Secrets Of My Top Affiliates

[Garland Coulson]

I pay out thousands of dollars in commissions to my affiliates ever month.

Some affiliates make only a little, but others make thousands of dollars per year from me.

While I was extremely pleased to see these top affiliates do so well, I wanted to know how they were doing it! :) After all, if I could get 50-100 affiliates doing as well as my top 2-3 affiliates, my income (and theirs) would skyrocket.

So I contacted a few of my top affiliates to see what was going on.

I found out they are doing a few key things that really ramped up their affiliate commissions with me.

Personal Review: Rather than just sending out the usual solo ad to their lists, they were carefully reviewing the product and telling their subscribers how the product would help them.

Bonuses: Some of my top affiliates offered their own bonuses to the offer in addition to the bonuses I was already offering.

Building Me Into Their Back Office: Some of my top affiliates have membership web sites that train members on how to be successful with a step by step program. They built my products right into the step by step program so all their students using the program would join.

Worked With Their Relationship With Their Subscribers: My top affiliates have excellent relationships with their subscribers. This is one of the reasons why their personal product review worked so well. My top affiliates also promoted my products to their members via webinars, interviews (some interviewed me for their group) and even created their own videos on how to succeed with my products.

A lot of work, but it sure paid off for them - and for me!

How do you apply this to your own situation? If you are the owner of products with affiliate programs, encourage and teach your affiliates how to do this. If you are an affiliate, consider how to ramp up your commissions by adopting these techniques.

[akitmane]

hey! i like your article, i got all my sales using JV!
can you send me your own products?

[Chris Douthit]

Great post! Including bonuses are always a huge part of making your readers take action.

[Ron Maxim]

I appreciate the post. Sometimes we can get side tracked by focusing on too many details instead of the simple basics that make things work! ;D

[ferrygreat]

Great think that you are doing great. I think the way your affiliates are trying to succeed with your products must be really appreciated. It is a lot of hard work. And most importantly thank your affiliates that they are doing so much, they are providing bonuses, as well as doing a lot to promote the products. ;) you are quite lucky man

[Sue French]

Hello,
As a new would-be affiliate, I thank you for this helpful article. Getting bogged down in info overload at present, so it's good to get a few clear tips.
Many thanks,
Sue French

[Tony Marriott]

Great tips - thanks.

Reading your post it occurred to me that product vendors, in general, may not be doing as much as they could to help affiliates (especially new ones). Of course everything a vendor does to help equates to money in their pocket as well as the affiliates.
I understand that vendors are business people and must apply their efforts in the areas that get the greatest rewards but that inevitably means helping the already successful.
As you said, the top 2-3 affiliates are making thousands whilst many are not. And I am guessing that even more would have fallen by the wayside completely.
Maybe a focus on fundamentals to help the new starters would reap rewards that far outweigh the effort. As an example, in your case, just another 2-3 top affiliates would presumably double your profits. Not suggesting that you don't help your affiliates of course, just giving a personal general view and maybe food for thought.

[Becky jenkins]

Thanks for this article, it suppports my thoughts that to get the best return from your list you really have to build a relationship with them so that they can trust what you say and sell to them. I have seen a great example of a marketer making a large amount of money from a list of less than 1,000. The way he did it was by caring about his list and only sending them products he knew would work for them. So for me it was proof that you can make a large amount of money from a small list. Infact he got a better
return out his list per subscriber than many of those with lists in excess of 10,000.

Now thats motivating!

[Andreas Spyrou]

That are some excellent tips Garland!

I also try not to use the default solo ad, and write the benefits and how the
product will help them solve their problem. What most people do when
they get 5 emails with the same subject is delete the message without even
knowing whats the product is all about!

But when a marketer has a really good relation with his list and he always writes the benefits and not just a copy-paste the default solo, the subscribers will definatelly read the message. This simply help the open rates and click throughs.
And that means more affiliate cheques! It is that simple!

