Find Affiliates to Promote your Product – It’s Easier Than You Think

When I created my first information product about 6 years ago I didn't give much thought to finding affiliates to promote it.  I was too focused on promoting the product itself, so I never gave a minute's thought to anything else, much less setting up an affiliate program.

If your products need more traffic and sales, this may be a good time to start your own affiliate program. Finding affiliates to promote your product can multiply your sales without having to pay for advertising or spend hours a day promoting. 

Laying the groundwork for attracting and recruiting affiliates, preferably super affiliates, is what will save you from spending hours at traffic generation.  I'm not saying that you shouldn't continue to work on getting targeted web site traffic, but if you have a product of your own, getting others to happily recruit for you is a clear way to more sales and greater revenue.  

I'm telling you this because once I realized this myself, my sales started to climb.  

Finding Affiliates to promote your product(s)

There are two ways to find affiliates, you can either actively seek them out yourself or place your product or service on affiliate networks.

If you'll be looking for affiliates on your own, start by contacting people in your industry and offering to partner with them.  Do this by Googling your top keywords and contact the owners of the first 3-5 websites that display.  Politely ask each site owner if they would be interested in promoting your product.  Make sure that your product will complement their website and that they don't have a product of their own that is in direct competition.  

You might also try seeking out well known names in your industry and discuss with them a joint venturing proposal.  Good affiliate marketers are always looking for quality products that they can promote.

If you find an affiliate marketer that you trust to promote your product, give them a copy of your product for them to look over.  A good affiliate marketer will generally start with writing a compelling product review, so providing them with a copy of your product is giving them the means to get started quickly.  

Meeting people in person is actually one of the best ways to find good affiliates.  Marketing conventions and conferences in your industry always have interested people. In fact many affiliate marketers will make a point of attending these types of events.   

Your Conversion Rate and Payouts

Your conversion rate and your affiliate payouts are two of the most important numbers that a seasoned affiliate marketer will look at, so to attract the best affiliate marketers you have to offer a good payout.

For example, selling a physical product or a workshop a 10% to 20% payout is standard; however information products pay out about 50% to 90%. If you look at some of the affiliate programs already out there, you’ll notice that several of the infomarketers attracting the most affiliates are offering 60% or more in commissions.  On Clickbank for instance, where 75% commission is the limit, top marketers often add another 15% bonus on top of that for their best affiliates. That's because savvy product owners would much rather reward an ambitious affiliate rather than keep the entire 100% of the profit and have no affiliates at all.   Even if you only make a few dollars per order, it can be made up in sheer volume.

That’s how affiliate marketing works, you reward your affiliates with a cut of the sale, but you make it back in volume.

Clickbank, Commission Junction, CPA Networks

Affiliate networks like Clickbank for example are perfect for infomarketers. If you can get to the top of a category in Clickbank, you’ll make well over 500 sales on autopilot just from affiliate marketers.  The trick with Clickbank though is getting your gravity rating up over 10, getting your first few affiliates will help you get there, after that you can let your conversion rate and the product itself attract the rest of your affiliates.

Commission Junction is another top affiliate network but it's more geared to physical products with lower payouts. It’s not as easy to get on CJ. Usually they only accept merchants who have been in the market for a longer time.

CPA networks such as Clixgalore or Pepperjam are networks that pay affiliates per action instead of a sale.  For example, you may pay an affiliate $2 each time they send you a prospect that opts in to your newsletter or fills out a form.  If your email opt in list has a good conversion rate it may be well worth it to you to use CPA networks.  

If you ask any top Internet Marketer what their #1 source of traffic is, they'll tell you it's from creating an affiliate program for their products. Generating traffic from the search engines is a great way to generate free traffic and sales but it's not the only way, you can multiply your efforts dramatically by finding affiliates to promote your product for you, and it's easier than you may think.  

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1. Increasing Your Affiliate Marketing Sales
2. What Are The Best Affiliate Marketing Programs?
3. Promoting Affiliate Products Vs. Creating Your Own Products
4. How to Spot Top Affiliate Programs
5. How To Write A Product Review

Tagged as: Affiliate Marketing