Are You Ready For An Affiliate Program?

To follow up the last issue of Online Success Secrets, hundreds of you clicked to get more information on affiliate management. Good move!

As you have probably seen from the glut of emails in your inbox today, Anik Singal’s Affiliate Manager product launched today. I received an early copy – and I have to tell you, it’s *very* impressive.

But are you ready for your own affiliate program? I help you answer that question in this week’s article.

Are You Ready For An Affiliate Program?
by Jeanette S Cates, PhD

You have a product for sale – and now you’re anxious to launch your affiliate program. After all, affiliates send traffic your way. They refer new prospects who become customers – and then affiliates.

But are you ready to offer an affiliate program?

Here are three signs that that you’re ready.

1. Your site is selling well. You have created a sales letter that closes at a dependable rate. You can share that sales conversion rate with your potential affiliates. You can let them know the difference in close rates from pay- per-click traffic and the traffic coming from your list.

This information may not be important to the casual affiliate, who signs up for your program because they like your product. But it is critcially important to super affiliates – those people who have the ability to bring you tons of traffic. And while you may not offer that information when you ask them to help you promote your product, you want to have it ready if they ask. It’s a level of professionalism that sets you apart from the casual affiliate program manager.

2. You have a toolbox of effective advertising media. This toolbox includes graphics, banners, ads, articles, emails – tools your affiliates will be able to use to promote your product.

When you add items to your toolbox, you want to test those items – so that your affiliates can depend on those emails and ads to draw traffic to your site. Yes, it takes time to assemble those items, but it will be a critical tool for your affiliates.

3. You are prepared to provide an education process for your affiliates. Many people who sign up for your affiliate program have never successfully promoted a product before. It is up to you to teach them how to be good affiliates.

This education process generally takes the form of a sequence of email messages. You’ll introduce them to each of your products, give them ideas on how to promote them, what types of prospects find the products attractive, etc. You’ll want to point them to the affiliate tools appropriate for each product.

And you’ll want to continue to motivate them. It may be through monthly calls, a weekly email, or contests, but affiliates are like anyone else online. Whatever has come across their desk most recently is what they will pay attention to. So you want to gain and remain top-of-mind.
If you have these three processes in place or are willing to formalize them, then you should be ready to run a first- class affiliate program. Best of all, the hard work is already done – with all the logistics in place. Now you just need to announce and promote the program and recruit the best people as your affiliates.

The traffic, sales, and friendships you form as a result make it all worthwhile!

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Dr. Jeanette Cates works with consultants and other experts who are ready to leverage their expertise into Online Success. She offers affiliate training videos and materials at http://www.getaffiliatemanager.com/