Do contests work to get new affiliates involved?

blogs in particular

[KenMendonca]

Hi everyone, this is my first post since registering a while back.

I was interested in picking everyone's brain about an idea for motivating inactive affiliates and possibly gaining new ones.

The plan is to implement an affiliate contest where any current or new affiliate creates and submits a blog to us. Then we judge them and give cash prizes to the winners. In the future we may even set up a method for affiliates to vote on the blogs they like the best.

The main goal is to get active all those affiliates who joined the program but have never done anything to promote it. I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts.

Regards,

Ken

[eljefe3]

If the money is right, there is sure to be interest. Perhaps instead of just giving away only 1 prize, give away a few and perhaps bump up commissions on these winners to get them motivated.

[humblebeginnings]

Sorry, don't want to be negative, but how would offering your affiliates cash prizes for submitting blogs motivate them to make more sales?

How about: this month all sales generate a 90% commission. Or create a top 20 of affiliates who all get a $ 500,- bonus at the end of the month. Or start a referral program with a payout of at least 10% for an unlimited period.

And additionally, if you want to motivate your affiliates, let them promote a product that actually converts (hard to find these days), pay them on time and by EFT, and offer some darn good stats.

[jomaxx]

Wouldn't work for me personally. Spending my valuable time developing contest entries is exactly the same as buying lottery tickets, which I also don't do.

[Beagle]

I'd agree with jomaxx here. It sounds as if you're assuming that the affiliate who has the best blog will sell the most of your product(s), but it ain't necessarily so. Much better to reward the end you actually want: higher sales. The most motivating things for me tend to be tiered commission set-ups, and bonuses or higher commissions on things you particularly want to "push". Contests might work for some people, but I'd rather know I'm going to get the money I've worked for rather than have a chance that I might get more. (I don't buy lottery tickets, either.)

[danthewhaler]

The only thing that has prompted me as an affiliate to put up links sooner rather than later is "place links before <date> and increase commission by x% for the first year.

You can do loads of work for a merchant as an affiliate and find that none of it works as the merchants can't convert the traffic you send them. 0% from a million visitors means $0. I'll never make a big effort for an unknown quantity, but I will make an effort as a look-see.

[webzilla]

If it takes anything other than steady sales conversion, reliable tracking, and reliable payment of commissions due to get an affiliate "motivated", they aren't worth chasing after anyway.

These are the things that productive affiliates want. Nothing more and nothing less. Though performance bouses are always nice :)

You can offer contests, or whatever, but the affiliates that you attract with these will only exert the minimum effort required to collect the bounty, and will forget all about you as soon as another vendor comes along with another game for them to play.

[QualityNonsense]

I join dozens more programmes than I ever dedicate any serious time to. Sometimes I join a merchant on one network but run my traffic via another - say, if the data feed is better.

These are the things that productive affiliates want. Nothing more and nothing less.

I disagree. I was an inactive affiliate for a merchant until this summer; I started promoting them to compete for a £1k bonus. I saw that the traffic converts and have stuck with them. If you gain one serious affiliate, it can pay off many times over. This merchant will have made a total of £1m+ in sales via me in a couple of weeks time.

I always have a list of must-work-with merchants with decent tracking, high CPA/percentages etc. The promise of cash bonuses for new affiliates gets them bumped to the top of my hitlist.