How do you find affiliates for your products?

I'm afraid it's not that easy.

Just because you are in the market place doesn't mean that affiliates will find you and start promoting.

The only thing I've found that works at all is to search out the owners and email them.

It's a long process, and if anyone has any faster methods I'm all ears.

Joint venture forums are great for this. Try the one here, or you could head over to jvnotifypro

It helps the bookkeeping and transaction-processing enormously: it doesn't help, much, to find affiliates. Putting your product onto "retail premises" doesn't produce "salesmen". Clickbank doesn't employ salesmen.

Yes, potential affiliates can look through the marketplace, and find your product, and you might find one or two that way, but the serious ones are looking primarily for trusted products of known vendors.

You still have to promote your product to affiliates. Your affiliate-page and "vendor spotlight" at Clickbank are one way to try to do that, but for many new vendors a pretty minor and inconsequential way.

I was recently promoted to "affiliate manager". Maybe I can help. I'm still new to my position, but I've been learning a lot.

1. Use Google to find all of the top guy's blogs in our market. I search the blog high and low for contact information. If it's not on the blog I do a domain whois. Maybe they didn't register privately (If you're lucky).

2. I keep an ear out for the top launches that are currently going on, coming up or previously ended. I Google those launches to see if I can find a JV blog. usually it's "productname.com/jv, productname.com/jvblog or productname.com/affiliates, etc". If it was a big launch, they most likely have a JV blog. I search the JV blog for their leaderboard. The leaderboard is a goldmine!

3. We also give out review copies to affiliates so they know it's a quality product that their list will love and benefit from. Obviously we can't just give free products to anyone who signs up as an affiliate, but if they have been on multiple leaderboards, we've heard of them or really want them on our side then we have no problem hooking them up with a copy.

While using methods 1 and 2 I compile a big notepad of potential affiliates. I draft a general email notifying them of our upcoming launch. Giving them any stats that might help get them on board (conversion %'s, payouts, etc). Then I wait for a response...

These are the things I do if I know we are going into a launch very soon and I need to get some new affiliates on board quick. It's always good to make relationships further in advance. So these two things I was literally doing days before we went into pre-launch.

Right now, I'm working on new affiliate relationships and maintaining current affiliate relationships by always leading with the giving hand. I'm on a lot of e-mail lists in our market. From time to time I drop by their blog and offer help.

I'm decent with graphics and have learned a few tricks along the way about conversions. So I might whip up some banner-ads that I think will convert better for them. I also might link them over to one of our high-converting landing pages and say (Hey NAME, this page is kicking butt for us right now. It's converting @ XX%, give it a try. If you'd like, I can send you the .html file).

Even if the banner ads don't perform better or they never try the landing page, they are going to remember you for TRYING to be helpful and you've got a way better chance of getting them on board for your next launch.

P.S (Don't give them ****ty banners and crappy templates just so they remember you lol. Always try to actually be helpful, not just appear to be helpful)