Adjust Your Sales Opportunities.
In other words, give the affiliate multiple opportunities to earn profit from their effort. There are a variety of options for this, including –
Up-sells. That is, you offer an additional report or “deluxe” version of your product at a higher-price on your order page. Instead of spending $47.00
with you, the customer has the opportunity to spend $67.00 with you and your affiliate earns extra commission.
Down-sells. That is, for those who can’t afford (or aren’t willing to invest) the $47.00 for your product, they are offered a $27.00 “lite” version. Your affiliate earns a commission on a lower-priced offer rather than no commission at all.
One-Time Offers. You present a premium-priced offer that is only available one-time during or after the process that you reward the affiliate a commission on.
Backend Offers. Offers inside the product, on the fulfillment page, and inside follow-up emails can all be included to give the affiliate more
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opportunities to earn referral commissions.
It’s all just a part of marketing and it makes for an attractive offer for affiliates –
the opportunity to earn multiple commissions per customer referred.
So, the fourth lesson to learn is this –
To attract affiliates, present more opportunities to profit than your
competition.
When you do these four things you’ll have “affiliate magnet” #1 attracting new affiliates for you with an irresistible force!
So, let’s move on to “affiliate magnet” #2...
Affiliate Magnet #2: Impressive Incentives.
While everyone else is standing around with their standardized, run-of-the-mill affiliate commission structure, you’ll be enticing all of their affiliates away from them to your program -- if you offer incentives.
In fact, if you offer the kind of incentives I’m going to talk about briefly, you’ll...
Convince new affiliates to join your affiliate program! Convince both new and existing affiliates to stay active!
That’s exciting, huh?
So, let me explain what I mean by offering “impressive incentives”. There are five of them worth mentioning...
1. RECRUIT. This would be some kind of free gift to be received upon joining your affiliate program. By offering a “signing” bonus of some kind, you’ll get the attention of prospective affiliates. Put together something valued at $97.00 and offer it for free to anyone who joins your affiliate program. This will get you new recruits. Will they join primarily as a “freebie seeker”? Maybe, but once you’ve gotten them to join, you’ll be able to use the remaining “incentives” to get them active.
2. REFERRAL. This is a big one that virtually no one uses – and that is to offer an incentive (a cash reward or some kind of free product or service) when the affiliate gets their first referred sale. This is a SUPER way to get affiliates to promote you
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immediately upon joining your program. Let them know that all they need is one referred sale to qualify for the incentive. You’ll get quick sales, plus many will produce more than one referred sale!
3. REACH. This would include incentives for reaching a specified number of referred sales. Whether you increase their commission rate upon reaching the level, award them a one-time cash bonus or present some kind of gift/prize, this is another way to motivate affiliates. If you can notify them with a message like
“Only 3 more sales to GOLD status”, you’ll have them scrambling to promote you again and again.
4. REVIEW. While this one wouldn’t be something you want to offer to EVERY
affiliate (otherwise you’d have customers join your program just to get the product free), it is a good idea to offer a free copy of your product to certain affiliates that you feel would have the potential to produce a lot of sales for you.
5. RECIPROCATION. That is, you offer to reciprocate the promotion favor for certain affiliates (I.E. “super” affiliates). In other words, “If you promote me, I’ll promote you.” Or, you could offer some other kind of reciprocation. (Ex. I’ll transcript your audios, I’ll host your web site, I’ll create graphics for you, I’ll do XYZ in exchange for you promoting my offer.)
What affiliate program do you personally know of that offers these kinds of incentives? How about your competition? If you can think of any at all (doubtful), chances are you can count them on one hand.
It’s a tremendous way to not only attract affiliates, but get them to become active participants in your program.
There’s one more “affiliate magnet” to go...
Affiliate Magnet #3: A Different Approach Than The Norm.
The problem with most affiliate programs is simply that they aren’t very good.
They don’t do much (if anything) that we’ve talked about so far.
And, of the small percentage of affiliate programs that do some of the things we’ve identified (or even MANY of the things), they pretty much take the “cookie cutter” approach. In other words, they all look the same.
Developing a “unique sales proposition” (USP) is just as important for your affiliate program as it is for your product, website and
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business.
If you want to make an impression upon potential affiliates, one of the surest ways to do it is to BE DIFFERENT. Be unusual. Be unique.
Think about this –
If you went to the zoo and there were five monkeys playing in a cage and one of them was wearing a wedding gown, which would get your attention?
And, even to a lesser degree, think about this –
If you went to the grocery store and saw five identical corvettes parked side by side. Four of them were black and one was red.
Which would get your attention?
Different stands out.
A critical first step to getting affiliates to join your affiliate program is to get them to notice your affiliate program. And a sure way to do that is to take a different approach than the norm; to take a different approach than your competitors.
Now, I can’t tell you what to do in order to make yourself different. If I start making suggestions, everyone who gets this course will start doing them and then no one will be different anymore!
It’s like Dash said in The Incredibles, “Saying everyone is special means no one is.”
I will give you a few examples of what I’ve seen other people do to make their affiliate programs stand out just to give you some ideas...
Instead of offering a rebrandable PDF report for your affiliates to give away, why not offer a rebrandable video presentation?
Instead of sending an email to a “super affiliate” to entice them to take a look at your program, why not send them $10 to their Paypal account with your request?
Instead of asking your affiliates to promote your latest article, why not give them a set of comics to distribute?
Instead of asking affiliates to quit doing what they are already doing, why not
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provide them with materials to ENHANCE what they are already doing while indirectly promoting you? (More on this in an upcoming section.)
Instead of giving affiliates 50% commission, why not give them 100%
commission on the sale and be content to build your list to backend other offers?
There are many ways that you can be different than your competitors. And different can be very good.
I encourage you to try thinking outside of the box. How can you do something that others aren’t doing?
I’ve just handed you detailed instructions on how you can get an edge over your competition and attract more active affiliates into your program.
I’m telling you the truth here. If you’ll do some of these things – not necessarily everything we’ve talked about – but if you’ll just get some of these things in place, you’ll find that the results will speak for themselves.
Up next we have step #4, the “E” of your S.A.L.E.S. A.R.M.Y.™, and that is...
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Step #4: E – EXPLAIN The Benefits
By this point, you should have something pretty special in place.
If you’ve followed the instructions thus far, then you’ve got a nice affiliate program with an attractive offer.
It’s almost time to let the world know about it and begin recruiting affiliates. The only thing standing between here and there is this idea of “explaining the benefits”.
That is, you want to create a contact letter to send to potential affiliates when you begin communicating with them as we’ll talk about next. So, let’s talk about that for a few minutes.
Seven Parts Of Professional, Personal and Profitable Contact Letters (Try saying that five times as fast as you can. ;-)