[Garland Coulson]

That are some excellent tips Garland!

I also try not to use the default solo ad, and write the benefits and how the
product will help them solve their problem. What most people do when
they get 5 emails with the same subject is delete the message without even
knowing whats the product is all about!


Great point, Andreas.

If it is a product I really like and use, I try to write a personal review instead of a canned solo ad.

Sometimes I will even do a webinar to support the product.

[Garland Coulson]

Great tips - thanks.

Reading your post it occurred to me that product vendors, in general, may not be doing as much as they could to help affiliates (especially new ones). Of course everything a vendor does to help equates to money in their pocket as well as the affiliates.
I understand that vendors are business people and must apply their efforts in the areas that get the greatest rewards but that inevitably means helping the already successful.
As you said, the top 2-3 affiliates are making thousands whilst many are not. And I am guessing that even more would have fallen by the wayside completely.
Maybe a focus on fundamentals to help the new starters would reap rewards that far outweigh the effort. As an example, in your case, just another 2-3 top affiliates would presumably double your profits. Not suggesting that you don't help your affiliates of course, just giving a personal general view and maybe food for thought.


You are right that product vendors may not be doing as much as possible to help affiliates succeed. I offer an affiliate toolkit and free webinars to help them.

However, the Pareto principle suggests that 80% of your results will come from only 20% of people, so it makes sense to focus on attracting more of the high results affiliates and not just focus on trying to get every low earning affiliate to do more.

[Kunj K]

Definitely!

I've witnessed a personal review email, carefully written in the partner's "language" absolutely demolish a canned solo email in terms of response.

I guess it depends on the relationship that your affiliate has with his/her subscribers, but a personal promotion is always best.

[dacahe]

Great advice, specially when it comes to affiliate partners.

Question, how do you get your aff partners? do you go the traditional Clickbank marketplace?

Thanks

[efellows]

However, the Pareto principle suggests that 80% of your results will come from only 20% of people, so it makes sense to focus on attracting more of the high results affiliates and not just focus on trying to get every low earning affiliate to do more.

Sounds like it would make a whole lot of sense to focus on attracting the desirable affiliates to your program more than attempting to educate and train the ones that probably will not be able to contribute to your bottom line. So the big questions is, how do you find the 20% that get you 80% of your results?

[E Brian Rose]

Great post, Garland!

I am interested in learning more about this:


Building Me Into Their Back Office: Some of my top affiliates have membership web sites that train members on how to be successful with a step by step program. They built my products right into the step by step program so all their students using the program would join.

Are you saying that the content of your products are built into their course? If this is the case, are they paying you for this or is it free content that contains upsell links that they are incorporating into their membership sites?

Maybe I misunderstood what you meant. I'd love it if you could clarify. I know this is an old thread, so no worries if you let it go.

[perfectlovehere]

Great article! Thanks so much for sharing! :)

I especially liked the idea of viral/backend sales. Thanks and best of luck to you!

[abbesnetwork]

Thanks

In my opinion it is very important to build a strong relationship with affiliates. What you said about their "backoffice" activity, you have to provide support including own reviews next to usual aff tools. Anyway great great and usual post. thanks again for tips

[krastew]

Are you saying that the content of your products are built into their course? If this is the case, are they paying you for this or is it free content that contains upsell links that they are incorporating into their membership sites?

I think he was talking about integrating a part of the product or just mention it and how they've used it in order to achieve the goal... I might be wrong as well but that's how I see it.

[Owen]

This article has really helped me.

Thanks,
Owen

[Dan Lew]

Hi Garland, that's great! I also believe bonuses and reviews are a great way to convert sales, particularly if you get to top of 1st page for those keywords!

[Victor.C. Richefeller]

Very Informative Post,

Information is in abundance, but words of wisdom are rare.

Thanks.

[Shawn Micheal]

really nice article . . . !!!
i use JV and amazon affiliate to earn money online .
amazon i also a leading affiliator throughout the world .

