Relationship with Affiliates - how do you do it?

[JustinHart]

Hey all,
I don't have many affiliates yet (just 3), but I was wondering what you do to help your affiliates? Do you send them emails? I don't want to send too many "let's do this!" emails because I think that would be annoying...

ideas?

[JustinHart]

anyone?

[Markus Allen]

Hey all,
I don't have many affiliates yet (just 3), but I was wondering what you do to help your affiliates? Do you send them emails? I don't want to send too many "let's do this!" emails because I think that would be annoying...

ideas?

I can help you out Justin.

Here's what to do... find an affiliate program that educates their affiliates and emulate what they do.

Mike Geary, the guy who's sold something like $5 million worth of a single ClickBank ebook is very impressive. He sends out emails periodically teaching his affiliates how to sell his ebook.

Here's where to get Geary's affiliate alerts:
http://www.truthaboutabs.com/Affiliate-Info.html

Pretty impressive, isn't he?

[alanmag9]

Justin,

Do you have a ClickBank product? If so, make sure that your description and information you give the affiliates is very highly attractive in telling them how well your product is converting, and also differentiate yourself from the market. If you find a perk about your product that is better than the rest of the products they see in the results, you will have a much better turnout of affiliates.

In my description for my personal product, I wrote "The New CB Reaper Is Launched! We're Paying Out 75% With Very High Conversion Rates. We Have Put 40+ Years Of Marketing Experience Into This Product And Have Excellent Design And Sales Copy From The Gurus, So Start Promoting CB Reaper Fast!"

Within days I had around 70 affiliates promoting my product. It wasn't a bad start. I didn't write any emails or anything of that nature. They just saw my description, created a hoplink, and started promoting.

With JV partners it's different. You must spend a lot more time developing relationships and building credibility with them before you start seeing some real numbers from their email lists.

Hope this helps,
Alan

[Audrey Thorne]

Hey Justin...I think I am familiar with your product, and have even recieved your ebook.

As an affiliate, I really like plenty of good sales copy I can summarize, and also banners and graphics I can insert into my pages, they come in handy. The other thing is emails for affiliates to send out to their lists, that's a nice feature(not that I have a list, but still).

Good luck with your product!

Audrey

[Mark Winder]

Hi Justin! I think you're asking the $1 million question there!

I think it's a delicate balance when you're dealing with affiliates and JVs - you want to connect with them, yet you don't want to overwhelm them.

Considering you only have 3 or so affiliates right now, I'd recommend contacting each one personally and asking them how you can help them and asking what more they need from you. One of the things I've found when dealing with my JV partners, is that the easier I make it for them to promote, the more likely it is that they will.

So on that note, provide your affiliates with a series of email templates - if you can, drop their actual affiliate links into the emails FOR them. Find out what else they would want or need to promote. Blog posts? Twitter tweets? Facebook updates? Content - articles, videos, audios, etc.

Remember - you only need to create this stuff once... but you can use it over and over again with your affiliates.

Also - SOME of your affiliates will take the ball and run with it. They'll make their own promotional material and some of it might be better than yours. So make sure you have a way of getting a copy of it (one of the things that I do is make sure my affiliates add me to their mailing lists. That way I know 2 things: when they mailed and what they mailed! ;) )

Again - boiling it down... make it as simple as possible for your affiliates, and they'll love you for it!

Hope that helps!