Recruiting and Managing Affiliates

In affiliate marketing, there's an abundance of myths on both sides of the fence. Many affiliates believe that it's simple to make a killing from promoting other peoples services and likewise, many merchants think they'll generate massive sales via an affiliate program.

Like any aspect of marketing, this can be the case, but not without some blood, sweat and tears. Even if you have a network of thousands of affiliates, chances are that just a few percent of those marketing your products will be responsible for over 90 percent of affiliate generated sales.

Before we move onto recruiting and managing affiliates, you'll need to have your affiliate software in place - manual recording of referrals just doesn't cut it these days and most good affiliates will not be interested in your program if you don't have an automated system with good reporting mechanisms.

If you haven't already selected an application; my affiliate software/services reviews may be of value to you.

Once your software is set up, you then need to start recruitment! This shouldn't just be left to having a "join our affiliate program" link on your site; you'll need to put in a bit more effort than that :).

On-site content is very important, not only to explain your program to potential affiliates, but to give search engines some fodder to chew on. Many affiliates will use a search engine to search for new programs , so ideally, you'll optimize your affiliate pages for terms such as:

(product) affiliate program
best (product) affiliate program

Ensure you have plenty of content spread over a few pages; I suggest the following pages at the least

- Program overview
- Rates
- Terms
- Signup

The "rates" page shouldn't just have "earn x%", but also examples of earnings based on referral levels. Stay realistic with projected earnings.

By the way, on your "Terms" page, make it ultra-clear that you have zero tolerance for spamming and the use of promoting your program; and make sure you enforce those policies. I'll explain why later in this article.

As with any sales process, it's important to have calls to action scattered throughout your content - after all, you're trying to sell your program to other marketers. Have plenty of signup links throughout, and ensure the signup process is simple.