Affiliates - How to grab their attention?

[kaknutso]

I think the widgets I sell are right in the mix with what's being offered out there. I'm trying to leverage an affiliate program and I have not got one sale in 3 months. Any tips?

[edited by: lorax at 12:24 am (utc) on Oct. 4, 2006]
[edit reason] removed specifics [/edit]

[ispy]

What we ended up getting is a lot of affiliate sign ups and eventually a handful (maybe 1.5 - 2% of total program sign ups) who actually refer traffic which convert, not many more even place the code and try.

[sun818]

Money talks. Try raising your payout percentage. With all the technical difficulties affiliates have to deal with such as domain blocking, ad blocking, cookie hijacking, etc - a higher payout will be greater incentive to include your site in their efforts. Some industries are also very competitive so you would need to pay more to get more attention.

[greenleaves]

I know one thing that works for me, is incentives.

Some industries can't afford to do this, but it can be very effective.

Most webmasters sign up for many affiliate programs and only promote a few of them. Many times we pass up good affiliate programs because we don't give them a chance to prove their worth.

The greatest affiliate promotion I have seen is:

Get X Dollars Free, Just Add our Link within the first xx days.

Then, to avoid abuse, just make sure they wont get that X Dollars unless they have sent a certain number of sales.

Increased commission helps, but generally I put up an affiliate link if I have heard good things about them, both from other affiliates, as well as from the consumers (this last part is actually quite decisive for me). This last technique has always worked on me (I've only seen this promotion a couple of times)

[jimbeetle]

What we ended up getting is a lot of affiliate sign ups and eventually a handful (maybe 1.5 - 2% of total program sign ups) who actually refer traffic which convert, not many more even place the code and try.

At what point do they sign up? Many sponsors force prospective affiliates to sign up before revealing all the details of the program. They wind up getting a lot of tire kickers who then decide that the program isn't for them.

[paperclick]

If you're getting good signups but people aren't promoting your products, make some videos.

Get camtasia, the screen capture software, and a microphone.

Show them step-by-step exactly how to implement code, how to promote organically and ppc, how to do every single thing involved in being an affiliate.

You'd be surprised how well this works..