How to Attract Super Affiliates
Affiliate sales are your ticket to an income that runs on autopilot. It might be fun to launch a few products on your own, write a bunch of articles and optimize pay-per-click campaigns, but at some point that is going to become boring, almost like a chore. Wouldn't it be great to hand the reigns over to someone else, to have someone else focus on the marketing while you sit back, collect the money, and only deal with customer support? There are three simple tactics you can use to attract super affiliates to your offer.
The first thing you can do is write a solo ad. When a well-known internet marketer launches a new product, do you notice that many of the e-mails you receive for it, from different marketers, all say the exact same thing ? That is because the product vendor gave out solo ads to his affiliates. A solo ad is a pre-written cut and paste e-mail advertisement for your product. It contains a catchy subject line and some text to get people to click on the affiliate link in the e-mail.
That is the only job of the solo ad... to get people to click. If that means you have to educate people a tiny bit on the product to get them interested, or you have to share a few bullet points, do it, but get people to click. Many marketers give affiliates multiple solo ads, but I believe in keeping things simple and only giving them a single solo ad. I make sure to remind my would-be affiliates that they can use the ad as a blog post, e-mail message, rewrite and submit it as an article or press release, record it into a video, do anything they can to stay ahead of the competition.
Affiliates also care about metrics. Tell prospective affiliates what the conversion rate is for your site. How much commission do they make? Is there an upsell or recurring commissions? Are there affiliate incentives? Do affiliates get free access to the product or a higher commission after a certain number of sales? What is the visitor value? All of these pieces of info are very important to your affiliates so they know what kind of traffic to throw at it, what to bid for keywords, and so on.
Finally, don't forget to train your affiliates, especially in niches outside of internet marketing. Tell them about list building, landing pages, forum marketing, blogging, and so on, so they have all the tools they need to get your product out there, and make you both some money.
Those tips are what you need to get started in gathering super affiliates: solo ads, giving the proper metrics, and training affiliates.
Filed in: Traffic
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I think you keep me busier than a one-legged man in a butt kicking contest.
5 Minute Copywriting has me embarked on my next little product creation: 12 short (4 min) screencasts supporting existing blog posts which will go out as premium content.
Good points, Robert.
I’ve also been told by 2 super affiliates that they want to know HOW the product will HELP their people. They’re very protective of their list (which results in many aff sales when they do promote).
Solo ads are great and are a must to have for your affiliates, for sure. When I’m the affiliate I never use them word for word but take chunks from them, usually the benefits, and write it in my own words so it sounds genuinely me and not the same as all the other email broadcasts.
Thanks,
Peggy
Robert – Seems like I have seen this idea and subject matter before on another of your websites. Any ideas where I might have seen it?
It really looks like something else that is out there. Hmmmmm . . .
Jim Fortune
At the moment I’m still getting my products to sell on my own. This business is being built, piece by piece. I know that one day I’m going to offer high commissions to affiliates that would like to sell my products.
Thanks for always looking ahead and showing us how it’s done!
Great post.
Is there an affiliate program you recommend someone just starting out? I am ready to get something like this setup.
“I would rather benefit from 1% of the efforts of 100 people that from 100% of my own.” – J.Paul Getty
Great article. I was just putting together my affiliate page and this was the determining factor of including ONE solo email.
Thanks for the simple breakdown.
Of course these salient point coming from a ‘super affiliate’ like you, though I have heard about solo ads before I have seriously not given it much thought, thanks for the reminder…I am on my way to becoming a super affiliate with following your tips!
Robert…I’ve been visiting your blog for a while now and I always find a gem in your new posts. Thanks for sharing
If you want to rely on others to help market your website and increase sales, an affiliate program is a way to go.
An affiliate program is the perfect partnership, as everyone involved makes money. Depending on your business or what you sell, you provide affiliates with coded links or banners or sales page templates.
Their website visitors click on the links. If a sale is made, you make money, but so does your affiliate. Once again, this is literally the perfect partnership.
Your tips are wonderful. But I am somewhat disappointed about how many of the gurus keep everything among themselves. Either they want a startup fee, or they will refer to lack of time – even though you can later see that they run a competing product inspired by whatever idea you presented to them.
You are somewhat unique because we have a direct communication channel with you, whereas many others practice active censorship. Whenever you write something challenging your comments simply just won’t appear.
So cartels are already in place in the world of online marketing and success depends upon our ability to break the odds set up by these gurus. In that perspective your tips are wonderful and can add to our online penetration into new markets/niches. 🙂
Robert – It is always GREAT to read your posts! The information you share truly helps others in their businesses. Affiliate programs and Super Affiliate programs are an AWESOME
This will be good to attract the gurus to mail on your behalf since they are more interested in making the big bucks. I recently learned how to earn more from each customer and how to attract affiliates because they earn so much per visitor.
