites that reach millions every day. Who knows how many sales they’re losing by cutting off the customer’s path and their flow.

● To begin this flow of affiliates, you need to link to your affiliate program on every page of your site, and when this link is clicked, there should be a sales letter there, not just a signup form. Shorter than the product sales letter, it’s still there to persuade people and sell yourself and your products. Without this, you’re selling yourself short.

● After this, and most importantly, a call to action. Don’t just give them a form, or worse still, leave them with a dead end. Place your signup form or link to signup after a call to action to do so. Don’t let people have to search for anything. Remember what we said heavy hitting affiliates like? Straight in, blast ad, straight out, earn money. It’s a simple as that, and the easier and more flowing you make your affiliate signup process, the more affiliates you’re going to see signing up.

● Here’s an example for you, I go to signup for an affiliate program, and they have this great sales page that tells me how much I’m going to earn per sale, a really nice bonus scheme for top affiliates etc, and I got to the bottom of the page, and guess what I found? Well, not much actually. They sold me on this affiliate program, but the page just ended. No click here to sign up, no nothing. Ever seen a site like that? Whether it’s affiliate programs or sales letters? If you haven’t, you can bet you’ll start to notice them now.

● This is something that loses marketers literally wads of cash, if you remember back to the difference to your income just fifteen affiliates can make, and you should be able to see how devastating mistakes like this are. Worst of all, they probably don’t even know they’re doing it. If you want the potential customer or resource to do something, you have to point them to it, giving them a gentle shove in the right direction.

● If I click on your ‘Affiliates’ button on your website, I don’t want to be presented with a form that asks for my details. I see this all too often. Write a mini sales letter that explains some things to the potential affiliate. Information you must include can be as basic as how much they’ll earn on how many levels, and for how long, and any bonuses they may get for a particular amount of sales in any given time, and of course, how often you pay out. This is what’s going to get me (as a an affiliate of yours) promoting for you.

● Another tip, something to do for your own benefit and the affiliates benefit. You’d be surprised at how powerful a signup page for an affiliate system becomes when you’ve proven the product they’re promoting is quality, and that the sales letter selling it has been tried and proven.

● I’d be happy about an affiliate program that pays me $500 per sale, but I’d be even happier with an affiliate program that pays me $500 per sale, when the sales letter has been proven to have a specific click through to sales ratio. It’s just like your sales letter writing. Eliminate risk, and build confidence in your product, only this time around, your affiliate program is your product. Never forget you’re always selling, this is no different to writing a sales letter for your products.

● On a similar note, of course we’re going to need a terms and conditions section in there. Don’t hide anything in it. Tell the affiliates the whole story on your sales letter, everything from when payday is to how much they’ll earn and how many sales they need to make to get to a certain level of commissions. Keep the terms and conditions for legal stuff, like pointing out you can’t guarantee any earnings and you’re not responsible for them if they give their details out and the like. You’re giving out all the info you can on your sales letter for the affiliate program for the sake of the affiliates not having to search for important information, the time in which between reading, signing up and promoting, the time where they’re most likely to be distracted and leave you without their profitable promotion.

● Sharing so much information straight up alone can make you tens of thousands in affiliate sales that you wouldn’t have normally received.

● So, we have our affiliates, we’ve given the relevant information already, we’ve got them to sign up, so what’s next? Getting them promoting, and keeping them promoting is what we need to get sorted.

● There are generally two type of affiliates, the ones that know how to sell and are going to make you money and the ones who don’t know how to sell and aren’t going to make you money. It sounds harsh, but that pretty much sums it up. Keep this in mind when looking at your affiliate stats. Just because they have ten thousand hits to their affiliate link, doesn’t mean they know how to promote, that could have easily come from guaranteed hits and you’ll be getting downhearted about nothing, when it’s actually the quality of their traffic at fault.

● To solve the problem of those signing up who don’t know how to promote yet or don’t have the resources is not an easy job, in fact, the only thing you can do to get them to make sales is educate them. Either by producing your own mini-guide or searching for an affiliate promotion guide with re-sell/give away rights, which is always a good investment to make.

