Internet Marketing Tips from Denise Wakeman

Affiliate Marketing Part Two: Top Five Ways to Keep Affiliates Happy

In Part One, I shared my personal Top Five Affiliate Marketing Pet Peeves. Today I'll share what I consider the best practices for affiliate program managers that will get their product to more customers, while keeping their affiliates happy and their programs profitable for all.

1. Create a long-range planning calendar. Andy Wibbels clearly sets the bar (imho) with his support for affiliates, leading the way with a public calendar of his upcoming workshop dates that you can even link into your own calendar, if you are technically inclined. Include your free and paid class dates, new product launches, and anything else important that affiliates might need to know (being interviewed by Oprah?) and give your affiliates the luxury of planning their promotions ahead of time!
   
2. Offer quality marketing collateral material. Product graphics are a nice plus, but even more important is well-written sales tools -- long and short sales letters, email copy, short blurbs for newsletter ads, even pre-written blog posts. Articles are another great tool for affiliates. (Wendy Weiss, the Queen of Cold Calling, is my favorite. In addition to an ample stock of high quality cold-calling articles on her site, she delivers a new article once a month via her newsletter -- just right for a steady publishing schedule.) Make sure to give affiliates express permission to reprint your articles and provide your desired resource box for them to cut and paste and add their affiliate link.
   
3. Create a product funnel. If your main product is a high-ticket item (more than a couple hundred dollars), chances are slim that someone who knows nothing about you is going to buy right away. However, they might be willing to sign up for a free newsletter or ebook, then later purchase a $20 teleclass recording, and so on until they get to your big-ticket product. Don't forget to create affiliate links so your team can promote your entire product line. (More about product funnels)
   
4. Love your affiliates! Okay, maybe that's extreme, but at least remember to talk to them, so they'll remember to promote you! Communicate often: share a success strategy or promotional copy that's worked well for one of your affiliates (Michael Port does this really well). Especially, don't forget to tell them, well in advance, of class dates and new product launch dates.
   
5. Identify and cultivate relationships with your super-affiliates. These are the folks who steadily market you and your products and bring in consistent prospects. Write them personally. Thank them when they've had a really great month promoting you. If you like, offer bonuses to show you really appreciate them. A really great strategy would be to send them a free copy of your product, or free admission to a workshop. They'll probably be willing to write you a product review/testimonial, and they will be even more enthusiastic about promoting you! And don't forget the up-and-comers -- they may not be sending you much traffic now, but if they are doing the right things, they'll be your future super-affiliates.

To your affiliate marketing success,
Terri Zwierzynski
www.Solo-E.com
Resources for the Solo Entrepreneur Lifestyle
"...because it's not just about the business!"

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

Social Media Article Directory

A quick announcement...we have set up a new article directory devoted solely to articles on Social Media, Internet Marketing and all things related. 

Categories include: Affiliate Marketing, Computer, Software, PHP, Web, html, Email Marketing, Internet Marketing, Pay Per Click, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing, Blogs, Podcasting, Social Bookmarking, Tagging, Video, Technology, Broad band
Mobile.

You're most welcome to set up a free account and submit your articles on any of the topics we cover.  Check it out: Social Media Marketing Articles

If you're looking for articles for your blog, ezine or website, we also have directories with articles on diet and fitness, PC gaming and leadership, professional and personal development (fee-based).

aStore by Amazon Debuts

aStore (beta) made its debut a couple of weeks ago.  If you're an Amazon.com Associate (affiliate), you probably received an email recently inviting you to try out their new "store" creation system that allows you to build a store focused on the products relevant to your business. Here's what Amazon has to say about aStore:

Build your own professional online store featuring Amazon.com products in minutes with no programming skills required. Because aStore is a dedicated shopping area for your site, it is a great complimentary product for your existing Amazon product links. Visitors to your site get a professional shopping experience through your unique selection of products and categories and the features of Amazon.com you have chosen including Customer Reviews, Listmania, and more. The checkout process is completed through Amazon.com.

I'm always on the lookout ways to expand my revenue and I wanted to see if it really was as simple as they touted.  And in fact, last night I set up my aStore in about 10 minutes.

iPod Contest Continues

A quick reminder that The Blog Squad's contest to give away 2 iPod nanos continues through April 30.  Details are here in a previous post.

We've added a new incentive for you to refer your colleagues to subscribe to our revamped ezine Savvy eBiz Tips...

...join our affiliate program and earn $.50 (50 cents) for each new subscriber you refer.

That means you'll be entered to win an iPod nano fully loaded with our entire Conversations with Experts TeleSeries, and entered to win a Razer mouse for the most referrals, AND you can earn $$.  What could be better?  Join today and start earning.

Our recent issue of Savvy eBiz Tips is below.