Affiliate Network Strategies
There’s no easier way to skyrocket your income, get your products in front of thousands of new prospects and build a recognized brand than by connecting with seasoned affiliate marketers.
Affiliates will help build momentum before, during and after your product launch, but they do much more than that. An affiliate army can make the difference between a decent week of sales, or an unstoppable flood of income that helps catapult your business to new heights.
So, you know that you need affiliates. The question is, how do you find them? This special report will answer that question and many more. We’ll not only help you quickly locate the top affiliates in your market, but we’ll show you exactly what you need to do to turn influencers into dedicated marketers that are proud to promote your products and align with your brand.
Steps to Success
Before you take the steps to build your team of affiliates and influencers, you’ll want to make sure you have all your ducks in a row.
You’ll increase your chances of attracting the top marketers in your niche if you can demonstrate that you have something valuable to offer and that you’re dedicated to providing the best experience possible for the customers they send your way.
This starts with having an online presence that potential affiliates can refer to when they are looking to find out more about you.
Visibility is important when it comes to forming trusting partnerships so you need to give potential affiliates an easy way to evaluate your products, research your brand and gauge the quality of your work.
This may sound obvious, but you might be surprised to discover just how many business owners, product creators and developers overlook this process. Instead, they begin contacting the top affiliates in their market only to be overlooked, rejected or simply ignored.
If you want professional marketers and top affiliates to risk their reputation promoting your products or services, you need to make it easy for them to conduct due diligence.
The more you go the distance in helping them minimize their risks by demonstrating a commitment to your market, providing support to the end-user, and fulfilling all promises made during the sales process, the easier it will be to build your affiliate army.
Here are a few ways to build a presence quickly in the event you are just starting:
Blog: There’s no denying that blogs take work to create, update and maintain. However, if you want to build a quick presence online there’s no easier way.
Consider starting a simple blog that offers a handful of high-quality posts. Focus on pillar content, you want those who visit your website to immediately find value.
If you’re short on time, you can outsource a few articles to seasoned ghostwriters on Upwork.com.
Squeeze Page: You’ll likely want more than one squeeze page, connected to specific lists so you can begin segmenting right from the start.
One squeeze page could lead prospects into your main mailing list, with other internal squeeze or landing pages being offered to those who have transitioned throughout your sales funnel.
Keep your squeeze pages simple, especially your entry one when people are just getting to know your brand and are still learning about what you have to offer.
One of the easiest ways to quickly build a targeted list is by offering a well-written report, guide or tutorial that helps your subscribers learn a new skill or improve an existing one.
Thankfully, you can save a lot of time by skipping the creation process and purchasing access to http://www.AutomatedListProfits.com, where you’ll gain access to done-for-you reports and squeeze pages. This content is written by seasoned professionals, so you can rest assured it’s top-notch quality.
YouTube Channel: If you prefer to create engaging videos more than you do writing content, consider creating a YouTube channel and filling it with 8-10 training videos.
Make sure that your videos are polished and professional. Remember, everything you put out there reflects on your brand and helps to shape how people feel about your business.
Your videos don’t have to be long or fancy, just make sure the content is geared towards your market and aligns with the products you intend to sell.
LinkedIn: This is a great way to develop a portfolio, manage connections and build an online presence with very little work involved. Just set up a free LinkedIn account, add all your contacts, fill out your profile and business/work experience, and upload a photo.
Facebook Account: While many marketers and business owners can avoid setting up accounts on many social media communities, you’ll want to create a Facebook account to find, connect and network with affiliates and influencers.
Everyone’s on Facebook, so even if you never plan to create a page for your business or a group for your customers, you’ll still want to set up a profile, add contacts and complete your bio. Now you’re one step closer to building your affiliate army!
Going The Extra Mile
When you approach a potential affiliate or influencer, you want to be prepared to give them a promotional packet that provides them with everything they need to advertise your website.
Again, the easier you make it for people to promote you, the more likely people will want to jump on board.
