Can I recruit affiliates here?

Don't think so, but thought I'd ask

[Surfiro]

Hi,

Can someone please tell me is it okay to recruit affiliates here for my affiliate program on a physical product?

Thanks a lot.

[Marcia]

No it isn't OK, but you can get some good "do and don't" feedback if you keep it general.

[Surfiro]

Thanks for the reply.

Would like to get some friendly advice on what's the best approaches to recruit affiliates. Have just set-up a new affiliate program for my site and am totally new in affiliate program arena.

All comments and suggestions appreciated. Thank you.

[edited by: eljefe3 at 4:03 am (utc) on Oct. 7, 2006]

[RossWal]

I'm another merchant who would really appreciate some discussion about selecting and recruiting apffiliates.

C'mon all you reputable Affiliates, help us out. What makes your services a better investment than some of your less upstanding counterparts? What should we do in structuring a program? Go with a network - or recruit directly? How do we match our needs to the right providers? What about reputation and protecting the integrity of our brands?

Tell us what makes for a good affiliate-merchant relationship.

<edit: fixed typos>

[edited by: RossWal at 3:21 pm (utc) on Oct. 9, 2006]

[ska_demon]

C'mon all you reputable Affiliates

Well, I don't know about upstanding but I'll give this a shot.

Firstly, why would I want to work for you?

Do you:

1. Have a unique product that isn't swamped by millions of other affiliates already?

2. Pay a bigger % than any competitors you might have?

3. Does anyone actually want your product. What's the point of spending time, effort and money flogging a dead horse.

4. Will you actually pay me for my sales/leads/whatever or will you skim it and reject sales left, right and centre.

5. Are you available to talk to over the phone or do I have to raise yet another support ticket that will never get answered?

6. etc

7. etc

These are just some of the questions I would be asking myself before I joined your program.

If you have competition you will find that most of the good affiliates have already struck up a deal with these companies and will need some pretty strong convincing to leave. If you have a unique product it's going to be hard to convince affiliates to invest time and money into a product/service that may flop.

Vicious Circle

Catch 22

Oh Yes!

You could join one of the major networks and hope that some affiliates find you in the abyss of affiliate programs that exist there. Remember these networks will not promote your program unless it is pretty damn special.

Or, you could pay less and join one of the smaller networks and get less exposure.

It's hard isn't it?

Or, You could try the forums that allow you to post specifics about your aff prog. This route will probably get you some interest at least.

In short, it ain't easy.

I would write more but you get the idea and anyway, It's nearly 5 o clock and I'm about to finish work.

Hope this helps

Ska

[QualityNonsense]

A few things I look for:

- Reliable tracking
- Prompt payment by BACS
- High CPA/commission
- 'affiliate friendly' site (eg, no 0800/1800 number leaking sales)
- Dialogue with a named affiliate manager

[Michael Anthony]

One method I've seen over the years that works really well is for the merchants to search for their given keywords and then email all the top ranking sites asking if the webmasters would be interested.

Bear in mind that most of these sites will already have an affiliate relationship where they sell their traffic, so your offering either has to be well priced or have a better usp to convince them to switch.

It's also a fairly good way to find out what your competitors are offering in terms of payouts, as any affiliate will be happy to tell you what you'll need to outbid in order to win their business.

An established affiliate will also need more than just money to get them onboard though - if they've been working with their existing merchant for years they'll know that the program's gonna be there long term, trust the payments, tracking etc.

Good affiliates usually have well established, high paying relationships where they don't share their revenues with a network or media agency. To convince them to break these is an uphill struggle, but with charm and a really coinvincing story it can be done.

Usually they will be happy to send you a small amount of test traffic/leads to see if it's gonna work for both of you - I do this with most of my new merchants and many have gone on to become my best customers. And, if it doesn't work out, neither of you has wasted huge amounts of cash or effort,so it's a win-win.

[jomaxx]

You could look at some past threads on this subject, I've made some suggestions in a few. I'm too tired to say anything in detail now, but think about (a) concentrating on reaching potential "super-affiliates", and (b) treating your partners as professionals and not expecting them to work for less than minimum wage. These days you have to have a serious selling proposition, because it's such a no-brainer to simply slap AdSense on each page.

I can think of one prestigious affiliate program I tried giving major coverage to. I contacted them after sending them almost 10,000 visitors without a single sale, and they wouldn't suggest an explanation or agree to pay a minimum CPC or even apologize for the waste of my valuable time. So I dropped them, and they lost one of the top sites in their field. I could have sent them literally millions of visitors by now, but they had this sense of entitlement that I should be sending them unlimited traffic for free.

[Car_Guy]

Anybody whose site provides quality, targeted exposure for a company deserves money, not excuses.

The fact that the individual who started this thread three weeks ago chose to ignore the questions that were asked of them and instead contribute nothing reinforces my belief that most affiliate programs are best avoided.