Drop by marketing forums (both “internet” and “affiliate”) and
© Copyright. All rights reserved
40
Hot Content Publishing
The Ultimate Free Traffic Blueprint
ask for recommendations.
That should yield several quality publications to advertise in.
11. Search the Clickbank® marketplace.
Product owners who are selling goods similar to yours (and, sometimes, even directly competing with yours) make for perfect affiliate partnerships.
Visit https://accounts.clickbank.com/marketplace.htm and choose the category related to your product. The author of virtually every product listed in your category will be a potential partner.
Variation: Go to affiliate program directories and see who has affiliate programs that are related to your own. They are potential affiliates as well.
Make it mutually beneficial and you should find new partners who are already actively marketing similar products.
12. Purchase low-cost classified advertisements.
There are several places online, including oodle.com, craigslist.com, freeads.com and gumtree.com who offer cheap and even free ads.
While you probably won’t get a ton of affiliates this way due to the abundance of ads being sold, even if you just get one new affiliate per ad, it’s well worth the few bucks you’ll spend!
13. Buy Google Adwords® and other PPC ads.
You can advertise your affiliate program on Adwords® and other pay-per-click search engines to attract affiliates as well.
Example: You can advertise for “keyword affiliate program” such as
“diet affiliate program”.
You may not get a lot of visitors by using this method, but those that you do
© Copyright. All rights reserved
41
Hot Content Publishing
The Ultimate Free Traffic Blueprint
receive will be very targeted due to the searched phrase.
14. Look for existing advertisers with your keywords.
There are a couple of great ways to see who is already advertising products and services similar to your own that are worth mentioning –
Drop by Google.com and search for keywords related to your offer.
See who is advertising in the Adwords® section (tiny ads to the right of the screen). These are potential partners.
Drop by Yahoo.com and search for keywords related to your offer.
See who is listed in the top twenty spots (these are generally paid advertisers). Again, these are potential affiliate
partners.
You should find another selection of people to contact about your affiliate program.
15. Identify those who rank highly in search engines for your keywords.
The other side of search engines (the opposite of “paid” advertising) are those who are listed “naturally”.
Visit Google.com (and other search engines such as Yahoo.com, etc.) and search for keywords related to your product.
You should find page after page of sites indexed in the listing. Visit these and contact the owners to recruit new affiliates.
16. Use specialty search tools.
There are several really good software programs that can be used to search for new affiliates on your behalf, cutting your research time down to virtually nothing.
My favorite of these tools is –
https://postaga.com/find-affiliates/
If you have the money to invest, these can be great resources to use in finding new affiliates to recruit into your program.
© Copyright. All rights reserved
42
Hot Content Publishing
The Ultimate Free Traffic Blueprint
17. Outsource your affiliate recruiting.
There are actually services available such as the one at
https://experienceadvertising.com or https://www.silverbean.com/
whereyou can have someone else recruit affiliates on your behalf.
If you have the budget for this, you may want to consider outsourcing your affiliate recruitment to one of these resources.
It’s not for everyone, but it can take a lot of the work off of your hands so you can concentrate on other things.
18. Watch for those who participate at forums.
I’ve talked several times about forums for good reason. It’s the community gathering place for many of those within your market.
So, let’s look at one more great way to use the built-in traffic to your advantage in finding potential affiliates.
The idea here is to watch for those persons at your favorite forums who actively participate in discussions. Specifically, for those whose posted messages indicate that they have a level of experience.
These individuals can be great assets to your program for a variety of reasons: they are experienced/knowledgeable, they are visible, they are active. Three adjectives that you’d hope would describe each of your affiliates!
19. Join every related list you can find.
That is, join ezines, mini-courses, etc. and look for products, resources, etc. that are being announced and reviewed. The owners of those resources are potential partners.
Look at who is advertising and what is being advertised. Again, these are people you should contact about joining your affiliate program.
If you’ll become a “spy” by joining as many lists as possible and be observant, then you’ll find many potential affiliates along the way.
Note: Make sure you join with an email address other than your
© Copyright. All rights reserved
43
Hot Content Publishing
The Ultimate Free Traffic Blueprint
primary one because you’ll be receiving a lot of email!
20. Tap into the search power of Google®.
I've found Google.com to be the best free research tool on the planet for finding new affiliates for your affiliate program.
There are (at least) seven ways to search Google's massive database for potential partners:
Popular Products. Conduct a search for the title of your competitors' products to see which sites are actively promoting those products. Those who are already promoting similar products are likely candidates to promote yours. (And, they are obviously already familiar with affiliate marketing.)
Example: If your product is about "niche marketing" do a search for "Nicheology".
Article Titles.
Conduct a search for the title of articles related to your product.
Identify which sites are currently showcasing those articles and see if they will load your article to their site as well. (Note: You can find article titles at popular article directories such as Articlebiz.com)
Accessories.
Conduct a search for items that are related to your offer, but not identical to your offer.
Example: If your product is about "web site templates", do a search for "hosting" or "salesletters".
Advertising.
