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Tim Godfrey
Tim Godfrey has co-created some of the most successful Internet Marketing training products of the last decade such as Commission Blueprint, Niche Blueprint, Trinity Code and eFormula,grossing over $20 million in sales. An expert in product launches and copywriting, he is currently offering a unique service to personally help other vendors capture more leads, attract more JV partners and make more money from their product launches. www.TimGodfrey.net

The Art of Attracting A-player Affiliates

By: Tim Godfrey

Pulling together a group of JV partners and running a week-long product launch is a great way to generate immediate income - and lots of it.

But what tends to happen is that once launch is over, effort dries up (or the cart is closed completely) and the vendor moves onto the next project, happy with the money they have made during launch week.

It depends a little on the price point and the niche, however, in most cases this is neither the best strategy of building up a business, nor is it the best way to extract the maximum amount of revenue from the product that took the vendor so long to create!

The fact is, there are many thousands of affiliates out there (and potential affiliates waiting to be found) such as site owners, bloggers, marketers, business owners and more. People who may not possess the big email lists that make the impact during launch week, but who do have MORE ability to send consistent traffic and sales throughout the year and beyond.

So when you do your next launch, perhaps think about turning the product evergreen after launch week. Set it up to make money day in, day out and aim to appeal to a wider group of longer-term partners, rather just the big-hitting ‘broadcast marketers’ who simply mail a few times and are done.

So what do you need to do in order to make this happen? Well, if you have launched a product, clearly you already have the sales funnel in place, as well as the product content completed.

Therefore you are going to need to focus on two elements initially:

Attracting affiliates …and providing Resources for Affiliates.

Both of these elements are synonymous in many ways, as providing excellent resources to promote your product actually attracts affiliates. This is because affiliates will be more likely to want to promote your product, over someone else’s, if the majority work has already been done for them!

What do I mean by this?

Well, during your average launch, vendors provide their JV’s with promotional material, but in most cases that material is limited to swipe emails which are only of real use to those people with email lists. But when you are making your product evergreen, you’re doing to need to provide MORE than that… MUCH more than that, if you are going to be successful.

You are going to need to give them the tools, content and strategy to promote your product and make it as easy as possible for them to do so and make money.

You know your product and your target market better than anyone and therefore in most cases you are likely the person who will create the best content. If you make a big effort and really nail it, you will WIN because:

  • By putting a little more effort into your affiliate resource area and making it better than your competitors’, more affiliates will promote YOUR product over others.

  • The overall conversions will be higher, and EVERYONE will make more money (and if it is making money, affiliates will KEEP on promoting – and the word will get around!)

Yes, creating a great affiliates resource center will be some work, but remember… most very successful people became successful by doing things other people didn’t want to do. Even if it takes you a week, this week’s work could pay off handsomely for months, even years to come.

After all, you only need to attract ONE really powerful affiliate to make a 5 figure increase to your monthly bottom line.

To give you a good example, you can take a look at the affiliate resource section here that I completed a couple of days back, for my new product, Five Figures Monthly.

So let’s run through a number of strategies that you can employ right now to create your own. They will take a little bit of time to set up, but the more effort you put it, the higher the conversions will be for your affiliates, and the more money you will make in the long run.

1. Create a Generic ‘Bonus Page’

One of the best ways to generate sales and increase your conversions as an affiliate is to offer people a bonus (or bonuses) if they buy through your affiliate link. However, creating a well worded bonus page along with high quality bonuses is difficult for your average affiliate. That is why you should DO IT FOR THEM so they don’t have to think.

The idea is that you create a bonus page that an affiliate can mail to via an affiliate link. As an example, here is how I set up the bonus page for my Five Figures Monthly course…

I created the bonus page which you can see here: http://fivefiguresmonthly.com/secret-bonuses.html and then I generated a link for affiliates to use.

So they send their traffic via this affiliate link direct to the bonus page. They person will read through the details of the bonus package. If they then click through to the sales page and buy, the affiliate will get the commission.

Yes, it will take a little bit of time to create a page like this, but it will be very valuable in attracting affiliates. It will also boost conversions as it will help to effectively presell your product.

2. Put Together Pre-Done Sales Funnels

As you will know, in most cases, a prospect or lead usually needs to see an offer 2 or 3 times before they will take action on it, so create content and a funnel structure that affiliates can send their traffic into.

What you will need to do is to create a series of landing page templates or at least landing page content that they can use to build their own pages to capture leads.

Also provide them with content that they can use as an incentive for people to opt in. Simply take a video or written content from your course and use it for this purpose.

If the content is written, make sure that you give affiliates the source file so they can add their affiliate link into it and then turn it into a PDF.

In addition, make sure you create a series of follow up email swipes that affiliates can add into their autoresponder. Try to make them as good as possible. The better they are, the more sales both you and the affiliate will make.

3. Content for review pages

Obviously you won’t be able to give affiliates a written review template – they will have to write it themselves. However, what you can do is to give them tools and resources to help them put together a high converting page.

For example, create screenshots from inside your members area that they can place on their pages. Give them embed codes for sample videos from the course and links to download other sample content that they can use to promote your product, such as spreadsheets, PDF manuals, software demo’s and so forth,

Really anything that you can think of that will assist them in putting together a decent page that will help presell the product and increase their conversions.

4. Banners that get CLICKS

When I look at affiliate resource pages I am often shocked at how little thought has been put into the creation of the banners. Maybe this is because people think that banner advertising is not very effective. However, that is only the case when the banners being are no good.

What I would suggest it to put a lot of thought into the banners and try and think what sort of images you should create based on who could want to promote your product. I would create some banners that are a little bit ‘scammy’ and are designed to get attention and clicks.

Then I would also provide some more professional looking examples too in case an affiliate has a website that would be unsuitable for more hard hitting banners

5. Give Affiliates a Traffic Plan

In some ways this is the most important part. It is one thing giving affiliates the tools, resources and content to create a good promotion, but if they don’t know to drive traffic to their content and onto your sales page, then you are in trouble.

Literally give them a plan of action to move ahead along with easy to follow 1-2-3 instructions. Also give them ALL necessary content that they will need in order to take advantage of the traffic source. Do all the work for them apart from spending the ad dollars.

There are many other techniques and content that you could use to build your affiliate resource section and I will cover them another time. You could always get some ideas from my new affiliates resource area over at Five Figures Monthly.

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