Creating a promo pack doesn’t have to be time-consuming, but it’s an essential step in standing out from the crowd and putting yourself in a position of uncovering networking opportunities.
It’s yet another step that many people overlook, so by showing super affiliates and influencers that you know exactly what they’re looking for, and you’re willing to go the extra mile in helping them promote you with minimal effort, the more likely they’ll agree to join your marketing team.
So, what sort of things should be included in your promotional packet? It depends on your niche market, also on the type of product you’re offering, but you should always have an affiliate promotional page set up on your website, preferably on a dedicated joint venture page so affiliates can find it easily.
You want to include the basic promotional tools, including:
Email Swipes:
These are pre-written email promotions that your affiliates can copy and paste into their mailing list making it easy for them to broadcast your marketing message with very little effort involved.
Consider offering 4-5 different variations so that your team has a variety of options to choose from.
Blog Posts:
Consider creating 2-3 short blog posts that outline your product, its benefits and how it will help the consumer. Your affiliates may want to use these pre-written blog posts on their websites.
Social Blurbs:
Create 6-10 pre-written Twitter posts, Facebook messages, Instagram and Pinterest images that affiliates can share with their following.
Landing Pages:
If you want to give your launch the best chance of success, consider creating a couple of responsive landing pages that your affiliates can quickly customize to include their affiliate links.
Most affiliates prefer to drive traffic to a landing page before they direct traffic to the actual offer. This allows them to offer bonuses, qualify traffic and warm up their lists.
Free Review Access:
You’ll also want to provide review access to qualified affiliates. While this isn’t something you’ll likely want to feature on the promotional page so that you’re able to retain some control over who has free access, you’ll want to extend this invitation to seasoned affiliates who you are interested in recruiting.
Offering free access to your product allows potential affiliates to verify your quality and to ensure that your offer aligns with their audience and is something that their customers and subscribers will find valuable.
It also goes the extra mile in providing influencers and joint venture partners with the opportunity to test out your product themselves, which could turn into a powerful testimonial or case study!
Tip: Keep your affiliate promotional page short and sweet! No one knows about your offer yet so you only have a few seconds to get a super affiliate interested.
Give them only what they need, including the most important promo tools, a killer headline that gets them excited about your offer and clearly outlines what matters most to them, including:
- Commissions (how much $ or % affiliates get from each sale)
- Length of cookies (days, months).
- Who gets the commission (the first, last or all referring affiliates,)
- Payment Frequency & Methods Offered (How often they are paid, whether you pay via PayPal, etc.)
How To Recruit An Affiliate Army
First, not all affiliates are created equal. Affiliate marketing is known to be a 90/10 game. What does that mean? It means that most of your sales will come from the 10% of top affiliates who have agreed to market your product.
So, when building your affiliate army, you should be focused on recruiting only active affiliates who appear on leaderboards, and who have a following and the outreach needed to get results.
While it may sound like a great idea to recruit as many affiliates as possible, the truth is that you could end up spending way too much time catering to affiliates who never drive in sales.
For example, new affiliates may ask for a ton of resources including extra ad or email copy, banners, landing pages, or social blurbs only to produce little results. Your time is best spent providing support and resources to aggressive affiliates who will get the job done.
Thankfully, it’s rather easy to qualify affiliates just by looking at their online following, browsing their profiles, evaluating their past performance promoting products (check out the leaderboards on any prior launches that they’ve been involved in), and subscribing to their list to keep a pulse on their activity as well as the type of products they promote.
While you won’t be able to qualify every affiliate, spending a bit of time evaluating the type of people you are considering recruiting will help you strengthen your promotional team and ensure that your time is spent wisely.
There are a couple of powerful resources that will help you quickly find potential affiliates for your next product launch. These include:
JVZoo: http://www.JVZoo.com and Warrior+: http://www.WarriorPlus.com
Both websites will help to connect you with joint venture partners and influencers in your market. Begin by browsing the marketplace in search of similar products.
