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If you’re a product seller, you already know that not all affiliates are created equal.

Some will never promote you. Others promote once and disappear. And a small percentage will promote your products over and over, making a lion’s share of sales for you.

So how do you recruit great affiliates?

While there is no one answer, there are many ways to find and recruit those key affiliates who will take your business to the next level.

1: “Wanna Promote?”

Contacting websites, blogs and other web publishers.

Send them a well-written email to ask them in a very polite way if they would like to become your affiliate.

You’ll likely have to contact a lot of people to get results, but it can be totally worth the effort.

2: Use a Service

Use a service such as Affiliate Leads https://affiliateleads.net/ to locate potential affiliates by category, keyword or advertiser.

3: Bloggers

Group High http://www.grouphigh.com/ is a site that will help you find the best bloggers and influencers, as well as manage your relationships.

4: Outsource

If you have the funds, you can hire a service such as Experience Advertising https://experienceadvertising.com/ to do your outreach and recruiting for you.

5: Use PPC Search Ads

Did you know that affiliates are actively looking for great programs to promote? You can find them by running PPC ads in Google Adwords and Bing Ads.

Don’t forget to track to see which ads are bringing in the most effective affiliates.

6: SEO’d Affiliate Pages

Create a page just for affiliates. Then optimize that page for SEO results, so when people are searching for affiliate programs in your niche, they can find you in the organic search results.

7: Press Releases

Write press releases for online distribution. Press releases can be another way to gain traction in the organic rankings.

8: Facebook Ads

Did you know you can find affiliates on Facebook? Target people who are interested in affiliate marketing and blogging in your niche.

9: Networks

Launch your product on an affiliate network.

There are many to choose from, including Clickbank, Commissions Junction, JVZoo, Linkshare and Sharesale. In some cases you might want to screen affiliates from these networks to be sure you’re only dealing with reputable people.

10: In Person

Trade shows, summits and conferences are great places to meet new affiliates. You might even consider getting a booth at some of these events, so affiliates are coming to you instead of you hunting them down.

11: Affiliate Forums

Build and maintain a presence on affiliate forums. These are great places to meet and recruit affiliates. Here’s a few to get you started:

A Best Web http://www.abestweb.com/
Affiliate Fix https://www.affiliatefix.com/
Affilorama https://www.affilorama.com/forum/
Black Hat World https://www.blackhatworld.com/
DN Forum https://www.dnforum.com/
Digital Point https://forums.digitalpoint.com/
Site Point https://www.sitepoint.com/community/
V7N http://www.v7n.com/forums/
Warrior Forum http://warriorforum.com
Wicked Fire http://www.wickedfire.com/

12: Twitter

Twitter is a good place to meet potential affiliates. Search for your keywords to find who is talking about your niche, and then follow them and start interacting.

13: LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a great place to meet affiliates and just network in general. You can post and participate in discussions and connect with people in a professional atmosphere.

14: Talk to Your Customers

This is a great way to get new affiliates who truly use and believe in your product. Reach out to your buyers and see who would like to be your affiliate, and take it from there.

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Some of you might remember the wild west days of the Internet, where you could make ANY income claim and pretty much never have to worry about the feds coming after you.

“Bank 10 Gazzillion Bajillion dollars in 2.3 Seconds!” Yeah, in some ways those really were the wild west days… The days of people throwing up a website, creating a crappy product and ripping everyone off to the tune of hundreds of dollars apiece…

…and then disappearing down the rabbit hole from which they came.

No, we don’t miss those days a bit. These days advertisers have to be…

(get ready for it, this is a lulu of a shocker) …advertisers have to be HONEST.

Gasp! Shock! Oh, the horror!!

Wait a minute – isn’t that a GOOD thing?

So many times I’ve heard people moan and groan about the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) playing cop and being mean when someone makes income claims.

For example, legendary marketer Frank Kern was sued by the FTC because he advertised specific income results. Yes, he might have made 5 or 6 figures from what he was teaching, but the vast majority of people won’t.

To be fair, I’m sure there are cases where the FTC gets overzealous or even spiteful and targets a marketer who means well.

But you have to admit, the trust level overall these days between product creators and product buyers is arguably higher than it used to be, because of the FTC regulations in place.

And this is a wonderful thing, because people are generally LESS skeptical when they read about a new product that doesn’t claim to make millionaires out of paupers at the press of a button.

Now then, if you’re new to marketing or you haven’t been paying attention to what you can and cannot do in your advertising, here are some guidelines to keep you out of hot water with the FTC.

And please note: I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on Netflix. This isn’t legal advice. This is simply me wanting to keep you out of jail with some good common sense.

Let’s get started:

1. If you’re making income claims of any kind, be fully prepared to back them up with documentation that will satisfy a court of law - just in case.

2. If you’re making income claims, state clearly that the income claimed is one example of what might be accomplished, and absolutely no guarantee these results can be duplicated. Just because someone can win a gold medal in running, and then teach me to run, doesn’t mean I can win a gold medal, too.

3. It’s okay – and even a most excellent idea – to let people know that many will make absolutely nothing with your system. After all, there is work involved, and if someone doesn’t consume your product and put it to work, they’re not going to make anything. This is common sense and yes, your reader already knows this. Expressing this demonstrates your honesty and makes everything else you say more believable. Plus, it’s true. And near as I can tell, the FTC likes truth in advertising. A lot.

4. If there are expenses related to making this money, clearly state what those are. For example, did you earn $10,000 but you paid affiliates $5,000? Then don’t say you earned $10,000 without immediately revealing you paid half of that to affiliates. Or simply say you cleared $5000 after paying affiliates.

