How to excite the most # of affiliates and get them selling...

[Rob Toth]

I figured these 2 points would be worthwhile re-posting here. I sent them out to my subscribers.

You might be saying "well duh" but you'd be surprised how many affiliate managers / marketers forget this...

I removed the "pitch" and the part about "instant commissions" obviously just means higher frequency of payment (so even bi-weekly is better than monthly or weekly better than bi-weekly etc).

**************

Affiliates today have NO SHORTAGE of what
offer they can promote. Physical or digital.
Merchandise, info-products, services. And
any subject/niche you can dream up.

In the internet marketing / information
marketing arena ... the "noise" of how many
aff opps there are is pretty insane.

So if YOU have a product that you'd want to
recruit affiliates for and have them
promoting long term... here are 2 points
to focus on:

Affiliates like money.

Go figure.

And this means 2 things...


1) Payment notifications

Just being told (via email) that they
received a commission is enough to spark
a little fire of motivation in an affiliate.

Given the exact same effort being put in,
nearly every affiliate would rather see
10 x $100 payments vs. 1 x $1000 payment.

Same amount of money... VERY different
response.

That does NOT mean you don't sell $1000
products (or whatever), but if you'd like
to "train" your affiliates to promote
YOUR product line and you want to build
that merchant-affiliate relationship, you
SHOULD have several lower ticket, high
commission-percentage and high conversion
offers so they can get accustomed to
seeing payment notifications from your company.


2) Instant commissions

Would you rather wait 60 days to receive
your earned commissions or 60 seconds
(ie: instant)?

Exactly.

Instant payments are BIG BIG motivators
especially since most affiliate marketers
are struggling and don't have predictable
ca*sh flow.

Not to mention if you want your affiliate
to succeed, you should return his earnings
to him as quick as possible so that he
can re-invest that into additional promotional
opportunities for your product line.

What this means is if it comes down to
promoting your offer or any one of 20 other
similar quality and similar priced products...
but YOURS pays instant commissions, YOU
get that affiliate.

------ chop -----------------------


I'll send "part 2" early tomorrow morning. The above is just a bit of food for thought or gentle reminder.

[Michael Larkin]

Hi Rob: That's great stuff. Looking forward to part 2.

[Andrew Maule]

Number 1 is so true. Every time I receive a commission for something I immediately think to myself about ramping up traffic to that offer.

[Rob Toth]

And the "instant commission" simply means frequency of payments... and that too is a big motivator. It provides cashflow for the affiliate so whether that's a instant, daily, weekly, bi-weekly... the higher the frequency, the more it "trains" the affiliate that your affiliate program pays AND it hands them back their advertising capital.

FYI... Posted "part 2" to my mini blog at RobTheGenieToth.com .

[mjbacch]

I can see the value in instant payments but what are your thoughts on returns etc. I know that the average return rate, at least in the IM arena is about 15%. Would you suggest just eating the returns in order to have more sales activity? I guess if you could increase your sales by 15% it would be a wash.

[Martin R Butler]

I must agree with that Rob, people like the "dripping tap" constantly feeding their bank account, I know I do. I don't like to see my hard earned ;D affiliate money sitting in the owners account. I have had large amounts of affiliate earnings kept by the shady operators in the past and it leaves a bitter taste in your mouth.

[Shaun Lee]

Hi Rob, what happens if you send commissions instantly to affiliates and one of your customers asks for a refund?

Do you have to refund the customer with your own money?

-Shaun

[David Sigouin]

I think twice a month or even every month commission is perfect.

Using clickbank or services like that automates your refund or payement system.