On January 13, 2014, I will be presenting at Affiliate Summit West 2014 in Las Vegas, Nevada. This will be my 10th time speaking at Affiliate Summits, and I’m excited that this one will be in my favorite format — a solo presentation.
I will dissect the ways to find and attract new affiliates into your affiliate program(s). The title of my session is 22 Effective Ways to Recruit Quality Affiliates and it will be run from 2:00 pm until 3:00 pm at the beautiful Paris Las Vegas Hotel in their spacious (7,965 square feet) Versailles Ballroom.
Pre-Conference Interview
In preparations for the show I was recently interviewed by Affiliate Summit’s Ambassador, Heather Diamanti. To learn what to expect from the session, as well as to get inspired to press on, check it out below:
Chance to Win a Free Pass!
Additionally, I have two Networking Plus Passes (which are currently being sold at $549 each) to give away!
To enter for your chance to win one of the free passes, simply submit a comment under this blog post, suggesting some of the more innovative and effective ways to find affiliates, reach out to them, or convince them to sign up with affiliate programs. If you want to elaborate on any details, be my guest too!
Deadlines: To allow the time for your travel planning, the deadline to submit your comments/entries is Monday, December 16 (of course, you’re most welcome to comment after this date too, but those “submissions” won’t qualify you for the draw). I will announce the winners by December 18 2013, or nearly 4 weeks prior to the conference.
Looking forward to your comments!
If you are looking for affiliates, and some big volume guys, you should go to an internet marketing forums online. There is one in particular. However, I won’t out it here. Hope to get a free ticket to ASW14. Anymore questions, email me.
Forums are a very good way to build relationships with affiliates. The best way to recruit affiliates would be first to become a contributing member of a forum related to a specific niche or just broad internet marketing forums which you can build rapport. Forums are definitely a good way to recruit affiliates. Suggesting offers, sources, and giving advice is a good way to get affiliates on board.
Another good way is by networking with affiliate friendly traffic sources and helping affiliates get faster payments, higher payouts, etc.
Looking forward to a free ASW 14 pass! 🙂
Thanks!
Hi Geno,
Thank you! I have learned much from your posts. I have Googled many times to learn more about affiliate marketing. I have read a number of your articles and I am now a little wiser and little more educated thanks to your recommendations and knowledge.
On to the topic at hand, my recommendation has to do with platform. I think there is a huge market out there of potential affiliate marketers using drag and drop platforms. I myself use Weebly. It is an easy platform to use and gaining huge market share. Adding affiliate widgets would be as easy as dragging and dropping on to my page and inserting snippets of Javascript. Sellfire.com offers the ability to create coupon galleries and product galleries … there are some drawbacks with this service though.
My recommendation would be to create and market affiliate widgets for both products and coupons galleries that can be inserted via Javascript for drag and drop platforms. (On a side note, I have been communicating with Brian at Prosperent who says, they are have a Javascript coupon widget slated for development. They already have some product widgets.) I am constantly Googling looking for new Weebly widgets and I know I am not alone … there are very few widgets in general and none directly marketed to drag and drop platforms for affiliate marketing. I think the drag and drop platform is a huge untapped market. Finding new affiliates would be easy, as users of these drag and drop platforms are craving and already looking for widgets. If you were to create widgets and market them by optimizing SEO with phrases such as: Weebly widgets, Wix widgets, Drag and Drop widgets, affiliate marketing widgets you would get a whole new audience of affiliate marketers with little to no marketing dollars. Create a couple Youtube videos showcasing the widgets and you have your magnet to attract new affiliates. No need to find affiliates, “we” are looking for you, if you can provide the tools we need.
I would love to win one of the tickets you are so graciously offering. The timing couldn’t be better, I will be in Vegas accompanying my boyfriend who will be attending his sales conference during the same period of time. I look forward to meeting you and hearing your thoughts on my recommendation.
Awesome! I’d love to be a first time attender to Affiliate Summit.