● This can take a long time, however, and you won’t see results straight away. It all depends on their willingness to learn. You should direct 99% of your attention to those who already know how to promote, and make sure they keep promoting and getting a good deal for both parties over multiple products. That’s the only way that you’ll be able to run a successful affiliate base.

● Here are some ideas that we put into action and have already tested. First and foremost are bonuses for affiliates. What do you think of when I say bonuses for affiliates? Well you wouldn’t be wrong if you have several ideas because there’s a lot of leeway here. Our aim is to get them selling and keep them selling resulting in huge profits for you, the way to do this is to make it in their best interests to promote your stuff.

● How about seasonal bonuses, an extra percentage push a few months before Christmas? Look at it like this, we all want more money at Christmas to buy our loved ones those extra special presents or whisk them away for a weekend, and your affiliates want the same, so give them a reason to earn their money from your products.

● Bigger bonuses for the whole month, bigger bonuses for top performing affiliates for example. In fact this was one of the things that filled my original site with members.

● I offered the first affiliate to reach 50 sales a $750 bonus on top of their monthly earnings, and everyone went for it. I had all sorts of traffic coming in from all over the place. Now be careful with this. Don’t go offering $5000 at the end of the month to your top affiliate if you’ve never tested this before. What we don’t want to happen is you having to pay 5k out to your top affiliate who was the only one to make any sales. Go about this in a smart way, and set a hard target on the number of sales or amount of earnings needed from an affiliate to earn the additional winnings. This way at least you know how much you’ll be making with a particular amount of sales and won’t make any big losses or any losses at all.

● Now I know this might seem a little bit of extra work, and depending on your affiliate software, it can indeed be a hassle, however, trust me when I say it’s worth it. It’s not the difference between making an extra sale here, it’s the difference between getting affiliates promoting who otherwise wouldn’t, or have stopped and moved on resulting in who knows how many sales. Five, ten, a hundred, thousands, even tens of thousands of dollars are at your disposal. Let’s make sure we use this.

● Quick start bonuses also work real well. First it provides a viable option for your affiliates if your site has a low price (for example, a $27 membership site may offer 100% for the first one or two months in commissions before moving onto the regular two level 50/15 commissions). Who wouldn’t join an affiliate program that offers 100% commissions? That’s one heck of a powerful thing to be able to say about your affiliate program.

● Second, it actually gets people promoting. It’s amazing sometimes how hard it is to get people to do things. You know how you try your best to get someone to do something or do a job well, and in the end you end up saying something like ‘Ah I’ll just do it myself’. Well this is the job of quick start bonuses on a deeper level. If you’re attracting affiliates that generally don’t promote very often or haven’t promoted before, then this is another reason for them to choose you.

● The next tip. Send congratulatory e-mails. Your software should do this for you as standard and it’s one heck of a motivator. Pack in quick and easy links to the affiliate system and your ads. It never gets old seeing ‘You’ve got Cash!’ or ‘Congrats, you made a sale!’ as a subject line.

● This is really important, so make sure you craft your congratulations e-mails and welcome emails well. Everything should be quick and easy for affiliates. Some just have lists that they want to blast your ads out to. Your job is to make that as smooth as possible. Send them a log in link in the welcome mail, tell them again how much they’ll earn, give them some small stats and figures, “With just 10 sales, you’ll earn $7000”. Emphasize the second levels, no matter how small. This passive earning is really important to a lot of marketers.

● I remember about four years back I joined a membership site and was all ready to go off promoting for them as an affiliate, then when I saw the welcome mail, I was told to look forward to an e-mail soon that would entitle me to extra earnings promoting the product. Just that wording almost put me off. I later found out that it was actually bonuses and top affiliate rewards for the previous couple of months, but see how that made me wait? You don’t want your affiliates to think twice. This letter will have them log in, grab the ad and blast it out. As quick and as easy as possible for them, with the best possible rewards, means and the highest amount of additional income for you. Give it a try. You won’t be disappointed.

