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Am I Wrong Teaching Affiliates to Market?

by Chris The Traffic Blogger
8 replies
My current affiliate program is doing well, but as with all things related to online marketing I'd like to fine tune it and make it stronger for the benefit of myself and the affiliates in question.

So how do you run your affiliate campaigns? Do you spend your time teaching, attracting or both? Are either of these activies the wrong way to do things?

I spend much of my time creating content to help the affiliates, such as premade emails, creating a list of keywords (a quite extensive fine tuned list mind you), a newsletter with 13 autoresponder emails and I speak to all my affiliates at least once on a 1 to 1 basis to discuss their marketing methods. Sometimes I even go into helping them build their site traffic in order to eventually sell more of my product.

Am I going about this the wrong way? Are there enough fish in the sea that I should be more focused on getting the pros instead of bringing the amateurs up a notch?

I mean no disrespect to my affiliates, many of them were already super affiliates or have gone from amateurs to rather good ones in a small amount of time, but that's not to say my methods were the best route to success.

What's your experience with gathering affiliates? Is there an 80/20 approach to this? Attracting = 80%, Teaching = 20%? Reverse?

Thanks!
#affiliates #market #teaching #wrong
  • Profile picture of the author globalpro
    Chris,

    I don't think you can ever do enough for people that are promoting your products. They are the core of your business. You can have great products, but great affiliates will really make it go.

    I have a few people I follow along with that are big believers in ensuring the affiliates success at marketing, much like what you are saying. One does exactly what you are saying with the 1 on 1 aspect, and to me, that makes it very special.

    Granted, not all affiliates will take action, but I think any way you can help them to better themselves at promoting your stuff, will pay dividends in the long run. They become future business owners and potential JV partners for other endeavors.

    I think at the end of the day what you are doing is great (think 'what goes around, comes around'), but only you know for sure. Focus on the ones that want to succeed and their success can/will become your success.

    Just my thoughts.

    Thanks,

    John
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  • Profile picture of the author Andrew Barton
    In most cases, teaching affiliates will always pay off more in the long run. It is just like dealing with customers, insofar as it builds a relationship and trust. More importantly, if you are giving them the tools and skills to make money with your products, there is less reason for them to look elsewhere.

    Plus, in the long run it will help generate excellent word or mouth advertising to recruit future affiliates. Affiliates are always asking each other what products they are doing well with and by training your affiliates, they will most likely recommend your affiliate program to others...

    So teaching is recruiting in a round-about way.
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    --Andrew

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    • Profile picture of the author Dave Rodman
      Banned
      With existing affiliates, I only work with them to optimize their sites to get better conversions. And usually it's a 10 minute conversation.

      And I usually choose not to spend a ton of time with people that don't have much traffic to begin with. I think the typical thought process is that they'll repay you down the line, but it's easy enough to monitor existing affiliates and see which ones have potential. So I focus on those.
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  • Profile picture of the author Christophe Young
    I would think that if I have to teach potential affiliates how to promote my product that these are not the affiliates I really want promoting my product.
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    • Profile picture of the author Chris The Traffic Blogger
      Originally Posted by Christophe Young View Post

      I would think that if I have to teach potential affiliates how to promote my product that these are not the affiliates I really want promoting my product.
      This is what I've been thinking as well when trying to decide if it's worth my time.

      The question before this is... how do I get in front of the eyeballs of affiliates who already know how to promote products well?
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