Fighting To Get Active, Quality Affiliates For Your eBook?
There are many steps that seem like major obstacles as you build your ebook business online, not the least of which is getting high quality, active affiliates on-board.
Its critical that you use affiliate programs to generate traffic and sales to your ebook site – more than 60% of my sales come from affiliate generated traffic – that's a massive amount of leveraged income that comes whether I'm in front of my PC or not.
Attracting quality affiliates can be tough though – yet without them, your ebook business will limp along at much less than its full potential. What's the biggest problem?
A major problem today is simply getting your affiliate's attention. Anyone worth having as solid affiliate is already extremely busy, successful and has lots of offers on the table – so sending an email asking them to consider marketing your product is likely to be ignored altogether.
You can turn the tables though, and have a small army of powerful, active affiliates for your ebook business by first offering them something for free, building a relationship and then (and only then) asking for their partnership.
A much better way is to start by offering review copies of your product in return for feedback. By doing this, you are asking your potential jv for nothing, instead you are offering to give him/her a copy of your product taking the initial uncomfortableness out of the process.
Then, if they really like your product, get a testimonial and hit them with your offer.
That way you will focus on those who really like what you have to offer and will have created a relationship making your liklihood of success much better.
Jeff
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Comments on Fighting To Get Active, Quality Affiliates For Your eBook?
Jeff,
What's your view on being selective about accepting affiliates?
Do you think it's a good idea to screen each potential affiliate or just let them all in?
Persoanlly, I'd rather have 100 strong affiliates whom I know are legit rather than 1000 not knowing what they might do to my brand.
What's your view?
I certainly agree with your statement that you would rather have 100 strong affiliates than 1000 non-active. In my case, I don't screen new affiliates, however what I do is…
1) I seek out super affiliates each month – its part of my constant work process, I am always looking to add at least 2 new major affiliate partners each month, sometimes its much more, other times that's what I achieve. Meanwhile, I get 100's of others that join, most of which do a one-time promotion and that's it.
2) I send out bi-weekly updates, trainings and reminders as well as dynamic tools they can use to promote my programs. Often non-active affiliates will be re-activated by constant reminders – those that don't want to be reminded end up dropping out.
3) I review my stats monthly and my most active affiliates get extra attention. I've even run affiliate reward programs that aim to reward most active affiliates.
Bottom line – if you don't pre-select upon entering as an affiliate, you certainly can determine who your top performers are each month and pay most of your attention to them.
Cheers…
Jeff
Thanks Jeff for your thoughts,
I like the idea of monitoring your affiliates and rewarding and offering incentives to the top ones.
It does make sense, as pre-selecting is very time consuming.
BTW, what affiliate software do you recommend that can handle such features?