Then, look at their leaderboards and affiliate contests. This is a great way to quickly find affiliates! Then, search for them online and do your best to connect with them via social networks, like Facebook or Twitter.
You should also join Facebook groups that are focused on your market, as well as groups set up to allow marketers and product developers space to discuss upcoming launches.
This will not only put you in direct contact with other developers in your niche which could foster networking opportunities, but it will help you determine when to launch your product.
Facebook groups are one of the most valuable resources for finding affiliates and influencers because it provides you with a visual snapshot of how big a following they have, what products they actively promote and what their customers are most interested in.
Learn where your target audience hangs out and join those communities. That may include forums, Facebook, Twitter, Periscope, Pinterest or LinkedIn. You don’t need to be everywhere! You just need to be on the preferred platforms that customers, potential affiliates and joint venture partners use.
The idea is to put yourself in their line of sight. You want to interact and engage with both the influencers you’re interested in recruiting and their following. Get yourself on their radar and you’ll be able to build your affiliate army quickly and easily.
Here are a few other ways to find affiliates for your next product launch:
Niche Bloggers:
Identify influential bloggers in your niche and reach out to them. When first making contact don’t include a full overview of your product. Instead, keep your email short.
Focus on acknowledging their website, indicate that you’re dedicated to providing value in that niche and that you have a product you feel would be a good fit for their audience. If they’re interested, you’ll be able to follow up with more information about your product.
Facebook Groups:
It’s worth mentioning once again that Facebook groups are a great way to connect with your target audience and can point you in the right direction when looking to secure affiliate partnerships.
Spend some time searching for niche-specific groups rather than ones that contain a mix of people and topics. It’ll make it easier to pinpoint potential marketing partners as well as engage with your target audience.
Don’t spam the groups! Instead, prepare to provide value to position yourself in front of possible joint venture partners and affiliates.
The key is to demonstrate that you have the knowledge and experience needed to produce a high quality product that will help your audience in some way.
Affiliate Marketing Conferences:
Conferences are a great way to form new business relationships and secure networking opportunities but you’ll want to choose which events you attend carefully as there are hundreds of meet-ups every year and most of them involve a fee to attend.
One of the most popular events can be found here:
https://www.affiliatesummit.com/
Social Media:
Follow influencers and super affiliates that cater to your market through all their social media accounts. Connect, engage and begin to build a relationship that puts you on their radar by sharing their tweets, commenting on their Facebook posts and adding value whenever possible.
Recruit Affiliates by Doing Pay per Click Campaigns:
Test out a few different ads on Google Adwords, Bing or even Facebook to find new affiliate partners quickly.
Don’t forget to create a well-designed landing page that provides information about your affiliate page and encourages them to join your JV mailing list. Don’t forget, your past customers often make the best affiliates!
These people have purchased from you, so they know your quality, commitment and what you have to offer. This can translate into thoughtful testimonials and social proof that can help increase sales and exposure.
So, if you have a mailing list of customers, contact them and introduce them to your affiliate program. Ask them to recommend your product to people in their inner circle, via social media groups, or even their friends and family. This is a great way to not only increase visibility but to build a loyal tribe.
Add Your Website to Affiliate Directories:
Sites like https://e-commerceaffiliates.com/ make it easy to add your store to their directory, putting it in front of thousands of qualified affiliates and influencers.
Here are a few other places where you can announce your upcoming launch and connect with affiliates:
https://muncheye.com and http://v3.jvnotifypro.com/account/
Regardless of what avenue you choose when recruiting affiliates, the key is to look for influencers and possible partnerships in your niche and reach out directly.
Focus on building a long-term relationship - don't just pitch your affiliate program. Have them test your products for free first, and offer them whatever tools and resources they need to effectively promote you.
Launching Your Affiliates Into Action
When it comes to organizing your marketing campaigns and getting affiliates prepped and ready to promote your launch, you need to make sure you give everyone enough time to set up.
