Recruiting Affiliates... A Proactive Approach!There are different ways of recruiting affiliates to your affiliate program.
In proactive approach you identify and evaluate an affiliates profile before approaching. Therefore unlike other methods you have much better control on the quality of affiliates you get. While recruiting affiliates with this approach you can easily extend your reach to the markets you want to tap. Since you get very high quality affiliates, even a very small number of affiliates (5-10) can make a huge impact and your affiliate program gets an instant boost. Creating Recruitment Plan.To put this approach into practice, you should start with a plan. The very first thing you need to decide isThe target market you want to reach. There can be multiple segments in your specific industry that you want to cater to. Deciding this will help you identify the affiliates faster. Secondly, You should also decide whether you want to follow your competitor. If yes then make a list your competitors along with the URLs where they offer their affiliate program. Thirdly, You should outline the profile of an ideal affiliate that would best fit into your affiliate program. While creating the profile you might want to judge prospective affiliates on following parameters.
Finally, if you have decided to offer incentive then you should decide on the type of incentive you want to offer. It could be cash, increased commission etc. Incentive should be attractive enough to compel them to do the initial work that is required while starting to promote a newly joined affiliate program. Implementing The Plan.While implementing the plan the very first step would be to prepare the list of prospective affiliates. Take the first target market that you have decided you want to reach to, and start looking for established affiliate sites in those market.While short-listing affiliates, look for the quality of content they offer, the traffic they get etc. (things that you have decided while planning). Do a thorough search and collect enough of them. Look for their phone numbers, physical address and email address and approach them with your best offer. Be prepared to follow up because you may not get through the first time. What To Expect?Yes it is a lot of work but the number of affiliates you get through this method may not look very encouraging. Though less, these are highly targeted affiliates and can easily become your best selling affiliates. Even a few of them can outweigh the sales produced by all other affiliates combined.In my working experience, I have found that this method works best for programs that are already somewhat established. It may not be a very good approach for a very new program.
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