Best Way to Find Affiliates

[maymorgano]

Hi,

Let's say I have a small budget to advertise to the webmasters / affiliates community, to get to get them to sign up for our program.

Where would you put your money if you where me?
Where would you not put your money if you were me?

Thanks in advance for your help

 

[Ron Bechdolt]

Advertising to get affiliates, on a small budget, might not get you very good results unless you have a niche product and could find a niche affiliate magazine or area where those type of affiliates might find you. Understand there are hundreds of affiliate programs and thousands of affiliates so your advertising might just get lost in the mass of information they receive.

What you might want to consider, as one option, is to try and find affiliates through free sources, like forums, blogs, etc. Then, use that budget you have to offer special bonuses for affiliates that make a first sale, reach certain goals, etc.

There are also some books out there on affiliate marketing that might be helpful in this area. One I read, written by an affiliate manager I know, is A Pratical Guide to Affiliate Marketing and can be found on Amazon. com.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Ron give you some great pointers.

If you have the type of program affiliates could search for by keyword, you could do a small Adwords campaign. If you have a green widgets affiliate program, don't bother because no one will be searching for it. But if you have a product affililiates may be looking for like baby products affiliate program, shoes affiliate program, travel affiliate program, etc. then try Adwords. If you set you your main "key phrase + affiliate program" in quotes the cost should be quite low and you won't get that many clicks, but will be visible if anyone is looking for you.

Also depending on your product and whether your program would qualify to be a 5 Star program,
I may have some options for you here at the 5 Star community.

 

[maymorgano]

Hi Ron,

Most of the forums (the good ones), just don't allow that kind of advertising. Am I missing something? I do want to run some targeted campaigns per forums, but the forums bump me out

 

[Linda Buquet]

You just need to read the rules at each one.

We allow one program announcement per month in our affiliate program announcement forum. Read the rules and you can post there.

Digitalpoint allows so you can post in their affiliate forum. Other affiliate forums have special sections for new programs to announce. But many forums would just consider your post spam and delete it. So you have to read the rules of each forum to see if and how to post.

 

[Ron Bechdolt]

You are correct, there are many that do not allow blatent advertising, but if you start to participate in them, pleople come to recognize you and and pay closer attention. If you are allowed to put your company name in a sig without links, they may take the time to investigate. Advertising rates there can vary, but some offer reasponable plans for banner advertising.

I hear what you are saying, it is very hard for a beginner merchant to get noticed and gain the trust of affiliates. That is why a lot of new merchants hire outsourced affiliate managers (OPM's). They already have connections to affiliates, know how to attract and motivate affiliates, etc. Many can offer various levels of service from initial start up campaigns to full management of a program.

Many networks also have programs in place to manage affiliate programs by their own staff. Not sure what they charge. I know you do lose a bit of the personal touch with that type of set up.

Sorry if I am not a lot of help, just throwing out some random thoughts here.

 

[maymorgano]

Ron and Linda - you are a lot of help.
I guess persistence will get me somewhere, as well as getting the first happy affiliates who will tell their friends.

Thanks again

 

[Rob_TID]

The main way I used to do it was to search for sites that I thought would be a good fit and then approach them INDIVIDUALLY with UNIQUE ideas on how they could incorporate my product.

Spending an hour a day on it used to get me an average of about 30 new affiliates per month. About 3 of them would make 90% of the sales though. The good thing is you have a group to see who is putting in the effort and can then help those affiliates out.

Some affiliates are worth putting more time into. Sometimes (for the larger sites) I would code up a whole page using their website template and just send it to them to show them how they could integrate my product. The fact that you take the time to do this seems to impress people and make them more open to working with you.

Cut fine. Cut deep.

 

[Dane Grey]

Have you seen "Affiliate Scout"? I am not sure if they charge to advertise there, but it's worth a look anyway.

 

[maymorgano]

Thank you very much for your ideas, and for taking the time to answer. I appreciate it.

I'll just keep on rolling, I guess that if you have a good product, and there is demand for it out there - than you'll do fine.

May