Just a question though… will not the superaffiliates want high priced products just so they can make more commissions? Will they even be interested in $67-$97 products or anything that is priced lower?
I second to your second tip.
I think the shortcut way to get super-duper affiliates promote your product is giving the RIGHT answer to this question: what is in it for me? [me=those-super-duper-affiliate]. Once you identified this, the road to promote your stuff through their emails becomes a lot easier. The problem is, however, that getting those big dogs say YES is a matter of ART of persuading.
Regards,
Sud.L
This is a great kick in the back side for me as I have been struggling and simply waisting time.
You caused me to pick up what I had dropped a few months ago and I am not leaving my office until it’s done.
Thanks,
Michael
Hey Robert, do you advocate using something like PPC on your offer just to get to the point of having some conversion stats to show off to prospective affiliates?
This part of the process always looks a bit bootstrappy to me (not sure that’s a word 🙂 )
Martin
Hey Robert,
Good tips, but you know what caught my attention? Using scarcity on a blog post – I had to be one of the first 100, and am going to be watching to see how well this works – I thinks it a fabulous idea!
Thanks again for the tips, I’ll pass them along to my clients…
Warmly,
Cheryl
For sure you want to be assisting your affiliates or potential affiliates as much as possible by at least providing an affiliates web site that provides them with Ad creative material and text content that they can use.
And commission levels of the order of 75% must be a big incentive.
Great points Robert.
I believe the most important part of the entire process is the conversion. If you have a site that isn’t going to convert, why would affiliates send people there?
Thanks for more great tips!
Robert,
Thanks for the tip about reminding affiliates that they can repurpose the solo email. (And timely, since I’m writing one today.)
Do you have an affiliate agreement that you use? Yeah, I know I’m your affiliate, but I signed up before I was ready for my own program. Now, I’m backtracking to find out what I need to know.
Thanks,
Lynn
Lynn, I just use the agreement that comes with the provider… I link to Clickbank for my own products and Lance uses the default agreement for PostAffiliatePro for our membership site affiliates.
There are so many options to consider why you are developing an online business. I like how you present information, Robert b/c it is how to get the most bang for your buck (or maybe in this case it is buck for you bang). Thank you for helping to streamline a complex process of making money online!
Theresa 😎
I like this nuts and bolts approach. I haven’t as yet put together my own product, but I am an affiliate of several different programs, and it’s a nice guide as to what to look for in a well-organized affiliate program.
As a super affiliate (I make over 10K each month just with this part of my online bussiness) I am looking for one thing: products and services that provide such excellent value that I am willing to stake my reputation on them when I recommend them to my list.
Connie,
Ohhhh yeah! Super CRG Crusher.
I agree with Connie nothing hurts you more than promoting a crappy product to your list (which you should be building)
Also I wouldn’t ever send out the exact solo ad the vendor provides although it’s nice to use as a base.
Robert good stuff, I like how you explain to get maximum exposure out of having to do minimal work (as far as affiliate tools go)
I love getting new buyers on my list from affiliates, so it’s definitely something I’m always interested in learning more about.
Yep good advice Jeff, I have written emails and sometimes whole launch sequences for some affiliates just so their emails are 100% unique to them. I’m surprised more people don’t do it.
Andrew,
Why 75 percent?
Amazon only pays out 5 percent.
AdSense… even less than that.
Robert, your comment #26 is incorrect. The Adsense commission is 68% of what Google takes in through AdWords.
Reference: http://joelcomm.com/google-reveals-adsense-publish.html
Henrik,
But you’re getting paid per click, not per sale like you would as an affiliate.
What if you were paid 5 cents through AdSense and that person bought into a $100 a month membership site and stayed for 12 months? You could have made $600 in commissions, instead you only made 5 cents… oops.
Robert, thanks for your feedback.
Please don’t misunderstand. I fully understand the anatomy of affiliate marketing. But also the fact that it’s far more difficult to get Mr. Y to take out his Visa than to accumulate a click on an Adsense ad.
When you have a CTR of say 5-8% on Adsense, you may only get a conversion rate of 10% of those clicks into sales. So in some cases some high-paying keywords may be very beneficial to target through Adsense, whereas e-book sales of 10% of the 5-8% who ever arrived on your sales page can end up paying very little if your sales don’t pay an excellent commission.