● This also brings up an even more important point that I see a heck of a lot. Ever had this? You join an affiliate program, do a little promotion, receive your cash or whatever, and before long you’re receiving ads because the persons affiliate program added you to an all out advert list that they’re charging to send to. Way to go annoying affiliates. I have to admit, some people don’t agree with me here, but as far as I’m concerned, every affiliate is valuable and should not be bombarded by ads to buy your stuff. They’re there to make money through promotion, not receive ads about your brand new piece of software. Understanding the role of each of your resources is important.
No ads, just offers that relate to the one thing they’ve already told you and show you that they’re good at, and interested in doing, making a whole bunch of cash for themselves and for you.

● Let’s say you’ve created a guide, and sold it for $1000, including audio, video, a free consultation and some DVDs. You make fifteen sales from joint ventures yourself in the first month, and make $15,000. Now with 150 affiliates, with just ten percent of them making two sales each at 50% commissions, you’ve just netted yourself an extra… I’ll let you do the math on that one so it really sinks in how powerful this is.

● Affiliate growth is exponential. It’s slow at the start, and gets faster, depending on your joint ventures, list size and the number of affiliates you have. Every product, every single piece of software or information you release relating to your business should have this in mind.

● Don’t worry if when you first start building affiliates they don’t quite make you as much as you hoped. This is totally normal. What you’ll find is, in every twenty, thirty, fifty, or even 100 affiliates, there are a couple of real gems there that make you (and them) a whole lot of cash. Take it from me, take your affiliate building as seriously as everyone’s been telling us to take our list building recently, and you’ll see some amazing results.

Make sure you craft your congratulations e-mails and welcome emails well. Still on the subject of mailing your affiliates, it’s important for everything to be smooth, quick and easy for them. Some just have lists that they want to blast your ads out to. Your job is to make that as smooth as possible. Send them a log in link in the welcome mail, tell them again how much they’ll earn, give them some small stats and figures; ‘With just ‘10 sales, you’ll earn $7000’. Emphasize the second levels, no matter how small. This passive earning is really important to a lot of marketers.

Think of this as kind of a small sales letter, but crossed with an instruction manual. They’ve signed up, now sell onto the promotion with how much they can earn and how quickly. Don’t forget to tell them to click the link below, copy and paste the pre-written ads, blast them out to their lists or the list of provided e-zines, and await the congratulatory e-mails from you, saying they have cash. Don’t just suggest an action and expect them to do it. Close the sale. Tell them to do it, and your response will increase dramatically.

Emphasize pay days, and tell them to look out for special promotions and bonuses from you that will give them the opportunity to promote your other products, or even promote this product at a higher commission. This really should have gone in the bonuses section that we talked about earlier, but since we’re here, try not to give the reader any excuse to hold off.

For example, I remember four years or so back I joined a membership site and was all ready to go off promoting for them as an affiliate, then when I saw the welcome mail, I was told to look forward to an e-mail soon that would entitle me to extra earnings promoting the product. Just that wording almost put me off. I later found out that it was actually bonuses and top affiliate rewards for the previous couple of months, but see how that mail seemed like a good deal, but made me wait? No doubt this was the opposite effect they were looking for.

You don’t want your affiliates to think twice. This letter will have them log in, grab the ad and blast it out. As quick and as easy as possible for them with the best possible rewards, which in turn means the highest amount of additional income for you. Give it a try. You won’t be disappointed.

Don’t Mistreat Your Affiliates

This also brings up an even more important point that I see a heck of a lot. Ever had this? You join an affiliate program, do a little promotion, receive your cash, and before long you’re receiving ads because the persons affiliate program added you to an all out advert list that they’re charging to send to? Granted it’s not so bad if you know the person, have bought or expressed interest in the products they happen to be selling, but I’ll be honest with you, if you just add affiliates to a mailing list, you’re missing out big time.