[Davidjames]

Great article! I'm going to create a course for my affiliates to give them advice on promoting.
Thanks for this advice...

[Bill Zimmerman]

It's a simple strategy, but one that SO MANY affiliates just tend to ignore. I'm not sure if it's because they can't afford/don't want to spend money for aWeber or another autoresponder, but by far most of the affiliates that are succeeding for our products build their own list, and follow up with them.

Sure, some affiliates get lots of sales without building a list around my product, but many have built a list and are getting traffic from ANOTHER RELATED product, built that relationship, and then also promote my product.



Great advice, specially when it comes to affiliate partners.

Question, how do you get your aff partners? do you go the traditional Clickbank marketplace?

Thanks



Honestly it took a while for our affiliate program to get some traction. When we jacked our commission up to 75%, that definitely helped get eyes on it in the CB Marketplace. We completely overhauled our affiliate tools and provided alot of tools and support, and make sure we were very responsive to any affiliates that emailed us for help or advice. Once your 'gravity' starts to go up, that will get you more affiliates, which in turn will further increase your gravity, etc etc...it will start to build on itself. While I personally think the 'gravity' has nothing to do with the product quality or conversion rate, many affiliates browsing the marketplace use that as one their main determining factors.

[margo24]

Great article and i'm sure it will give everybody some valuable advice like it did to me.

Cheers

[olapeju bankole]

This is educative and informative, few people give useful information like this. Thanks it will definitely help me to achieve my dream on affiliate.

[Robin Durham]

Garland,

Thank you so much for sharing this great advice. I am so excited about it, I would like to share it with my Affiliates. Would you mind? I will of course give you the credit?

Thank You Again,
Robin
Street Hypnosis

[patrick ingram]

Re; Bill comment regarding 75% commision, I inderstand how paying out higher commision gets more affiliates, but with the clickbank fees and rolling reserve, how do you make any profits? Or are you just wanting to get the email list at that point?

Honestly it took a while for our affiliate program to get some traction. When we jacked our commission up to 75%, that definitely helped get eyes on it in the CB Marketplace.

[Rajesh Gianchandani]

Thanks for good tips. Personal relationship always provides better results.

[Devon Artis]

I pay out thousands of dollars in commissions to my affiliates ever month.
Personal Review: Rather than just sending out the usual solo ad to their lists, they were carefully reviewing the product and telling their subscribers how the product would help them.



Yes Garland you are correct I just posted about getting an real affiliate review. It seems as everyone is doing fake reviews or their not reviews at all.

I am actually looking to promote products that I can say yes it is a good product. I emailed one product owner about getting a review copy of the product and have not hear back.

Which is sad as I am on the first page of Google for the product.

Basically I am just going to promote that I have bonus ... not comfortable giving a review.

[Jamshid Khurramov]

Great tips! I'll teach my affiliates in the future to do the same.

[tania sharma]

Nice post.
Thanks for sharing to your important experience.
Will you please share your products?

[Beverley Watts]

Thanks for your post Garland - it just emphasizes that 'the money is not in the list; it's in the relationship with the list'!

Whenever I send out an email to my subscribers, I ask myself how I would feel if I'd received it!

[Beverley Watts]

Thanks for the post Garland - you've given some really excellent tips. It just emphasizes that 'the money is not in the list; it's in the relationship with the list'

Whenever I send out an email to my subscribers, I ask myself how I would feel if I'd received it!

[Julian Farley]

Great post, but that assumes you have an email list to promote too.

There are many affiliates that have no email list - they just run banner, or PPC traffic (or something else) straight to the offer. I know a few guys that get in the top 10 doing this... I've always wondered how the hell they do that.

[reza behjati]

Thanks for you report .I'm almost new in this area I hope that it would help me getting better:)

[Daniel Lane]

This is awesome I think we need more posts like this