Affiliate Marketing Part One: My Top Five Pet Peeves

Do you have an affiliate program? Are you getting the results you want from your affiliates? If not, are you really doing everything you can to support their efforts?

I'm an affiliate of a good number of programs with products targeting solo entrepreneurs, ranging from self-improvement to business startup to marketing. And I'm surprised at how many of my affiliate program managers (aka the people I'm an affiliate of) make it so hard to promote their products! Here's a list of things affiliate program managers do that absolutely drive me up the wall:

1. Send email about an upcoming program to promote -- that starts in 48 hours or less! This is definitely the most frustrating situation I run into. I don't know about you, but suddenly dropping everything I'm doing to spend an hour or two preparing and sending a promotional mailing is a big disruption to my work day. It happens to me so regularly that I'm no longer surprised when it happens. But it runs a big risk that I won't bother promoting the program at all.
2. Don't let affiliates know about new program dates at all. Your affiliates can't promote something they don't know about! When I sign up for an affiliate program, I have the expectation that I will be notified when there is something they want me to promote -- weeks, if not a couple of months, in advance.
3. Offer little or no collateral material. Affiliates need something to work with! Articles that I can post with my affiliate link, pre-written short and long sales letters that I can customize, banners in various shapes, sizes and colors -- all are tools I can effectively use to promote affiliate programs.
4. Offer freebies without giving me an affiliate link to use to promote them. Many affiliate program managers have great freebies they give away -- a free ebook, ecourse, teleclass, etc. These are great introductions that can fill their pipelines with prospective buyers, and I'd love to promote them! But if I don't have an affiliate link that will tag my referrals for future purchases, I'm less likely to publicize them. It's just a reality -- I have to choose activities that are going to eventually make me money.
5. Lack of communication. I sign up, get the generic welcome email, and then never hear from them again. Marketing is all about relationships. If you want your affiliates to promote your products, build a relationship with them. Even a simple email once in a while would be a start!

Tune in on Friday, when I'll share my Top Five Ways to Keep Affiliates Happy.

***Bonus Sixth Pet Peeve (added 08-03-07):

6. Forcing affiliates to send prospects to a squeeze page. Let's say I write a nice promo piece about your product. Then I send them to a page...where they have to put in their email address just to learn more about a program they might want to buy? Huh? I just got them to take a leap of faith to check out something I recommend...making them take a second leap to trust whoever wants to take their email address is just as likely to make them click away. By all means, have a newsletter/freebie signup on your sales page -- just please don't make it harder for me to get you prospects.

Learn more about Affiliate Marketing and other ways to create Multiple Streams of Income

Comments

[kirk]

Hey Terri, this was a great article. Your first point about alerting affiliates about new promos more than 48 hours in advance was a good one. I move so fast sometimes that I think to send my top affiliates a note the day of the promo launch. I liked your point about lack of communication too. I err on the side of caution so I don't email my affiliates that much because I don't want to bother them. Now I'm going to rethink my strategy. Thanks again. -Kirk

[SylviaVictor]

The article was really mind blowing...

[Jay Hamilton-Roth]

Related to #5, your affiliates can help you dramatically by sharing how other affiliates are successfully selling. Learning from others is a sure path to your startup business success.

[Dave]

What you have given is excellent and very useful information, provided for the people who want to make money. I hope some of this helps!