Affiliate marketing is a powerful weapon especially for E-commerce merchants. It is quite sensible if store owners want to utilize affiliate marketing to boost sales, and the only way to do that is by managing Affiliate program fully and carefully. We have run through the process to master Affiliate marketing, which will be created separately in each post:
Step 1 – Comparison between Affiliate network and in-house Affiliate program.
Step 2 – How to calculate the commission in Affiliate program?
Step 3 – How to create creatives for affiliate?
Step 4 – How to promote and recruit Affiliate?
Step 5 – Report and paying commission in Affiliate program.
Now we take the fourth step, and this step is really essential. As we all know in Affiliate marketing, Affiliate is the core of this strategy. So it is necessary to find out How to promote and recruit Affiliate? In fact, no matter what you use own in-house Affiliate programs or Affiliate network, you still need to find a list of Affiliate to add in your Affiliate programs. We will discuss about it, and together we could find out.
1, Submit your affiliate program into Affiliate directories to promote and recruit Affiliate
Affiliate directories are free and can be achieved in the Internet easily. In some research, experts conclude that 1/5 affiliate are using Affiliate directories to find Affiliate programs to join. As you can see, affiliate program directories having fairly good and improving Alexa rankings. And in one result of the poll created by amnavigator, this diagram below will show you Do affiliates use affiliate directories to find programs to join:
So don’t waste your time, let’s have a look at the list of Affiliate directories below:
_ Associateprograms – 14000+ affiliate programs that are well-designed to highlight your offer for affiliate. This directories are simple interface, and easy to find offer related to your field.
_ Affiliatefirst – 8824 affiliate programs for Health & Fitness products, Website Services, Computer & Electronics, Beauty, Food & Beverage, Accessories. You can post your 2-tier commission program in a separate section.
_ Affiliatesdirectory – 9272 affiliate programs for Gift Stores, Books & Literature, Web Services, Music, Internet Marketing & more.
_ Top-Affiliate – Listing of 2000+ affiliate programs.
_ Affiliateguide – Offers many areas to submit your affiliate programs started from $37 for 3-month subscription.
_ Affiliateseeking – Offers a wide range of program from Multiple Tier Program, 2-Tier Program to Pay Per Sales & Pay Per Leads Programs.
2, Submit your Affiliate program into Affiliate forums
Affiliate forums, which quite similar to Affiliate directories, giving the affiliate a list of affiliate programs in one or several topics. While they don’t have simple interface to find like affiliate directories, they have many topics and threads to discuss as well as learn more about Affiliate marketing. The top affiliate forums are:
_ Warriorforum – One of the biggest Internet Marketing Forum in the world, you can choose which affiliate programs promoting in this forum.
_ Abestweb – The most famous forum for affiliate marketing. You are an affiliate, you certainly join this forum.
_ 5staraffiliateprograms – A thread of 1700+ posts for newbies of affiliate marketing, quite good and simple interface, however it’s hard to find what you want.
_ Wickedfire – 200000+ members’ community for affiliate marketing with advanced knowledge. Wickedfire proves to be a very well-known forum of Affiliate.
3, Advertising
It is not so strange to promote affiliate via advertising, and specifically, use Google adwords is a bright idea. For Affiliate, Google Adwords can be created for your purpose. By advertising, you can reach the audience quickly, as well as recruit enough Affiliate for your Affiliate programs. That’s is totally realistic, as 18% affiliates can find you through Google only.
The key is that you can choose generic keywords in your market to start. For example, try the keyword “your industry keywords + affiliate program” or the inversion of it.
4, Affiliate outsourced managers
If you don’t have enough experience and time to explore the world of affiliate, but you still understand the vital role of this type of marketing to boost your sales, then you can try Affiliate program management. There are some good manager and agency you can put your trust in.
_ Schaff-PartnerCentric – One of the largest agencies for affiliate management with clients like zappos.com, shoes.com, edmunds.com. Schaaf-PartnerCentric provides premium affiliate management services to retail and lead advertisers looking for top line growth, bottom line profit, or optimal technical implementation.
_ AffiliateManager.com – A premium outsourced Affiliate management agency with clients such as Groupon and 3-month guarantee for client profit.
_ Geno Prussakov – AM Navigator is an award-winning online marketing agency. Geno is an international speaker, affiliate management experts and is named on the Top 25 Affiliate Marketing Minds 2014 list. He also has worked with popular brands such as Warner Music, Skype, Medifast, Hallmark, Forbes and Nokia.
5, Your own resources
You can build your own resources easily if you use Magento, as you can utilize Magento Affiliate plus extension.
_ Send newsletter/emails for your customers/subscribers about your affiliate program. Ask them to join your affiliate program as they believe in your product. To make your offer more appealing, you should create your programs with recommended functions below:
_ Refer friend: Customers can share this product via social media (Facebook, twitter, Google+, etc.) to sell your products.
_ Affiliate coupon: Customers can share the coupon of product as a gift to their friends to get sales more easily.
_ Tier commission recruitment: Customers develop their own affiliate network by getting more friends to join our affiliate program. If a friend sells a product for him, he will get commission too. This is a proven way for success of multi-level marketing network.
6, Find top affiliates, super affiliates
Research shows that top affiliates can bring 80% of your affiliate revenue. That’s why it is difficult to recruit them as they request high on merchants. The requirements are shown below:
_ 10 Elements Super Affiliates Look For In An Affiliate Program – super affiliates always need a high-conversion rate landing page, as well as good niche for them to bid on your brand.
_ SearchEngineJournal – A valuable interview with Adam Reimer about how to recruit super affiliates.
– Strategies to recruit high-value bloggers for your Affiliate program – With step-by-step strategy to find, scan and reach them effectively and time-saving
You may consider creating these affiliates by turning your customers into super affiliates as long as you and your customers have good relationship.
So now we are almost complete the way to master affiliate marketing. Only last step – Report and paying commission in Affiliate program are waiting for us.
