As mentioned in my last post, I’m going to share with you tips on how to nurture your affiliates.
Those of you who have read the Insider Advertising Report will know that to be successful in advertising, you have to understand the characteristics of your prospects. Likewise in affiliate management, you have to understand the characteristics of your affiliates.
Here are the characteristics of your affiliates:
1. They are unmotivated.
2. They are uncreative.
3. They are lazy.
I believe these characteristics hold true for all affiliates, until you have their attention and interest in your program.
Once you understand the characteristics of your affiliates, nurturing them becomes a simple task of asking the right questions. The tough part is answering those question.
Questions that I keep asking myself are:
1. Why would someone promote our website?
2. How can we encourage affiliates to take action and start promoting our website?
3. What other creative tools can I develop to make it easier for our affiliates to promote us?
4. Since affiliates are lazy, is there a way to promote our program without having to promote it?
Let’s look at how we answer these questions in one of our websites, LeadsLeap.com.
1. Why would someone promote our website?
When our members promote LeadsLeap, other than making money, they are at the same time building 10 levels of leads whom they can advertise to.
In addition, whenever their referrals read ads, they earn advertising credits on autopilot. Many of our members earn thousands of advertising credits every month without reading any ad on their own because they have a team of people earning credits for them.
2. How can we encourage affiliates to take action and start promoting our website?
Our answer to this question is to have a Bonus Credit reward program, where members with just 20 personal referrals will receive 500 advertising credits every month, forever! Needless to say, many members try to get their 20 referrals by hook or by crook.
In fact, the rewards do not just end there. The more people they refer, the more bonus credits they receive every month. That’s why we have affiliates promoting our program on a continual basis.
3. What other creative tools can I develop to make it easier for our affiliates to promote us?
One powerful tool (or rather a system) that has brought lots of traffic to us is our blog referral system.
The way it works is quite simple. Our blog (which is the blog you’re reading now) is a viral blog. Our members can send traffic to any article in the blog with their affiliate ID. When the traffic signs up, it becomes their leads. When the traffic click ads, the members earn ad credits. This system alone has brought us lots of traffic because whenever we make a blog post, many of our members will inform their leads about the article. Sharing good information is always easier than sharing an opportunity.
To further leverage on this system, we create a LeadsLeap Widget that members can place on their websites. With this widget, our members will be able to send traffic to read the useful information on our blog while helping them to build leads and credits on autopilot.
4. Since affiliates are lazy, is there a way to promote our program without having to promote it?
Is it possible to get someone to promote your program without that person promoting it?
Definitely yes. Google uses this trick all the time.
The answer is to provide useful tools that webmasters can use. At the same time, those tools carry your brand.
We have quite a number of such tools and we are developing more. An example is our SlideSense advertising system. Members can use it for their own advertising purpose, but indirectly they are promoting LeadsLeap. Other tools we’ve developed include our Advanced Link Cloaker and List Building Script.
Some Final Notes
You may think LeadsLeap is an advertising system. That’s why we have the luxury of advertising credits and tools that we can leverage on to come out with incentives that address to these questions.
It’s not true. (At least you can’t allow yourself to believe it’s true.)
Regardless of which niche you’re in, you will be able to find a similar solution for your niche. Just believe and think hard. One day, you may wake up with an innovative idea that may just work.
Great again Ken! Incentives sparks initiative. The Insider Advertising Report brings this into perfect logic. When will part two be released? I’m eager.
Thank you for sharing these tips. Having an affiliate program doesn’t mean you will get traffic. These information will be very useful for webmaster.
Ken, I love your articles and your work, and I realise you are generalising and being a little provocative by saying affiliates are lazy. But at half past midnight (UK time), having worked on my online business non-stop since coming in from “the day-job”, I don’t feel lazy!!
What I will admit to is lack of focus, but that is largely because, despite the long hours I put in night after night, I have yet to find anything that has really paid off the way many of the big marketers “promise”. (Not Ken – he is realistic.)
So when I feel I’ve “flogged a dead horse” for a couple of months, I’ll admit I tend to move onto the next “promised land”, because I have yet to see the success I imagine everyone but me is achieving.
Once I find that formula for success, you can bet that my hours will be even longer, and I will focus better! But the lack of success, despite my long hours, can be very discouraging!
Sorry if any reader is offended. The thing is, when designing a system, we have to think for the worst type of people. Of course there are people who are highly motivated, but that belongs to minority. It’s never overdone to have a system designed for the laziest. Those who are hardworking can still embrace such system. :)
Not offended Ken, only very frustrated by my own lack of progress.
However, I think much advertising of other systems focuses on how “easy” everything is, when in practice it is NOT. And it shouldn’t be easy. We are running businesses, and the sooner everyone realises that, the better, so I do agree with the general thrust of your argument :-)
nd it shouldn’t be easy. We are running businesses,
It’s the old story: service to many leads to greatness!
Superb!!! Great Stuff. Very helpful
Nice, and thanks for sharing this info with us
it is great pleasure to visit your site. thanks
Hey Kenneth,
Leadsleap is about one of the very few viral marketing service I use for some obvious reason – like the value, the content and it’s uniqueness.
I have recently created a membership site for a high ticket product for my members to leverage my marketing experience & success from their beginning. and I’d like to know more about how I could create my own “blog referral system”, so that my members could promote my blog posts, with their referral ID.
I’ve spend my whole day searching the web like a madmen trying to figure out what is the scripts and technology necessary to reproduce the features of this blog, even wondering if I’ll have to code it from scratch?
I’d really appreciate if you could point me in the right direction for this.
Thanks Kenneth!
Pierre
Hi Pierre,
Indeed you need to code it from scratch. The problem is each affiliate system is different. Your plugin will have to be custom made to link to your own affiliate system. Hope that helps.
Regards,
Kenneth
Your article is useful for me. It is a good article.
Thanks for these tips! I really needed them! It takes a lot of patience though just executing these.
Interesting ideas and perspective as always Kenneth on looking through the internet marketing glass onion …
Cheers
Rui
Thank you so much for a wonderful site!
I like to think of it as affiliates in a sense are business partners. If you give them helpful promotion support such as email swipes, articles, and banners this gives the affiliates a direction to go in to promote your offer.
Affiliates are partners but they usually don’t recognize that initially. We have to nurture those relationships to the degree possible. Also, remember that they are never as motivated as when they clearly understand what’s “in it for them”.
All of the above is the case. even then what we do not expect we should expect. otherwise we get a negative result. because everything comes from us and we expect the impossible. it’s easier to say that the problem is in ourselves and we are looking on the side and do not even want to admit it to ourselves. it’s to give birth to children and to abandon them. so often happens with the referrals which we invited. everything works and all right. but the result is difficult to say which. the output is simple – to understand the situation and act on the circumstances. in principle, what Kenneth says. Thank you .
About what people comments I hope is trustable I am a new member I haven’t learned more so I not have that trust but please people who have learn it more I request your help to assist me what are the benefit of this system.
Nice and Thanks for this important tips.