Conduct a search for terms that are related to your product and then look for those who are currently advertising using Google's Adwords(R). (The tiny ads in the right margin of the browser window). These will be more experienced marketers and more likely to be open to a joint venture proposal.
© Copyright. All rights reserved
44
Hot Content Publishing
The Ultimate Free Traffic Blueprint
Example: If your product is related to "dieting", then search for
"diet", "diet program", "weight loss", "exercise", "lose weight", etc.
Authors And Experts.
Conduct a search for the names of well known authors and experts within your field of interest. You'll likely find NUMEROUS sites mentioning that expert ranging from promoting their products to posting their articles to making comments about their influence. Look specifically for those who are using affiliate links.
Example: If your product is related to "internet marketing" then search for the name of a well know Internet Marketer.
URLs.
Conduct a search for a word or phrase related to your topic of interest in the URL
of the sites listed in Google's database. You can do this by using the search string,
"inurl". I.E. inurl:"travel discounts". This will return a listing of all indexed URL
listings that contain that phrase.
Example: If your product is about "rose gardening" do a search for inurl:"rose gardening".
Tips And Articles.
Conduct a search for a combination of a word or phrase related to your topic of interest, along with the words "tips" and "articles". I.E. "marketing tips", "time management articles".
Example: If your product is about "UFOs" do a search for "UFO
articles".
Using Google.com's search features makes it easier than ever to find affiliate partners.
Recap and What’s Ahead
We’re talking about creating your own S.A.L.E.S. A.R.M.Y.™; starting your own affiliate program.
© Copyright. All rights reserved
45
Hot Content Publishing
The Ultimate Free Traffic Blueprint
Just as a quick recap, we’ve just covered the first 5 steps in the process: S – SETUP your program.
A – ASSEMBLE tools.
L – LOOK for an edge.
E – EXPLAIN the benefits.
S – SEARCH for partners.
Now we’re about to go through the next 4 steps:
A – APPLY gentle pressure.
R – RECRUIT indirectly.
M – MAKE an investment.
Y – YEARN to expand.
We’re about to look at other ways to recruit new affiliates indirectly. That is, you’ll learn some specific things you can do that will automatically yield more affiliates as a secondary by-product of the activity.
We’ll also look later in this S.A.L.E.S. A.R.M.Y. course about how to hire an affiliate manager to do 90% of everything we’ve talked about so far FOR YOU. In other words, most of what we’ve looked at (setting up an affiliate center, recruiting affiliates, etc.) can be done by someone else ... even without spending any money. That’s still to come.
Note: Before we move on, it’s worth noting that once you start using the strategies you’ve just discovered plus the ones I’m about to reveal (from page70) to recruit affiliates, you will begin to create a powerful snowball of traffic to your offers. What’s the wisest way to use that traffic? In 3 words:
“build your list”. That way, your affiliate’s efforts are not wasted and produce maximum returns for you. Why? Because you can remarket your product to prospects who don’t buy the first time at a later point in time. You can also offer them (plus your buyers) different products down the road. And it’s as easy as sending an email. For more information on how to build your own lucrative list of subscribers take a look at this free report.
© Copyright. All rights reserved
46
Hot Content Publishing
The Ultimate Free Traffic Blueprint
Step #6: A – APPLY Gentle Pressure
One of the most frequently asked questions that affiliate managers pose is simply this –
How do I get my affiliates to actively promote my products and services?
If you’ve been around internet marketing long enough, then you know it’s not an easy task to keep affiliates active and loyal. Why? Because there are a lot of competitors out there who want your affiliates’ attention just as much as you do.
And, as we’ve discussed earlier, affiliates are fickle.
They go where the money is.
They go where the allure of ease is.
They go where the latest craze is.
If you want to keep them – AND keep them active – you’ve gotta do more than simply put up some ads and articles and keep your fingers crossed that they won’t go off searching for greener pastures.
They will. It won’t be long until they’re gone. Guaranteed.
If you want them to stick with you, then you need to give them some compelling reason to do so. You need to “apply gentle pressure”.
That’s what we’re going to talk about now…
© Copyright. All rights reserved
47
Hot Content Publishing
The Ultimate Free Traffic Blueprint
How To Keep Affiliates A.C.T.I.V.E. In Your
Program
I’ve used the word “Active” as an acronym to illustrate the 6 Keys to keeping affiliates “A.C.T.I.V.E.”. These 6 keys are...
A – ALERTS.
C – COMMUNICATION.
T – TRAINING.
I – INCENTIVES.
V – VISION.
E – EXTRAS.
We’re going to make our way through these 6 keys and, as we do, I’m going to share a staggering 30 different strategies you can use in order to get your affiliates “a.c.t.i.v.e.” in promoting your products and services.
Let’s begin with key #1...
A.C.T.I.V.E. Affiliates Key #1 – Alerts.
That is, you want to notify your affiliates of something which requires their immediate attention in order to cash in on a revenue-generating opportunity.
If they snooze, they lose.
Now, what I want to do is just share 5 simple ideas for creating limited opportunities for commissions which will “force” your affiliates to get active or get left out.