The Ideal Affiliate Profile --
Passion Marketing: Your Best Affiliate Is Someone Who Would Buy Your Product

When many companies open their affiliate programs, the assumption is to target only the following:

1. Sites with high traffic counts

2. Sites related to your product or service

3. Email lists with many subscribers

4. People who sign up at affiliate program directories such as Refer-It, AssociatePrograms, ReveNews, or CashPile.

Yet there are other ways to approach this. A recent email from Outpost.com to its affiliates points out one of the crucial factors in affiliate marketing.

Of 7 affiliate sites that generated over $15,000 in revenue for Outpost.com in February 1998, guess what common characteristic 5 of the 7 shared?

1. Let's go through our initial list; none of them is a "high" traffic site. They get decent traffic, but not great.

2. All of the sites are related to computer products, but that's obvious. Anyone with an Internet business does something related to computers.

3. Email lists are not the driving force of these sites. And they may or may not have signed up from affiliate program directories.

4. What they really had in common was passion, for something that might surprise you. Here's their secret...

Each Site Feeds the Passionate Market of Macintosh Users

Think about Macintosh users and you may think they are a small percent of the market, which of course they are. Most Internet studies, and most computer studies, are dominated by Windows users. Obviously there are fewer Mac users than Windows users, but there is more passion for the Macintosh.

If you have ever owned a Macintosh, you know what a passion it is; Mac users are almost religious in their fervor about their operating system, their computer. Mac users are also affluent, having consistently paid more money for their computers and software, year after year.

Think of it this way; when did someone brag about using Bill Gate's Windows, or a Windows machine? They may like them, but they are not passionate about them like Mac users.

So if Outpost.com went out to create the traditional affiliate program, you would think that Windows related sites would do the best. Perhaps they do well, but let's focus on the core success of these 5, Macintosh related affiliates.

This kind of spending power, this kind of passion, is helping to drive sales for Outpost.com for the following reasons:

1. Macintosh computer users will revisit those sites that give them the best information. These sites obviously have a loyal audience with repeat traffic.

2. . The traffic counts at these sites are not that high, but the buying power and loyalty of these visitors outweighs raw traffic claims.

3. These Mac sites generate quality visitors who buy, not quantities who may or many not buy.

4. Finally, Outpost.com has helped their affiliates build Macintosh related storefronts at their sites. This kind of key marketing targeted to a passion makes all the difference.

The next time you go out to your affiliates and think in terms only of traffic, think in terms of passion. This kind of passion for a specific Web Site, information product, or even computer is powerful.

As the old saying goes, the Internet is filled with niche markets an inch long, and a mile deep. Outpost.com is mining those inches and gettting back sales in miles.

Be sure to apply the same logic to your program.