Ebook Sample Content Preview:
In addition to contests for product launches, you should also consider holding ongoing contests that will keep affiliates motivated to promote your products in between launches.
One problem many product owners experience is the “temporary” nature of product launches. They experience a huge rush of sales in the beginning, and then the rush slows quickly to a mere trickle, or even nothing at all.
Fortunately, you can help turn your products into perpetual cash machines by offering ongoing contests that are designed to keep affiliates interested so they’ll continue promoting your products long after the initial launch.
Contests could be monetary or non-monetary. They could be based on the top affiliates, or on random affiliates. These types of contests motivate two entirely different types of affiliates.
Those that reward the top affiliates will motivate super affiliates, because they will feel confident of their ability to win. They will also tend to be more competitive, because they won’t want to be outdone by their competition. After all, they have a reputation to maintain. The last thing they will want is to be the #5 seller and have their competitors outsell them.
However, those types of contests may actually de-motivate smaller affiliates.
They may feel jealous, or like you don’t appreciate their efforts. They may actually stop promoting you altogether. You may not care about one sale here and there, but remember... those sales add up. If you have 100 small affiliates selling a copy or two each week, it can be a lot of money over time.
In order to motivate smaller affiliates, be sure to hold contests that will include them. For example, you could offer a $50 Amazon or iTunes gift card each week or month to a random person who sends at least one sale during that timeframe.
This will motivate people to keep promoting you, because they will know that as long as they send even one sale, they will have the chance to win a prize. Sometimes, just knowing you have a chance at something is a huge motivator.
Ongoing Bonuses
Bonuses are also great as ongoing incentives. You can offer perpetual bonuses for sales, and you can also offer cumulative bonuses.
For example, you can offer the bonus mentioned in the previous chapter (such as 1 bonus commission for each 5 sales). That would be the perpetual bonus. Then you can offer a yearly bonus for your top earners.
Like companies often give Christmas bonuses, you could give your top affiliates a Christmas bonus, as well. You might give them 10% of their total yearly sales as a bonus the first week of December.
However, you must either save 10% of your earnings all year to ensure you can cover this bonus, or just don’t tell anyone you’ll be doing it until it’s time to do it. Imagine how disastrous it would be for your reputation if you promised this and couldn’t afford to deliver!
Attracting Affiliates
Attracting affiliates isn’t as difficult as it may seem. The only reason most people seem to think it’s difficult to get affiliates is because they aren’t providing the things affiliates are looking for.
Quality, In-Demand Products
Perhaps the single most critical element of running an affiliate program is to provide quality products that are in high demand. It doesn’t matter what else you do, or how much you’re paying, if your products are low quality or are not in high demand, affiliates aren’t going to promote them.
It may be tempting to create products in small niches with less competition, and that’s fine for the occasional product. Just keep in mind that if a product is not in very high demand, the likelihood of anyone having traffic or a list to promote that product is slim.
Instead, stick mostly to products in very popular niches. Competition doesn’t matter so much when you have a large number of super affiliates promoting the product. And if you create a very high quality product and follow the other tips in this chapter, you will!
Great Sales Copy
Another very important element of successfully finding affiliates is to be sure your products have killer sales copy. If the copy on your sales page isn’t up to snuff, affiliates can smell it a mile away and they aren’t likely to promote the product.
Do yourself a favor and hire a good copywriter to create your sales letter. If you can’t afford one, read some books on writing sales copy and save up to hire one as soon as possible!
If you’re low on funds, it is recommended that you pay for really great sales copy for one product and promote the heck out of it rather than trying to create a bunch of products with poor to mediocre copy.
Beautiful Graphics
Beautiful graphics aren’t absolutely critical, but they certainly help. People do judge a book by its cover, and they will judge a website by its graphics, as well. It’s unfortunate, but it happens.
If you don’t want to pay to get great graphics, you may want to use no graphics at all and just use a standard CSS or HTML template with sales copy. Some people say this works better than fancy graphics, anyway, because sometimes the graphics can detract from the actual sales letter.
Affiliate Tools
If you want to attract the best affiliates, then you need to provide them with the best tools. Not only will this attract affiliates to promote your products, but it will make it much easier for them to do so.
It is appalling that in today’s world, there are still affiliate programs that don’t provide promotional materials. They give you an affiliate link and then expect you to do everything else on your own. Shocking!
It’s important to provide a wide variety of tools to affiliates, because affiliates promote products in many different ways. Some use blogs or websites, some use email marketing, and still others have additional methods.
- File Size:709 KB
- License: Private Label Rights
- Category:Ebooks
- Tags:2014 Ebooks Private Label Rights