We’re a membership site for food bloggers. We’re currently in the process of building a course on our site called “using Food Blogger Pro”, and one of the sections will be how to go through the process of signing up to be an affiliate. 🙂
Hi Geno,
I’ve been reading your blogs for the last 2 months. I really appreciate the way you’re sharing the lesser-known facts, case studies and guides for affiliate managers/merchants. I’m also writing a series of posts to share my affiliate marketing experience that I am learning every day, and I’m going to launch a small blog this week. After reading this blog I think I should share some tips in brief, I believe these tips may be useful for affiliate managers and merchants.
***Finding New Affiliates outside the network***
1) Search engines, forums, twitter, Facebook, etc. You all know about effective strategies, so I am not going into details.
2) Use Google Alerts- add your keywords, your brand name, and your competitor name. And you all know what to do with the results that you will receive to your inbox. 🙂
3) Try to find affiliates on blog search engines like Technorati and Blogcatalog.
4)Don’t ignore blogrolls on affiliate sites.
5) Try Citation Labs Link Prospector – Yes, it’s very useful service. Though Link Prospectus raison d’etre is link prospecting, but this tool can be very useful to find out affiliates as well. Once I used this tool to find adverting partner for one my clients, and it works. The best thing about this tool is that it finds out websites/webpages from the deepest and darkest corner of the web, which you usually miss when finding affiliates partners by using search engines.
6) Try BuzzStream tool- When sending emails to people outside the affiliate network, finding out contact information, managing affiliate details, and writing follow up emails are really tedious tasks. For conducting effective outreach, give a try to this tool. Why I find this tool useful? There are many reasons and I am sharing one here- this online tool offer you a bookmarklet (known as Buzzmarker), so when you find a website who caters traffic of your interest, just click the bookmarket, and this tool extract contact details of the website owner from webPages, Whois record and social sites thereby saving your time .
***Convince affiliates ***
1) Incentives are very important.
2) When outreaching affiliates, (Giveaways + affiliate network invitation) combo could increase chances of conversions.
3) Use a branded email – Get email for your merchant’s domain. A branded email ([email protected]) looks more convincing than those [email protected] , [email protected], or affiliates (merchantsite)@outlook.com.
Setup Google Apps account to use gmail.com with your own web domain. And if your client doesn’t want to buy Google apps paid plans, then you could even setup Outlook.com with your own Web Domain, and for free.
And yes, if you’re using Google Apps for outreach activities, don’t forget to install rapportive plug-in. And don’t forget to upload your profile picture.
*** Tips for merchants***
After seeing hundreds of inactive program on various affiliate network, I want to say to them that affiliate program is not “Set it and forget it” kind of thing. Please hire an affiliate manager if you really want to get ROI.
Geno, I would love to win one of those tickets, but at this time it’s not possible for me to visit US. But I would be thankful to you if you find time to comment on my new blog. I’ll be posting new posts this weekend, and I’ll inform you as well.
BTW, I like that Columbus story. I never knew he had a hard time in getting permission for his voyage.
Thanks for reading. Comments are welcome.
Ishank Badhani
I think there’s plenty of info out there about “finding” affiliates. The obvious sources are places they congregate. Marketing forums, Facebook groups, and conferences/meetups.
But convincing affiliates to join your program is a different matter. Every Affiliate Program Manager does the obvious stuff. They try and highlight payout, give the stock creatives, etc. But the ones that convince me go above and beyond.
One example I can give is Stefanie who works with Dream Marriage. When she sees an affiliate posting a follow along or mentioning they are testing the offer, she always chimes in with useful advice. Stuff like demographic insights that help the affiliate understand the audience better, suggestions and improvement on landing page copy that can increase the lead quality, and more.
Once I see that, it makes me want to run the offer. Because I know that I’ve got a smart Affiliate Manager in my corner who can help me understand the business better.
I guess I missed the 12/16 deadline, lol but here’s my comment anyway.
See you at ASW