This means that as soon as your product is ready you want to set up review access, create your promotional tools and begin recruiting affiliates. The more advanced notice you can give them, and the more time they have to plan for your launch, the more focus and commitment they’ll be able to give you.
I’ve seen many launches suffer simply because the affiliates and joint venture partners weren’t given enough time to align their marketing campaigns with the launch process. Since most super affiliates have their promotional campaigns planned and booked weeks, sometimes months in advance, it’s important that you give them as much notice as possible so they can work you into their schedule.
This is where a JV newsletter comes into play. You want to create a mailing list exclusively for your affiliates. This will let you stay in touch and inform your partners of every component of the launch, including any free content made available during the pre-launch phase, what available upgrades or upsells are being made available, and anything else that will help them keep a pulse on your launch.
Having a newsletter dedicated to affiliates is also a great way to motivate your marketing partners so you can keep the momentum going. With so many launches taking place each day it’s easy for affiliates to get caught up with another product, so the more engaged and connected you are, the better.
You can design a simple landing page that includes information about your affiliate program, what platform you use (eg; WarriorPlus, ClickBank, ProductDyno, JVZoo, etc), and of course how much they’ll earn per sale.
Depending on what affiliate program you are using, you can either direct them to a sign-up link (as in the case if you sell on JVZoo or WarriorPlus) or if you run a self-hosted affiliate program, you can direct them to create an affiliate account on your website which should automatically add them to your JV newsletter.
Set up an autoresponder sequence right away so that whenever a new affiliate subscribes to your list they get an email the same day that outlines your program, notifies them of any upcoming launches and gets them excited about your products.
If you have a promotional tools page ready, you’ll want to include that in the initial email so they can download the resources and work you into their schedule.
When it comes to keeping affiliates engaged throughout your entire launch process, keep in mind that the best launches involve a 3-part process:
Pre-Launch:
This is when you are building your affiliate army and connecting with joint venture partners and influencers. Your pre-launch process can be as long or as short as you want it to be, depending on your goals and how much work you have to do before you’re ready to launch.
However, keep in mind that the longer the pre-launch phase is, the harder it will be to keep the momentum going, especially with potential customers who are interested in your product.
It’s during the pre-launch phase when you’ll begin to generate buzz, solidify important partnerships and continue working to build a relationship with your customers.
If this is your first product launch ever, no worries! You can still lay the groundwork for your launch by sharing information via social media, your mailing list (if you have one), and engaging with any active audiences you have.
Launch:
This is when your product goes live and affiliates can start promoting it. Your launch can last anywhere from a few days to a matter of weeks.
The key is to analyze other product launches in your market to determine the best time frame for your launch.
How long do other launches run for? Is there a special price offered during the first few days and then it increases once the launch is over? Mimicking the structure of successful launches, and then working to improve on their format is the fastest way to success.
Tip: Set up a series of broadcasts designed to go out to affiliates once every few days, in the days leading up to your launch.
Include links to done-for-you email swipes, blog posts, social media announcements and anything else your marketing partners can quickly copy and paste into their funnels and campaigns.
Give them everything they need without making them dig for it. Send them direct links in your email campaigns so they can pick and choose what they want to use.
Maximizing Sales With Affiliate Contests
If you want to encourage affiliates to actively promote you and maximize your sales and overall exposure, consider running a contest that includes an updated leaderboard.
A sales leaderboard is essentially a contest that keeps track of the top-performing affiliates. In other words, the affiliates who drive in the most sales.
Featuring a leaderboard that is updated to show the top 10 affiliates in the running, along with the various cash prizes available, is a great way to motivate your affiliate team. It brings out the competitive side of people!
An affiliate contest can:
- Motivate and inspire affiliates to keep promoting, and to close more sales, especially when they can see themselves climbing up the leaderboard.
- Encourage joint venture partners to email their list more frequently as they try to push their way up to the top.
When it comes to creating an affiliate contest, there are a few things you’ll want to consider early on:
How long will your contest be active?:
Decide whether you want your contest to run the full length of your launch, or for just a part of it.