To say it straight out: I have tried Amazon affiliate banners, and I am still waiting for my first sale to happen. Even tweets couldn’t perform – and it seems some are indicating Amazon is pretty bad since they only pay a commission on the book you are directly linking to, and not the entire purchase made by clients, so I am pretty hesitant about Amazon…
Keep up the good work. 🙂
Excellent post. I sure can see some things that I am doing wrong. Thanks for sending me the email to visit and I will be back and check things out.
Robert,
I realize how crucial this is to my online business,(any online business) and have committed to making it my number one priority! This will be DONE by 11/12/10.
Thanks for the positive push.
Bob Molton – (rock n roll)
Hi Robert, so say I have all those things (solo ad, complete metrics and training) and other affiliate tools like banners / box art / blog posts / articles / etc.
How do you go about attracting the next level up of affiliates.? Do you send them an email and just ask them to get on board? What’s your take on this?
I’m sure you get requests every day for you to promote others products.
Aaron
Robert,
I agree with you about repurposing the solo ad when promoting an affiliate product.
Most of time I can see many internet marketers never bother rewriting the solo ad but just use the one given by the product creator.
Rewriting or repurposing the solo ads will definitely increase your CTR rate.
Thanks for sharing your tip.
I’m in a niche where there are few people who have email lists, etc. There are several blogs and podcasts, but very few of them treat them like businesses and try to sell anything. I’ve tried (a little) to encourage them to grow a list and promote my products, but you’re right. I need to specifically train them in the areas of marketing and list-building.
Thanks Robert.
Thanks, Robert!
Am now off to create solo ads…
The tip on training affiliates is timely. Will use M3 for that. 🙂
I used a solo ad to promote a Guru recently. I just wrote a blog post about what I thought of the product then pasted the solos ad that I was supplied in there. Then let the Guru do the job of converting prospects. Like you say Robert, the purpose of the ad is to simply get the click.
Okay Robert, here’s a question; I am a NEWBIE with a head that is spinning with too much to see, to learn, to know…I got my first *book “published” in Amazon; “The 3 Energies That Unveil Your Life’s Purpose” and have a list of maybe 20 people…. I have a website that Jim Edward’s team put together, a downloadable journal, with the *book to purchase. Could I create my bundle for Affiliates? Should I do this so early in the game? Do you have a company you like for your Affiliate Software? Think NEWBIE….Do you have “Affiliates for Dummies” classes? Thanks!
Hi Robert,
How do you decide which affiliates to get? Not everyone is the same.
I have several people who promised to only send me occasional emails when I opted-in, but have bombarded me with affiliate links. This is not the kind I want.
How do you differentiate? Between those with a list of buyers (in a matching niche) and those with a huge list of tire kickers?
Warren
Great points to keep in mind when I’m up to that point. Affiliate marketing isn’t something I’ve focussed on much yet but will be building that space next year.
I really appreciate the solo ads product owners provide their affiliates. But I never use a solo ad in it’s original form. The emails I like to send my list are pretty short (would love to get them as short as most of yours!)
Another thing I appreciate is when affiliates are given a handful of updates to post on Twitter.
Free access to a product?? Haven’t seen that happen yet.
Melanie
Great info to know! I think Affiliates are coming soon, for me.
Great post. Something I’ve not done much with, but definitely need to look into it again.
Thanks for the reminder.
That’s some rather fascinating stuff, but I’ve got a question for you. I have a WordPress site, however my style is rather lame. Yours looks really good though and I am wondering if it is a premium style? I’m just contemplating acquiring one, but I really like the one you have. Thanks!
I’m always learning from you. You are a expert.
Robert, good points.
I do wish you would create a script we could buy that would be better than Rapid Action Profits and all the other wannabe-scripts. It would be nice to have a quick PHP plugin that could handle payments in multiple forms just by editing a few parameters – and which might even be compatible with both PayPal and AlertPay, or at least Paypal without the boring boxed affiliate registration that is used by so many people.
If one could edit color choices etc, I would gladly pay for such a script and indeed begin running product launches on autopilot.
Hope you had a good x-mas and new year season. 🙂
Here’s a trick, find affiliate marketers that already sell in your niche. Approach an super affiliates and give them an offer they can’t refuse.
A smaller piece of a bigger pie is better than a big piece of a small pie.
Hey Robert…
YEP…thats the only way to grow…you need to have time and room to build your online empire…and the only way in my book is to do so is to *create* the time to build it by outsourcing business tasks….
…recuiting JVS and building an army of affiliates…for the steady weekly..*auto-pilot income!
Ed.
This is great information and I believe super affiliates need a sample of the product so that the will know how it works and they can better explain how and why it works to their people.