Wondering about a surefire way to get word out about your book, ebook or information product?

Sure, you can run yourself silly doing promotional events, book signings, webinars, article writing, press release submission and blog posting…and yes you should be doing all of this!  But is there something else?

LEVERAGED TRAFFIC AND SALES

The real power of selling things on the internet came to me very early on when I signed my very first heavy-hitter affiliate (Joe Vitale) to “tell” his list of fans about my latest ebook.

Minutes after he sent the email I started seeing a flood of orders hit and subscriber sign-ups hit my inbox…when the dust settled a few days later I had sold multiple dozens of copies of a $47 product, pocketed thousands, had a list of nearly 1000 subscribers from this one campaign itself and most of all…had learned a valuable lesson about how leveraged affiliate marketing worked.

All it took was a few contacts with Joe, a week or so of having him review the product, and some ideas on how we could jointly promote…

Even better, Joe went on to promote my product on his sites for years to come…I continued to benefit from leveraged sales – frankly I’m sure he even forgot it was there except for the monthly affiliate check I would cut him.

So the bottom line is that you want to have your own affiliate program and be actively growing your list of affiliates to really see huge momentum in your ebook selling business.

How do you find these affiliates?

FINDING TOP AFFILIATES AND BUILDING MOMENTUM

Here are 10 methods you can use to track them down and turn them into passive profit centers for your information publishing business.

Couple of suggestions…

1. Search Google for sites around your keywords looking for sites that appear professional, are structured as “authority sites” (Ex. lots of content, an email list, blog, etc…) and then approach these authority site owners with an offer to have them review your product (do that first before soliciting them to become an affiliate)

2. Attend trade shows or conferences in your market – you can walk away with hundreds of potential affiliates and an excuse to contact them

3. Hit Twitter and Facebook with the express purpose of finding potential JV partners – I find this works MUCH better than email as people generally pay more attention to their FB and Twitter dialogs (not PM‘s – they ignore those)

4. Find authority blogs in your marketplace and participate – make comments, this breaks the ice and usually will get the blog owner speaking with you

5. Search for JV broker in your given market – some have a decent level of JV brokers who feed larger affiliate sites with new offers for a middle cut.

6. Mine Discussion Forums...here you want to see the people that participate frequently, look at their sites and see if they are a candidate for sharing content to help tell people about your new ebook

7. JV Directories such as Clickbank, Ejunkie and Commission Junction operate platforms that include marketplaces where affiliates can search and find your products to promote

8. Market Your Affiliate Program…just as you would market your landing pages and sales sites or products, let people know your affiliate program is open and pays them to refer your product to others.  Issue press releases, keyword optimize your affiliate landing page (where affiliates can learn more about your affiliate program) and include the links to your affiliate program in article resource links, forum signatures, etc…

9. Advertise...we have had success doing this and very few people actually take advantage of this approach.  Even though you may look at this as spending money on Facebook Ads, Google Ads or Solo ads without actually seeing immediate return (in terms of direct product sales), just attracting one affiliate can result in far more sales than running direct ads could ever provide.  The trick here is to have a well messaged affiliate sales page that gives the reader solid benefits of promoting your products.

10. Reciprocity…Consider promoting other people’s products to your list which will create feelings of obligation to the other party to at LEAST here you out on your offer to have them promote your product to their subscribers.  Obviously your leverage will grow with time, but use what you have in the beginning – even offering to do multiple promotions, interviews, audio/video testimonials for them if they will help you with your promotion.

YOUR TURN

Do you have a question or experience to share about building your own affiliate program online…?  Leave us a comment and we will be happy to give you our best response.