Most affiliate contests will remain open throughout the entire launch process of 5-7 days. You want to make sure your leaderboard is updated regularly for as long as the contest is open.
How you reward affiliates:
Decide whether you want your contest to reward affiliates based on when they reach a certain number of sales, or whether they’ll be eligible to win regardless of sales volume.
If you do base your contest around the amount of sales made, you’ll want to make sure your prize makes sense (the bigger the sales, the bigger the prize).
Additional Incentives:
Some affiliate contests offer more than just cash prizes to the top 1-3 on the leaderboard and to reward other affiliates who may not have as great of an outreach, but who have worked hard to promote your launch. Consider what kind of incentives you could offer those who are further down the leaderboard. Smaller cash prizes or gift cards are always great ideas.
You can create an affiliate contest and leaderboard easily if you plan to launch your product through marketplaces like ClickBank.com, JVZoo.com or WarriorPlus.com as they have built-in tools readily available.
JVZoo has a series of video tutorials available that show you how to quickly set up your affiliate contest. You can find one of those here: https://youtu.be/j72FG9KA5EU
If you use a tool like ClickFunnels, they offer what they call Backpack, which gives you an up-to-date overview of affiliate sales, commissions, referrals, payment dues and a lot more. They also make it easy to set up and run an affiliate contest for your launch.
If you plan to launch your website through another marketplace, or on your website, you might want to check out this free WordPress plugin that helps you set up an affiliate program as well as run powerful affiliate contests that will motivate your partners every step of the way.
You can grab the plugin here: https://affiliatewp.com/add-ons/official-free/leaderboard/
Whatever platform you choose, make sure you use a reliable affiliate management system that allows you to track sales in real-time. That way you can keep your leaderboard updated regularly.
Note: For weekly or monthly affiliate contests, you should consider adding a timer or countdown script to your competition page. Doing this will add a sense of urgency to your contest and keep your affiliates aware of how much time they have left. This is a great way to boost sales and keep affiliates motivated as they want to send you as many customers as possible before the deadline.
Tip: You could also set up an Affiliate Recruitment Contest where you provide rewards for referrals. This is a great way to build your affiliate army and because you can pay out cash rewards only if those referrals drive in sales, you only spend money when you make it.
Final Words
I hope the information contained within this special report has helped you think of ways of reaching out and connecting with influencers and affiliate partners.
The key is to be consistent when building your affiliate army and to always be on the lookout for ways of attracting and engaging with affiliates through many different avenues.
Building your affiliate team will take time and patience. If you spend a few minutes a day exploring networks and communities where your target audience congregates, and you work towards developing a rock-solid landing page that provides information about your affiliate program and highlights the benefits of joining, you’ll begin to see results quickly.
Remember, your customers often make the best affiliates because while they may not have the outreach that super affiliates have, they’ve already been introduced to your brand and are familiar with the quality of your products.
Reach out to everyone within your inner circle, newsletters and take advantage of any social outreach you may have. Begin the process of affiliate recruitment weeks before your product launch takes place.
You want to give yourself enough time to be able to connect with potential partners, provide them with free review access to your product, and give them enough time to prepare for your launch.
Resources
Here are links to some of the resources found in this guide as well as other websites and networks to help you get started.
Automated List Profits:
Done-for-you professional lead magnet packages that include high-quality content, 7-day autoresponders and gorgeous squeeze pages.
https://www.AutomatedListProfits.com
Products to Promote:
A wide variety of products you can promote, including software, training courses, video-training programs and more. Get a free membership into Affiliate Profits Club.
https://promotelabs.com/affiliates/
Affiliate WP:
WordPress plugin that helps you set up and manage affiliate contests and leaderboards.
https://affiliatewp.com/add-ons/official-free/leaderboard/
Funnel Builder Software:
The Best Way to Build Funnels FREE and Sell Digital Products
Apply AI to Avoid Tedious Marketing Tasks:
Automate your Marketing with the Power of AI