5. Reassure your prospects that your money making method takes WORK. Believe it or not, this will usually increase your conversion rate, because people believe it takes work to make money. If you make it sound too easy (even if it is easy) they won’t believe you. And if they do believe you and buy the product, and then realize it’s not as easy as you made it sound, there will be complaints – some of them straight to the FTC.

6. Be brutally honest about how long it took you to achieve your results. Oddly enough, this not only keeps you honest, but it can also be a great selling point. “I had to try 27 different techniques before I got it right and I made my first dollar. Fortunately, I’ll teach you only the 27th method, the one that works for me. Because you won’t be wasting your time with the other 26 methods that didn’t work, your learning curve should be far shorter and less bumpy than mine was.

7. With everything you write or say, ask yourself if you are telling the whole story, because a half-truth is in fact a LIE. From the FTC website (bolding is mine): The Federal Trade Commission Act allows the FTC to act in the interest of all consumers to prevent deceptive and unfair acts or practices. In interpreting Section 5 of the Act, the Commission has determined that a representation, omission or practice is deceptive if it is likely to: mislead consumers and affect consumers' behavior or decisions about the product or service.

8. Assume the FTC is going to read your copy or watch your sales video. Yup. That puts things in perspective, doesn’t it?

9. Whenever possible, don’t make an income claim your primary benefit. Let’s say you teach a course on how to do marketing for offline businesses. Hopefully that is your BIG benefit – teaching offline marketing. Any income claims should be secondary to that benefit.

10.Can you sell your product without making income claims at all? That’s terrific – do it. Very few products MUST contain income claims.

Okay, I need to talk about #10 – back in the day if you wanted to sell an Internet Marketing type of product, you just needed to make some realistic income claims along with a plausible story of how it works, and you made sales.

As marketers we got complacent. We had a sales technique that worked – making income claims – and so we used that most every time we were selling an IM type product.

Bottom line – we got lazy and we forgot how to sell without income claims.

So let’s say Bob has a nice little method to earn $1,000 a week. And that’s what he’s earning, too. He writes up the process he uses and makes a product out of it. So far, so good. But how does he market it?

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First, we better reveal what a lead magnet is. You know those freebies you get for subscribing to a list? Those are lead magnets.

They’re something offered as a free gift or enticement in exchange for an email address. And they’re the easiest, fastest way to build a list of target subscribers.

Remember this: The goal of any lead magnet is to convert traffic into leads.

While it’s true you can throw just about anything together and call it a lead magnet, it’s also true that the better (and more targeted) the lead magnet is, the easier it will be to build a profitable list.

A lead magnet doesn’t make money by itself. Yet working as your front line ambassador, they can be extremely lucrative.

As you know, there are three ways to grow a business:

• Increase the number of customers • Increase the average transaction value per customer • Increase the number of transactions per customer

With the right lead magnet, you can increase the number of prospects and customers you have joining your list.

And with a well-targeted lead magnet, you can also increase the average transaction value and even the number of transactions per customer, by attracting the very best customers for your particular business.

As you go through the following sections, always think of your lead magnet as an irresistible bribe that will offer real value to your prospects.

Your lead magnet has to be so good, your prospects will ‘buy’ it with their email address.

It should be relevant to your niche and your offers.

It should be ultra-specific in what it gives to the user.

It should be priceless, in that the prospect can’t easily google the information and find it for themselves, or even buy it someplace else.

And it should be easily consumed, because you want the prospect to consume it immediately after they download it.

We’ll go through each of these in turn in a moment.

The point to remember right now is this: Your lead magnet is perhaps the single most important piece of your entire marketing system.

The right lead magnet will bring you a never ending stream of new prospects and soon-to-be customers.

The wrong lead magnet will bring either the wrong prospects for your offers, or no prospects at all.

Let’s get started:

Creating Your Lead Magnet

First we’re going to choose a specific market segment to target. Then we’re going to craft your ‘promise.’

Next we’ll write the title and decide on the format.

And finally, we’re going to actually create your lead magnet.

Choosing Your Specific Market Segment

The biggest mistake I see people making is trying to be all things to all people in their lead magnet.

Let’s take the Internet Marketing niche as an example.

New marketers will write a lead magnet such as, “How to Make Tons of Money in Online Marketing.”

Evidently they are trying to target ALL people of all experiences trying to make money in all arenas online.

That’s a wide audience.

Another one might be, “How to be a great parent.” Parent to who? Newborn babies? Toddlers? Grade school age children? Teenagers? Children with special needs? Adopted children? Foster children?

It’s a cliché, but it’s true: When you try to be all things to all people, you’re nothing to nobody.

The more you can niche down your market segment, the more successful you will be.

This isn’t to say you can only service one tight niche. You can work in several different segments; you’ll just need to create several different lead magnets – one for each segment.

For example, let’s say you’re in the dating market. You could create a lead magnet targeted to:

• Professional women in their late 20’s and 30’s looking for the perfect husband

• Recently divorced men who haven’t dated in over a decade

• Widows over 40 who are lonely but afraid to date again

• Men who want to play the field

• Women who want to date younger guys

• And so forth.

Each of these segments have different fears, desires, challenges, motivations and so forth.

You could easily come up with a 100 possibilities, but it’s up to you to choose the right segment to target with your lead magnet. Think about the exact segment of your market you want to write your lead magnet for.

When you’ve decided, move on to the next step.

Crafting your promise

You’ve chosen a specific segment of your market in the previous step. Now it’s time to make them a promise.

The goal here is to enter the conversation already happening in your prospect’s mind.

Ask yourself what their concerns are. What are their fears? What do they want most of all?

What conversation are they likely already having, and how can you enter that conversation with a promise?

What value can you give them that will be irresistible to where they are in life right now?