How to Recruit Your Affiliates:
The Selection Process

Once your affiliate system is ready to go and you have done the market research on your affiliates, it is time to contact them. Here are some of the best ways to recruit them for your network.

1. Identify and Qualify Those People Most Likely to Offer Your Product

Before you begin contacting them, try to look at your offer from their viewpoint. What are the main benefits you provide? Why should this get them excited? Is it a unique product, one that can be sold to a diverse audience? Is it a product or service tailored to a niche audience? Who would be most interested in what you have to offer?

Instill a sense of excitement in your message; don't try to oversell it or hype it. Most people have a simple outlook on life; they rarely expect to make the best choice.

Think about that; how many times in life have you made the absolute, best choice? It is extremely rare. If you tell them it is the best decision they could make, you limit your success because it loses believability.

Address them as you would in person and read your copy out loud; listen to what you have written. Read it to someone else; what do they think? Reading out loud is one of the best tricks to getting your message across. If it sounds weird out loud, it will likely sound weird in their heads.

2. Contact Prospective Affiliates via ezines, email, phone, and fax

These are the communication tools of the Internet and should be used wisely. Ezines are an excellent way to get your message out to many, interested readers. You can target your niche and get your message out.

Email is also an effective tool; the funny thing is, some people online assume all email is spam. But if you target your message and search for sites, you can provide them with the message that is relevant. If someone gets an email that has to do with their interest and is the result of searching, not just stripping email addresses like a spammer, you can get an effective communication going.

If they are happy to receive your message and it relates to them, it is direct email. If it is sent to them without any regard for what they are interested, it is junk emailÉa waste of your time and their time.

Be careful with email though; if your target affiliate site is big, it is unlikely they will even answer their own email! The biggest players are so busy, or get so many emails, that your inquiry may get lost. The bigger the site, the less reliable email becomes.

That is where the phone and fax comes in; it is sometimes good to call them and ask about advertising. Compare that to what you might do with them via an affiliate program. If they don't like the idea of an affiliate program, move onto the next prospect. But if you ask them how often they sell their ad space, and if there is any negotiation or open advertising space, you can then open up to the possibility of affiliate programs.

If they say they have no dead advertising space, don't even bother talking to them. All media has dead advertising space, even radio and television. They want you to pay for it and if they can sell it, great for them. The fact is, below the top 10 visited Web Sites, there is a ton of dead advertising space to be bought, begged, bartered, or borrowed. Use Affiliate networks as a means to open up a long term advertising campaign that brings them continual advertising revenue and brings you sales.

Most sites do not sell their advertising space regularly, so repeat business is not common. Selling advertising online is tough. Make it easy with your affiliate program, and get a thick skin. You will still get many more no's than yes's, but that's part of the test. Target your efforts and you will see your efforts improve.

At the end of this section is a sample email we have used to recruit affiliates; it is also a good overview of how to approach them on the phone as well.

POWER TIP: Invite the owner of major ezine/email lists to endorse you to their list and compensate them per affiliate if possible. A recent test of this approach yielded over 100 affiliates within a week, through just one ezine/email list owner. By extending the trust they have earned and rewarding them for endorsing it to their list, you can quickly set up a vast, efficient network via an endorsement.

3. Register at major associate directories

Many affiliates research programs at the top directories; there are so many popping up on the Internet that it is hard to tell who is who. Most of the Web Sites share their knowledge of affiliate programs, ratings, and have their own subscribers lists and advertising. You can also post for free at most of these sites.

The two most popular Web Site directories are http://www.refer-it.com (Refer-It) and http://www.associateprograms.com (Associate Programs). They review and discuss programs, with many competitors on the horizon. Be sure to get the word out at these directories.

Finally, if you work with a third party service bureau like ClickTrade, they may make their own list of affiliates available to you as an added service. Some of the top affiliate software providers are trying to integrate this into their services. You will pay extra for their services, but they try to streamline the operation for you.

4. Promote it at your own Web Site

This should be the most obvious suggestion, but it is amazing how many times an affiliate network is hidden at a Web Site. Make it a prominent link on your site and invite people into sign up for your program. Add this to every element of your marketing, so that visitors can buy from you, or even affiliate with you.

5. Use some free reward, invitation, report, discount, coupon, or something that delivers immense value and does not sell them anything on first contact.

An excellent way to invite affiliates to join your network is to give them immediate value. When someone contacts you to learn about your program, give them a free report via a Web Page or autoresponder. Put a discount or coupon on what you offer; if they become an affiliate, apply a percentage off their purchase of your product.

Get them to quickly understand the value of what you are offering and more importantly, the value of working with you.

6. Spread the word at mailing lists, newsgroups, discussion boards, and using your SIG file

Some of the best places to invite affiliates are the many places people are meeting to discuss. Just make sure you don't act like it is a blatant ad; share some information and insight and invite them to get your free information, or to your Web Site to learn more about your affiliate network. Start a thread and put your SIG (signature) file in, which acts like a business card at the bottom of your emails.

7. Most of all, follow Mark Twain's advice: "The secret to success is -- find out where the people are going and get there first."

Here's a sample email of a first contact that was used with a recent client. We visited each Web Site and wrote a short description in the first paragraph, and then followed through with the form letter that invited them in. The key is to be honest, and to have visited their Web Site; it will dramatically increase responses and improve their perception of you.

NOTE: This email has short lines, because all email programs read things differently. A good rule is to make sure each email line is just 65 characters long. A great program to do this on Windows is TextPad, http://www.textpad.com, and on the Macintosh, BBEdit will shorten your lines to this length for email (http://www.tucows.com has a free version).

Subject Line is
RE: I've recommended your website

Hello [their name], (if no name use Hi there!)

I just reviewed your website at [their URL]. I really liked [write a couple personable sentences about their site design or content. Have fun with this!] Did you design the site yourself? Excellent work!

I wanted to introduce myself and present you with an offer. The company I am working for is called Habitat. They have high-quality hand drawn artwork, of nature and the outdoors, available on clothing, mugs & stationery. Check it out at:

http://www.habitatonline.com/home.html

We are looking for a few website owners (like you) who love the artwork as much as we do, and would like to make it available to their web visitors. We will pay you for doing so.

The idea is simple. You add a link to your site, we track your visitors and pay you a fairly attractive commission on each sale. We do all the work of processing orders, drop shipping, customer service and handling returns. You receive e-mail notification with each order and a check at the end of each month with a sales recap.

Sound interesting?

Habitat has been in business since 1983, has over 6,000 retail locations handling their merchandise and typically outsells their competition, off the rack, by 1 1/2 times. They offer a 100% guarantee. That's an indication of the quality of the company and their products.

They asked me to select a few great websites and reward the WebMasters with better than average revenue-sharing commissions. That's where you come in! I like your site and recommended it to the Review Committee.

If you are intrigued at this point, I invite you to investigate the site, then fill out the Associate Application at:

http://www.habitatonline.com/associates.html

Our Online Sales Director will call you to discuss the commission arrangements and answer your questions.

P.S. Keep up the good work on your site. It was a great place to visit! I ended up spending quite a bit of time at it and bookmarked it for later...

Declan Dunn
Habitat Review Committee
http://www.habitatonline.com/associates.html