They’re going to get annoyed at getting something they didn’t sign up for, and if just one good affiliate un-subscribes… I’ll leave that to you to figure out exactly how much money that could mean you lose in the coming months or with the launch of your next product.

Some people don’t agree with me here, I have to admit. But the general rule is, if your affiliates really are valuable (which they should be) and have been promoting for you, don’t send them adverts for anything. The only exception is for a special offer for the affiliate program, notification of a new product they can promote, or something of that sort. Like your list, and on a smaller but more personal scale your JV prospects. These are not people you want to annoy, because quite frankly, they’ll just leave and go elsewhere and you’ll lose wads of cash, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but in the future, you will lose long term. Way too many small businesses seem to do this. I wonder if they know what they’re doing to their earning prospects.

General rule of thumb here, if they asked for it, send it to them. Marketing is only intrusive and annoying if it’s not wanted. If they signed up for something, don’t start sending them unrelated information, which will only annoy them and lose you money. This doesn’t just relate to affiliate programs either, this goes for mailing lists, newsletters, e-zines, personal lists and more than anything, especially joint venture prospects.

What I will say to you is test things out, and have a play around. Carefully though, we don’t want any unexpected losses to creep up uninvited. Test out different percentages at different periods in the year. Test out big start up bonuses and a large addition to month one commissions if you have a low ticket membership site. What we’re looking to get is the most amount of affiliates promoting for you, whilst spending the least. I would love to tell you what works best all the time, however it varies from product to product, business to business, and of course totally depends on your affiliates, how good they are at promotion, and whether they signed up to promote you or just to get the freebie.

One thing I will say though is this. No matter how much extra work this seems, or how little returns it gives over a small number of people, remember, that the numbers in your affiliate system will grow over time. When it does grow, it’s going to be your job to make sure you keep on top of the affiliates and keep them promoting. Education and special offers is the way to start.

Quick Start Bonuses Explained

Something else you may want to think about is quick start bonuses. We mentioned these earlier but I never really told you why they’re important. Well, it’s for two reasons. For a start it provides a viable option for your affiliates and makes your program more enticing for them to join. Hey, who wouldn’t join an affiliate program that advertised 100% commissions for the first month or two? I know a few people who went ahead and did this, and they got one heck of a response. Remember always to put yourself in the shoes of your target. Think like them, and you’ll be able to attract them.

The second reason for big quick start bonuses is to actually get people promoting. It’s amazing sometimes how hard it is to get people to do things. You know how you try your best to get someone to do something or do a job well, and in the end you end up saying something like ‘Ah I’ll just do it myself’. Well this is the job of quick start bonuses on a deeper level. If you’re attracting affiliates that generally don’t promote very often or haven’t promoted before, then this is another reason for them to choose you. Once they’re going and start to make money, it’s amazing how much of a motivation enhancement it is to receive an e-mail saying you’ve just made some cash. Quick start bonuses are especially important when you have a membership site that doesn’t cost a huge amount per month, but you can take advantage of a big and powerful high commission headline to attract them. Don’t forget all of this is tied to you and your business also, important for repeat affiliate business. If someone gives you cash, you don’t forget it, and no doubt you’ll be back for more, as will your affiliates flood back to you over multiple businesses.

Communication – The Key to Profits

Which brings me to my final point, and probably the most important one in this section. Communication is the key. As well as sending bonuses and offers, an e-mail with a ‘Congrats, you’ve made cash’ subject can be one heck of a motivator. It’s also important to remind your affiliates, not necessarily through offers, but often letting them in on info like ‘It can take seven times and upwards of 10 times that people have to see your offer before they will sign up’.

We’ve seen those before, and that is the purpose. I have found to an extent that with mailing list advertising, this is indeed true, provides a good excuse for you to mail your affiliates, and also provides them with the confidence they need to know that send out another mailing to their list isn’t going to be a waste of time. They’ll gobble up any free info and tips you can give them, simply because it means more money for them. (And for you in this case)